In 2002 when I attended the very first WCOFF in Las Vegas, I was just totally blown away by the fact that Lenny and Emil were able to get 552 teams to fly to Las Vegas to draft at the MGM Grand at $1,250 per team. You have to remember, this was after 9/11 when nobody wanted to fly and the economy was starting what looks like a mild recession compared to today. Also, the industry was really going towards free content, free commissioner products, free games, and here was Lenny and Emil introducing a live event at $1,250 a team. I didn't think it would take off, but seeing is believing.
I was amazed at the number of teams they had gotten with a strong late push and when I boarded my plane in Green Bay there were about seven WCOFF teams on my plane. That really told me they were attracting from all over. I was one of the guest participants in the Friday Night experts league at the ESPN Zone and I almost suffocated by the masses who came over to look at our results. They booed every non-RB taken early and within a short time I knew these folks knew as much if not more about football than me and everyone in that league. It was amazing the intensity and excitement.
During the first break, I congratulated Lenny and Emil and told them we could do the same thing for baseball. I also said we could do this in New York and our company would be perfect to run multi-city events. Unfortunately, we never were able to get WCOFF and Krause Publications together, but my idea of doing multi-city live drafts continued and in 2004 we unveiled the NFBC in Las Vegas, New York and Chicago. We then did the same thing with the NFFC that summer.
WCOFF eventually expanded to Atlantic City and other cities, while we've been in at least three cities every year since 2004 for both baseball and football. We expanded to Florida for both sports in 2006 and of course this year we expanded to eight cities and learned a lot.
Some folks may now think that we were foolish for being so aggressive, but I don't regret the move at all. For one thing, you can tell in this economy that it was going to be hard for folks to travel to one of the three main cities if we hadn't come to their region. Yes, we have failed to get more than one league in any other city, but hopefully we can fill one league in each city and make that feel like a solid local league with $100,000 at stake. All of those owners still have the option to go to another city if they'd like, but the economy makes it tough to do that. Folks who can go to Boston instead of New York are saving a lot of money and that was the plan. Unfortunately, we didn't recruit more people to Boston.
Secondly, the regional events do allow us to bring in new members. While we only have six Primetime participants right now in Minneapolis, FIVE of them are first-time NFFC players from Fanball. None of them would go to Chicago and Chicago hasn't suffered one bit from the additional cities. I know some people think it has, but no Chicago participant from last year is competing in Minneapolis or Dallas or Buffalo or anywhere else. Our Chicago participants right now are either doing it online or not at all. My hope is that they will still come back, but the other cities certainly aren't hurting the Windy City.
What we have learned, unfortunately, is that not every NFL city can support a high-stakes draft. There just aren't thousands and thousands of fantasy players looking to play at $1,400 a team. You folks who do this are special and that's why all competitors in this space recruit heavily among this unique 1,200+ user base. It's that small among all three contests, I really believe it. So your decisions based on our actions are key to the success of this space. I don't know how else to say it.
And what you've told all of us recently is that the economy makes it tough for you to play even if we come to you. In fact, playing online makes more sense. And so when I added an online option three years ago to give everyone a chance to participate, I never thought it would outgrow Chicago to now become my third biggest event location. And the success that all of the online championships are having is telling everyone that an online contest in the $350 range is the ideal price point and location. You don't have to travel and you don't have other expenses, yet there are still big prizes. Nice.
Again, I don't fault us for swinging for the fences here or in baseball when we went to five different locations. We obviously need to address Denver immediately and have been in contact with those owners, and even Dallas is a concern. But we'll go forward with all of the other locations for this year (and maybe Dallas too) and make the most of it. We will have plenty of food and drink in each location and again make this feel like a fun home league with a bigger prize at stake.
We tried. We're going to make the most of it and hook up cities via teleconference if need be. We'll learn from this and next year scale back if needed and offer more things online. I think everyone knows me well enough to know that my initial goal in 2004 when the Internet was taking off and everyone was going online that I wanted the live draft feeling and experience and fun to continue. I didn't want to see our industry go ALL ONLINE. There just is nothing like the live draft experience and that's what I wanted and tried to grow in the NFFC.
We will still experience that this year and we will try very hard to keep it going in the future. Las Vegas right now has a chance to top last year's 6 Classic and 6 Primetime leagues, which is great. New York once had 130+ Classic signups and now has less than 50 even though we are hosting it at Citi Field and have free Mets' tickets. Tom and I are calling every past participant and we remain hopeful that NY will still make a late run. We have room for only 6-7 leagues at most in the space we have, so we're still okay if we get our die-hards to return. And Chicago is down from a high of 84 teams in 2006 and struggling to equal last year's total of 56 and 48, respectively. But I'm calling all past participants there and hopeful of things to come.
But you've spoken. Online has to be given more emphasis in the future and expanding to more cities has to be re-evaluated. We tested the waters, and my feeling is that we'll pull back. But it wasn't from a lack of trying.
Now, let's get our die-hards back in the core cities and take care of business. We can still equal or top last year's final numbers in the Classic and Primetime with a strong late push and I have an idea that might help us reach our goals. Stay tuned and hopefully you'll like this new offering.
Thanks everyone and good luck this season.
