I have just quickly breezed through some of the comments here. My comments were not meant to "bash" the FFOC in order to help our contest. I do not think the two are all that interrelated. The FFPC is doing just fine and is not really like the FFOC. What I was trying to do is make a comment that agreed with another fantasy player as a fantasy player. The AFFL thing has been a disaster and was one of the primary reason why we formed ForPlayers-ByPlayers and did the Escrow account.
I 100% support the contests I believe in. I am buying 3 NFFC/NBC Main Events teams by the way totaling about $4,000 or so, so I think that I can feel free to post on the NFFC board about what I think of the FFOC when a fellow player comments on it in a worrisome fashion. This is not my message board, so when I post on the NFFC board, it is as a high stakes player. Thanks for making me feel so welcome.
a. I already commented that the hockey comment was inaccurate on page one since the guy owned the company. My bad.
b. They have had drafts go off with less than 10 people actually drafting. I cannot say for sure if they filled or people did not show up.
c. They have drafted less than 80 leagues or 800 teams as pointed out by KoQ. There is less than 1 month until the season starts. Break even is probably 15-20,000 teams. Even a company that can take a loss could see that selling 5,000 teams this year only could mean 10,000 next year - another sizable loss. Some ideas are just bad ideas. Some are not fiscally feasible to pull off - the market may not be big enough. Out of the millions of players that play fantasy football, only 17% play for money. And probably 80% of those play in home leagues.
d. They have charged no one's credit card. Some find that to be good, but I find it to be worrisome that the FFOC will not go off. That is a lot of expensive credits and refunds to offer if the event cancels, so why not just "not charge anyone" for now.
e. The "grapevine" I speak of is regarding advertising that was not subsequently placed when the person/site/operator in question requested payment in advance. They "reconsidered".
I've got $100 that they: a. either do not go off at all or b. pay less than $1,000,000 to the winner. If they do go off and pay $1 million, you win $100 and I will say I was wrong. First to agree gets the bet.
As for my record, I have a BS of Business from the University of Wisconsin, with an honors degree completed in 3.5 years in 1993, with an emphasis in Marketing/Finance and Entrepreneurship. 2 months out of college I started my first business, which is still in existence in the same location in the same mall. I have seen well over 100% turnover in mall-based retailers since I opened my primary location. Since then, I have opened multiple locations and a thriving eCommerce web site. In July of 2005, I bought a franchise location called LoveSac. Six months later my corporate franchiser went bankrupt. 33 out of 36 franchisees followed suit and either abandoned their operation or just went belly up. I could easily have gone that route, screwing over my bank, the mall, employees and anyone I did business with. Instead, I stayed open and expanded, taking over 2 corporate stores and opened 2 more of my own, all while Corporate was in bankruptcy. They recently re-emerged from bankruptcy and I sold all of my store back to the new corporate entity two months ago at a profit.
My personal and business credit is excellent and I have never defaulted on a payment in 15 years as a business owner. That is my business history, and that is why the FFPC started small and will succeed. We are not biting off more than we can chew, and we are learning this business from the ground up. I feel that it would not be fair to my family or to fantasy players to take an unreasonable risk by trying to be too big too soon. Alex and I could easily have gone to our bankers and taken that huge risk, but there was no need for that. As Greg has shown over the years, a personal touch and good customer service goes a long way.
Sorry for the novel. Flame away.
[ August 06, 2008, 03:06 PM: Message edited by: Leroy's Aces ]
