Website: www.protourfantasygolf.com

Interview With: John Hohlen

How many founders does Pro Tour Fantasy Golf have and what are their names?

Pro Tour Fantasy Golf was founded by John Hohlen and Steve Molitor.

What are the founders’ backgrounds and qualifications?

John and Steve each have over 20 years of experience in software engineering. For the last 8 years, their focus has been developing web-based applications using technologies such as Java / J2EE and Ruby / Rails.

John has a Computer Science degree from the University of Missouri and an MBA from Washington University – St. Louis. John has worked in for firms in aerospace, financial information, and transportation industries. Steve has a Music degree from DePaul University in Chicago. Steve has worked for firms in aerospace, transporation, and health care industries.

What does your website do?

Our website is a new fantasy golf game offering a new and innovative approach where participants pick 3 golfers for each week’s golf tournament with the option to substitute 1 golfer with another after the 2nd round. But a golfer can only be used twice throughout the course of the PTFG season (24 weeks). Whatever money each golfer wins is how many points you get. There are few other features such as double earnings, mulligans, and 4-week sessions which add to the overall strategy.

When did you launch?

Our fantasy golf game was actually invented about 10 years ago, but we didn’t have an Internet based version of our game until 2006. In 2006 and 2007, we launched two pilot sites; one for friends and family, the other for a local country club. Developing these pilot sites allowed us to flush out the features of our game as well as one or two bugs (okay, maybe a few more bugs than that!) This year, 2008, is our inaugural year for offering our game to the public under the brand names www.ProTourFantasyGolf.com and www.HighStakesFantasyGolf.com.

How do you plan on building your community?

We’re currently offering an introductory league for $25 with smaller cash prizes to allow users to get familiar with our game while building our credibility. Our standard league entry fee is $100 and our high stakes league is $500. Based on the results from our pilot leagues, we have found our game is viral in the sense that participants really enjoy our game, so they tell their friends about it so they can compete against them is well. Participants like the simplicity of our game, but yet the numerous ways that strategy comes into play throughout the season. They also like our larger cash prizes (compared to other fantasy golf games) and the better odds of winning a cash prize since each league is limited to 200 participants. According to the FSTA, there are over 5.5 million Americans who play fantasy golf, and we expect that number to continue to grow in the future. So there are already plenty of players out there.

What types of marketing will you do?

We joined the Fantasy Sports Trade Association www.fsta.org and they helped us issue a press release . Since then, we have been advertising on the Internet, and have formed relationships with several other fantasy sports companies who are helping us promote our game. Fantasy golf is a niche market compared to fantasy football and baseball. Many fantasy sports companies don’t have a golf product or if they do, they don’t put nearly the time and resources into compared to their other games. The companies we’ve hooked up with think we have a great game that is more appealing than the other golf games out there. Unlike fantasy football and baseball, there is no dominant format for fantasy golf so there are a variety of ways to play the game. Hence, we also have to market the rules of our game and why it’s fun to play.

Do you have any revenue streams besides advertisement? Who is your ad provider?

We currently pride ourselves in being an ad-free so when participants come to our site, it’s all about our game and not trying to get you to sign up for a bunch of other stuff. Since the Internet Gambling Act of 2006 requires all prizes to be fixed and announced in advance, we can’t just take a percentage of each entry fee. So we have to make sure the numbers work out for everyone. It would be a lot simpler if we could take a small cut of every entry fee and therefore have a built-in profit margin, like most businesses, but Congress decided that’s illegal; go figure.

Funding: Self funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?

Self-funded.

Are you currently looking for funding?

No. Right now, we’re only looking for participants to play our game. Our structure is such that entry fees are used to cover our cash prizes and our operating costs.

What is your favorite feature on your site?

I don’t think I have one single favorite feature. In general, I really like the layout of our site and how easy it is to navigate. The Weekly Results screen makes it really easy to see everyone’s lineup once play begins. So you know which golfers to root for because you picked them and who to root against because others picked them. I also like the Golfers Used screen which allows you to easily see how many times a golfer has been used by yourself and everyone else. We do some cool AJAX stuff on that page. Lastly, the Statistics page is a favorite because we keep some interesting stats pertinent to our game and we know how fantasy players love statistics.

Besides Pro Tour Fantasy Golf, what is one of your favorite sports sites that many people would not know about?

Sports Tech Now, what else? Seriously, we weren’t familiar with your site until you contacted us for an interview. Now, we’ve subscribed to your RSS feed.

What type of technology do you use?

Our application was written in Ruby On Rails (ROR). Ruby is a dynamic programming language and Rails is a relatively new framework designed specifically for building web applications. Ruby On Rails allowed us to greatly improve our productivity. We feel it would have taken us 3-4 times longer to develop our game using traditional languages such as Java or C++. Plus, we’re doing things via ROR that we could have never done using Java.

Any bold predictions for sports and technology in the future?

We think you’ll see an increased use of dynamic languages like Ruby over more traditional languages like Java. Ruby continues to steal web developer mind share from PHP. Ruby is dynamic like PHP, but more object oriented and with more advanced features for building larger and more maintainable sites. We also think you’ll see richer user interfaces, as already seen in popular applications like GMail or Google Maps, for fantasy sports applications. It’s difficult to predict however, which RIA (Rich Internet Application) approach will win out: AJAX (which build on the capabilities of HTML and the web browser) or plug-in based systems like Flash or Microsoft’s new Silverlight technology.

STN’s Take

Fantasy Golf definitely has a ton of growth potential on the internet.  After taking a look at the site it is extremely simple and easy to use.  They may want to think about a re-design when it becomes more popular cause it looks like its out of the Mid 90s.

Personally, I think they may be making a mistake by not offering free private leagues as well.  Private leagues are usually more viral in nature because one person usually has to convince another nine people to use the site and those people may choose to play in the money leagues.  Plus they could put ads on the private league pages.  They also may want to think about having shorter time period leagues as well.  I think there are many people out there that are fans of watching the Masters and want to have something to root for but they don’t want to watch all the other tournaments during the year.  Draft Mix which was previously covered on STN was able to do this for weekly Fantasy Football.

All in all I think its a great idea and you can tell John and Steve are very intelligent people so they could definitely become a leader in the Fantasy Golf Niche.