I hope people realize what Lenny and Emil did in 2002 and how improbable this all seemed. I ran the Fantasy Sports Trade Conference at that time and in August of 2000 CBS Sportsline.com shocked the entire industry by announcing that their very popular commissioner product was changing from a pay model to a free model. They basically were going for a major land grab and using their top product to push millions of fantasy players to their site. It changed the landscape in A HURRY.
Soon you had the entire industry mulling over free vs. pay. Pay content sites had to figure out if free was a better model and obviously the other big media sports sites had to think about changing their financial models to recruit eyeballs and finance expenses via banner advertising, not paid subscriptions. It was an incredible change for the industry.
During the next 18 months, Sportsline went from pay to free and back to pay again, but many other sites went to free when Sportsline changed course again. That free model had been proven to be the right call for anyone going for a land grab and there was no turning back.
Then in the winter of 2002, there was an ad for something called the World Championship of Fantasy Football with a $200,000 grand prize and a $1,250 entry fee per team. They were looking for 600 teams, an improbable number when the industry was leaving the pay model for the free model. I remember when this ad came in for our May 2002 baseball issue of Fantasy Sports Magazine and I asked our ad manager Chris Adamski who the hell was taking this ad out. He said Lenny Pappano from Draft Sharks, the guy who always takes the ad out after our Cheat Sheets. I told Chris to take cash with that ad because this contest HAD NO CHANCE IN HELL of succeeding!!
Those were my exact words.We took the ad and I later interviewed Lenny for a story on the WCOFF in our August football issue. At that point there was some momentum for this event and it looked like it was going to go off even if they didn't get 600 teams. I was happily surprised for Lenny and for our industry. I didn't take a team that year, but I did go out to Las Vegas to compete in the Friday night Experts Draft they held at the ESPN Zone and to help someone else draft on Saturday morning.
When I flew out of Green Bay we had about 8-10 teams going out there for the draft. That amazed me. On Friday night at the ESPN Zone, I was totally amazed that they had rented out the entire restaurant for a kickoff party with food and drinks. That was one of the most energetic nights I've ever seen in this industry. And on Saturday morning when everyone first entered the draft room -- we had to wait outside for a long time as Lenny and Emil got the room set up -- I remember someone behind me saying "This is the F---ing Super Bowl of Fantasy Football!!!" I totally agreed with him and couldn't believe the excitement of that draft with 552 teams -- over 800 die-hard fantasy players -- entering one room. It was an amazing accomplishment by Lenny and Emil.
I told both guys how proud I was of them during the break, but both of them were like in another world. They both looked totally wiped out and stressed about the whole thing. The fact that they both probably dipped into their own pockets to make that first year a go at the advertised prize pool probably had something to do with their attitudes too. But I knew that if we could work together on baseball that we'd get at least 300 teams in Las Vegas for a similar event during March Madness.
We never got to work together for reasons I wish never had happened because I know that me, Lenny and Emil would have put on two great shows a year and expanded to multiple cities by 2003. It would have been very tough for anyone to compete with us in football and baseball with us working together. That was the plan for both baseball and football, with Krause's adding the staff to make that possible. But instead we became competitors in the same space and they eventually sold to Jesse and Dustin, and Krause's got bought out by F+W Media, which sold the NFFC/NFBC to Fanball in 2009. Wow, what a wild time for all of us.
I hope to see Lenny and Emil in San Francisco next week, but I'm not sure either one is going to the FSTA Conference. If I do see them, I'll again congratulate them on a job well done, on a vision nobody else had at that time, and for best wishes the rest of the way. No matter what happens down the road, what these two guys did for the industry is historic and needs to be honored.
I'm part of the FSTA's Hall of Fame Committee and a past inductee and I'll do what I can to get those guys in the FSTA Hall of Fame down the road. They are very deserving. Both are pioneers in their own right -- Emil with Fantasy Pro Forecast and Lenny with Draft Sharks -- but what they did with the WCOFF changed the landscape forever. They pioneered an area of the space that has grown into one of the biggest pay revenue areas in the industry. They created that space. Anything I did or anyone else did after that was learning from their creation. They are true pioneers in the industry and they should be FSTA Hall of Fame members.
Thankfully, the three of us always maintained a good relationship even during our competitive ways. We realized there were enough players around to allow both of us to be successful. We never got into the wars for players or anything else like that. We both sold out in our specialties and had different games. There wasn't any type of poaching off the others' ideas or customers. Just innovative games that attracted players to both contests.
Let's hope the WCOFF pays off its players and lives to see a 10th anniversary season. But no matter what happens in the future -- good or bad -- it can't take away from what Lenny and Emil created in 2002. Well played guys, well played.
[ June 11, 2011, 07:26 PM: Message edited by: Greg Ambrosius ]
