The WHAT THE HELL Greg & Tom Q&A!!

[Greg Ambrosius]

I know what you're all thinking: WHAT THE HELL GREG? What's with the delayed start to the drafting season?

I ask that question every day and every day I hope for a positive answer. So tonight I'm back in the office, doing a little therapy session as I answer my own questions. It keeps me sane if I talk to myself, even on a public Message Board.

So let me ask the questions you're thinking and see if I can explain everything about this whacky and slow off-season. Give me a few posts to answer the pressing questions and then feel free to post any questions I may have missed. And Tom is more than ready to talk about the Packers, the rookies and his latest Rotowire draft, so bug him with questions too. This is my therapy session tonight, but he needs some therapy as well. A LOT of therapy!!

So here we go:
DAMMIT GREG, WHEN ARE WE FINALLY GOING TO DRAFT?: Let me first say that going forward our goal is to always be hosting drafts by March Madness. No more delays for baseball or delays with the web site. We have a big enough programming team at SportsHub Technologies to be live and drafting before the baseball season once we fully take over the site in 2018. So that's our guarantee going forward.

That being said, there are many reasons for this year's delay and yet I never expected to still not be drafting on May 19th. I thought for sure we'd be drafting in April. We promised drafts this week and when the APIs still weren't connecting STATS and SportsHub today, we decided not to open the draft room over the weekend and will launch the leagues on Monday with the goal to start drafting on Tuesday at 1 pm ET. We don't want any hiccups on the first drafts, so starting early next week makes sense to the programmers.

SO WHAT ARE THE DELAYS? It's definitely a technical delay as we hook up our SportsHub signup page to the STATS game software. But in April we received licenses from New York and Tennessee and we really felt it was important to be fully compliant by their standards before we took any registrations. Most of the states that now license DFS and pay-to-play fantasy game operators are asking us to have GEO locator software and age verifier software installed. CDM and NFFC didn't take football signups until that was done. We also had to have requirements in place to limit and list the number of games each owner has, combine their accounts into one login, and tag Experienced Players in every contest. We all know that these are steps that are needed in DFS, but we are required to do them as well. Once we were done with that in early May we opened up the Registration page. Not every game operator in our industry is doing it this way, but we felt it was important to get all of this done first.

Not only is this important to show the state regulators that you are doing what is required by them, but it's important for credit card processors as well. Our industry is feeling the pinch these days by credit card processors who have read the state Attorney General opinions on DFS and nothing is guaranteed anymore. We aren't taking any chances and our credit card processor appreciates that. So all of that prevented an early start.

CAN WE BLAME YOUR NEW COMPANY, SPORTSHUB? Not really. I understand the carefulness with the state regulators and our programming is done for the site now. We want to be licensed in all of the states if possible, so we are showing them exactly what they can expect from us if licensed. It's a long regulating game and playing for the long term. As for the programming jobs from our side, we recreated every page from nffc.stats.com and successfully transferred that to playnffc.com. We also recreated the Registration page and will process all payments going forward. During the baseball season, the NFBC was already moving forward when the sale was announced, so STATS ran Registration for the NFBC. We definitely had to switch that over to SportsHub for football and that works fine now.

CAN WE BLAME STATS? Again, not really. We are grateful to still be able to use the NFFC game engine on STATS while we build all of that during the next year. So you will be using the same draft room, the same in-season game interface, the same FAAB, etc., as you always have and that obviously is all done. And STATS couldn't run the payments for us, so we had to create APIs to send the signup information back to them. The problem is that we didn't have the APIs ready and tested by early May and so we both share that blame. And we won't take a chance on that not being fully tested and bogging down creation of leagues before it's ready, so here we are. We still need to connect that bridge from the user's signup on SportsHub to the draft engine on STATS, whereas in baseball everything still remained on the STATS NFBC site. We will definitely get this done, but right now it's the only cause of us not drafting yet.

Once we bridge that gap we'll be drafting on the same software that you're familiar with and we'll make up for lost time in a hurry. I know a lot of people are anxious to draft and trust me we are even more anxious to host these. We still have 100+ days of drafting ahead of us and we believe that thanks to the debut of the NFFC $25s we'll produce more drafts than ever before. And because of the delay, we now have all of the rookies listed in the player default list and there shouldn't be any Placeholders to worry about.

I hope this helps. I have more questions coming, so hang tight. Thanks all. You are the best and we'll make this up to you. We have a LOT of good things planned for this season, I promise. Stay tuned.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Next question please:

WHERE ARE WE DRAFTING IN LAS VEGAS AND NEW YORK, GREG?

Geez, do we have to use all caps for these questions? Why am I shouting in my head?

Let's start with New York. We have narrowed our choices to two locations and we should have an answer shortly after Memorial Day weekend. One of them is a new site that has some unique possibilities and we're going to do a site inspection very soon. It's not easy hosting live drafts on the East Coast -- which is why we're the only contest to ever do it -- but we're excited about our options. Stay tuned and Tom will announce this soon enough. It will be fun again as we return to New York City for a 14th straight season of live drafts.

In Las Vegas, we have the Bellagio for the entire First Weekend and have the beautiful Monet ballrooms once again. Those have the walkout patios overlooking the pool and it's always nice to walk out of the draft with a cold beer and see semi-naked bodies in 110 degree heat!! We also have the Executive Penthouse suite at the Bellagio for the Wednesday Primetime, the Thursday Kickoff Gridirons and the NFL Viewing Party. We also have the Monet ballrooms for everything on Saturday, Sept. 9th, including the Primetime, Classic and Platinum. There's a huge auto convention at the Bellagio from Aug. 30-Sept. 10, so we're still negotiating for space on Friday, Sept. 8th. My new sales rep is working through this. Sometimes it takes time for space to be released and secured, but we're getting closer. So we're back at the Bellagio for an 8th straight season, but secure rooms soon if you want to stay there or nearby because convention season is in full swing in early September.

Hope this helps. We're getting closer on all of this, but unfortunately these things take time. But I think we will have some good news to report soon.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Next question please:

What's the deadline for the Early Bird Special?

We've extended it to Wednesday, May 31st because of our late launch with Registration. You can now get $100 off every Classic and Primetime if you sign up by May 31st and all of that is programmed into Registration now. You can also get your $75 Events Fees and $50 co-manager fees waived if you take multiple teams. So if you take a Classic and a Primetime or two of each by May 31st, total cost is only $3,000. Sign up now if you want to secure those deals.

If you need help with anything, just contact me or Tom via email ([email protected] and [email protected]). We'll help where we can.

Thanks all and save money by being an Early Bird!!

[Greg Ambrosius]

Next question please:

Anything new for the NFFC this year?

Even with the change in ownership from STATS to SportsHub Technologies, we're trying to make things as similar as possible. That's why still using the STATS game engine is reassuring. You all know how to use it and we know it works, so let's start the transition slowly and unveil our new draft room and game engine in 2018. We'll have both fully tested and ready to go by then.

We are adding the NFFC $25's and $50's this year to give people an affordable option to draft earlier than ever before and more often than ever before. These are 12-team, straight serpentine, 30-round slow drafts where the league champ can earn 8x entry fee and second place can earn 2x. We also will offer nightly versions of these at 1 minute per pick. The goal is to give you a drafting option every night at 8 and 10 pm ET.

We also hope to return weekly contests during the season similar to what we did with Fanduel in 2015. We don't have that ironed out yet, but we're working on it. It would be similar to 2015 where first place would be $1600 or a free entry into next year's Classic or Primetime and a $350 prize for second place. Those were 50-team limits and we limited owners to 3 teams. Those were a lot of fun and I'm pretty sure we'll have those again this year.

Otherwise much of the NFFC is the same. We are the only contest with 10-team, 12-team and 14-team contests and our entry fees range now from $25 to $20,000. There truly is something here for everyone. Enjoy and find your comfort zone.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Next question please:

How do I earn one of those Experienced Player badges?

Aren't those cute?!! The state-by-state laws require us to show every signup in every contest and to tag the Experienced Players so that owners know who they are competing against. You can see an example of that here:

https://playnffc.sportshubtech.com/contest/?id=90

Those signup lists will continue to get updated with each new Registration. And there are five requirements to tag Experienced Players that you can find by clicking on the "click here to view badge levels" link. The only one that pertains to our contest is No. 3, because as of now we don't have anyone who has competed in 500 or 1,000 NFFC leagues. No. 3 reads:

"Has won at least 3 contests with a payout of $1,000 or more OR has won at least 5 contests with a cumulative total payout of $2,500 or more"

We are using recent results to tag Experienced Players. Email me if we've wrongly tagged you or have missed you as someone who should earn a badge. Thanks all.

Check out all of these on each Contest page. And hopefully all other contests are doing the same as required by the states. Enjoy.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Next question please:

Can Indiana and Virginia residents play in the NFFC this year?

We are negotiating with both states now. We have been negotiating with Indiana for a while and are allowed to take Indiana registrations through July 1st as we continue negotiating this license. We hope to have a license by then. Virginia is currently exempt from Registration as we continue negotiating a license. We have every intent to be licensed by Virginia, but we just don't know how long this process will take and the state isn't giving a temporary license at this point.

We have a lot of reasons to work with each state to be licensed. Thankfully, we have a lot of different games already through the NFFC/NFBC, CDM Fantasy Sports, League Safe and Sports Technologies. All of those companies have been around a long time and we all have a long list of games we run. We hope to run even more as well. So we are bullish on the industry and want to be in as many states as legally possible.

Speaking about our family of games, it's fun to have game discussions, rules discussions with industry veterans like Charlie Wiegert, Rob Phythian and Paul Charchian. Those three and myself have all been recognized for our lengthy careers in the industry and for pioneering new products and games. So it's a company tailored just to the fantasy sports industry and with a lot of people with years of experience doing this. When we had a company gathering in April to talk about our upcoming products, it was damn exciting to have everyone in the same room knocking ideas around. You'll hear about some of them very soon.

So all is good. All in good time.

Okay, time to get off the couch and get some sleep. thanks for hearing me out and pop in some more questions when you have time. Tom and I are around to answer anything you have for us, even if it involves the Packers' shoddy defense. Just don't bring up Dom Capers if you direct that question to Tom!! Thanks all and happy drafting this season.

[Hooligans]

Greg,

No disrespect intended, but you continued excuses just aren't believable. Fact is you knew this sale to Sportshub in late 2016 and should have been preparing from that moment on.....maybe you were....for Babseball. Anyway, Sportshub is a business pure and simple and this kind of miss isn't acceptable. Here it is anyway, and providing a "mea culpa" is the only honest response as it is clear the NFFC was ill-prepared for this changeover in ownership and systems....and still is.
Anyway, competition always rewards those that exceed and I know other NFFC'ers have, like myself, found other season-long sites running. It is only May, but the worry is whether this is a one-time problem or a symptom of something worse.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Greg,

No disrespect intended, but you continued excuses just aren't believable. Fact is you knew this sale to Sportshub in late 2016 and should have been preparing from that moment on.....maybe you were....for Babseball. Anyway, Sportshub is a business pure and simple and this kind of miss isn't acceptable. Here it is anyway, and providing a "mea culpa" is the only honest response as it is clear the NFFC was ill-prepared for this changeover in ownership and systems....and still is.
Anyway, competition always rewards those that exceed and I know other NFFC'ers have, like myself, found other season-long sites running. It is only May, but the worry is whether this is a one-time problem or a symptom of something worse.

That's a very fair response. If I wanted to draft right now I wouldn't wait for us to get our shit together either. I'd find a place to draft right now and check back later, no doubt about it.

It's time for us to stop talking, start drafting and prove that nothing has changed on our site. We know that everything is set up to run as before, which is why we didn't want to rush out a new product. You're right, this latest delay is self inflicted and it's time to resolve it and get drafting. Proof that nothing has changed can only be seen once we're drafting.

New ownership is good for us. We wouldn't be licensed in many of the states with high fees without new ownership. We would have exempted them like many of our competitors are doing. We have the resources to expand our products and improve in so many ways. But enough talking. "Shut up Greg and prove it."

You're right. It's time to prove that we're ready for a great season. And we will. Thanks for the feedback and good luck.

[Coltsfan]

Next question please:

Can Indiana and Virginia residents play in the NFFC this year?

We are negotiating with both states now. We have been negotiating with Indiana for a while and are allowed to take Indiana registrations through July 1st as we continue negotiating this license. We hope to have a license by then. Virginia is currently exempt from Registration as we continue negotiating a license. We have every intent to be licensed by Virginia, but we just don't know how long this process will take and the state isn't giving a temporary license at this point.

We have a lot of reasons to work with each state to be licensed. Thankfully, we have a lot of different games already through the NFFC/NFBC, CDM Fantasy Sports, League Safe and Sports Technologies. All of those companies have been around a long time and we all have a long list of games we run. We hope to run even more as well. So we are bullish on the industry and want to be in as many states as legally possible.

Speaking about our family of games, it's fun to have game discussions, rules discussions with industry veterans like Charlie Wiegert, Rob Phythian and Paul Charchian. Those three and myself have all been recognized for our lengthy careers in the industry and for pioneering new products and games. So it's a company tailored just to the fantasy sports industry and with a lot of people with years of experience doing this. When we had a company gathering in April to talk about our upcoming products, it was damn exciting to have everyone in the same room knocking ideas around. You'll hear about some of them very soon.

So all is good. All in good time.

Okay, time to get off the couch and get some sleep. thanks for hearing me out and pop in some more questions when you have time. Tom and I are around to answer anything you have for us, even if it involves the Packers' shoddy defense. Just don't bring up Dom Capers if you direct that question to Tom!! Thanks all and happy drafting this season.

So I understand that Indiana can draft til July 1st. But can we sign up for the main events now and get the discount? The bigger question is can we go ahead and book our flights to Vegas?


Wayne

[Glenneration X]

[/b]Aren't those cute?!! The state-by-state laws require us to show every signup in every contest and to tag the Experienced Players so that owners know who they are competing against.

Does this mean no more anonymous sign ups or aliases?