Website: Fantazzle

Interview With: Ryan Parr, founder

Is their more then one founder? If so, who are they?

Only one – Ryan Parr

What is your background and qualifications?

I have worked in the sports industry for the past four years and have been a fantasy sports fans for nearly 15. I graduated cum laude from James Madison University with a triple major in Economics, Marketing, and Marketing Information Systems with a minor in Computer Information Systems.

What does your website do?

Fantazzle provides short term fantasy games you can play for free or for an entry fee. All of our games give out cash prizes to the winners and are geared towards fantasy fanatics, individuals who do not want a season commitment, those who always seem to have issues getting leagues formed with their friends for various reasons, and others who may have had bad years in their traditional leagues and still want to have something on the line in fantasy games. At Fantazzle, you can create a fantasy team any day of the week and have fun rooting for your players during the pro games. The site offers several different types of games for fantasy football, baseball, basketball, golf, and auto racing games.

How do you generate revenue? If through ads, what ad network do you use?

We generate revenue by charging an administration fee upon game entry for setting up leagues and running the site.

How have your marketed your site?

Fantazzle is slowly ramping up its marketing and has used a number of different avenues including pay per click, banner ads, press releases, and working with non-competing sites to exchange exposure.

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

Fantazzle is currently being funded by myself and friends and family.

Are You currently looking for funding?

Yes, we are actively looking for a partner to raise capital. We would like to find someone who believes in the opportunity and can add funding and resources to build something profitable and industry changing.

What type(s) of technology do you use?

We use PHP programming throughout the site to communicate with our back-end software. We also use an XML feed to connect with our stats provider.

What is your favorite feature on your website?

One of the coolest things Fantazzle offers is called FantaStock. You earn FantaStock when you do certain activities on the site like creating an account, making deposits, and more ways like playing games to come. You can use the FantaStock you earn to play in all of our games so its like free cash. While these types of loyalty programs are not groundbreaking, the FantaStock votes we will hold are. After every sports season concludes, we will hold shareholder votes for all of our players to vote on how Fantazzle runs its site and games. Votes will be on things like our scoring system, roster requirements, blog content, etc.The more shares you have, the more your opinion counts. This feature will put our players in power of how Fantazzle evolves.

Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?

As your site can attest, its an exciting time for the sports and fantasy sports online world. The development of Web 2.0 is really spurring the voice of the sports fan through social communities. All of the content and distribution of it will be a major benefit for fantasy sports. There are going to be some great innovations that will change the way we now play and view fantasy games and will make an already growing past time even bigger.

eCouchCoach

Website:eCouchCoach

Interview With: Zach Harris

Is their more then one founder? If so, who are they?

I am a co-founder with another fantasy football guru Eric Mattingly.

What is your background and qualifications?

I have been an NFL follower and Fantasy League Commissioner for over 6 years now.  I am an IT consultant with lots of knowledge about the web and about football.  Also if you have suggestions for the site I am the man to ask, as I like to let the site have a little bit of something for everyone.  The site has been up for 2 years, however, this is the first year it has become public.

What does your website do?

It is a completely free fantasy football league website.  Everything from live scoring, to injury updates, to custom scoring, to custom league types, to news, to articles, etc. are all free.  I was tired of paying for what I wanted a fantasy football site to do so I decided to create my own.  Now that it is up and running I would like to share it with others.

How do you generate revenue? If through ads, what ad network do you use?

I am not looking to make a profit off this site.  I am just looking to pass the word about a completely free fantasy football website.

How have your marketed your site?

I have basically just used word of mouth so far.  I have used forums, to blogs, to telling people verbally.  The site is starting to pick up in the Indianapolis area.

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

This is a self funded site.

Are You currently looking for funding?

No I am not.  I am just looking to get people interested in eCouchCoach.com.

What type(s) of technology do you use?

PHP, MySQL, Javascript, Ajax

What is your favorite feature on your website?

I really enjoy the free live scoring.  Most sites make you pay for that.  I also enjoy the free stat tracker and the “My Challenges” portion of the site.

Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?

Fantasy football is going to take off now (as if it hasn’t already)  that it is becoming so easy to following the NFL online.  So why not be able to do it for free?

Sports Data Hub

Website: SportsDataHub

Interview With: Kevin Goodfellow

Is there is more then one founder? If so, who are they?:

It’s just me.

What is your background and qualifications?:

During the week I’m a Data Warehousing consultant for Fortune 500 level companies. During the weekend I’m a 12 year fantasy football fanatic bulldozing my fellow league owners. In a previous life, I designed commercial aircraft mechanical/hydraulic systems for Boeing.

What does your website do?

Sports Data Hub provides interactive football data for avid sports fans and fantasy players.  Our point and click visualization tools allow fans to analyze football data the way their minds work – forward, backward, and sideways….in real time.  We make football data analysis easy, convenient, fun, flexible, and more productive.

How do you generate revenue? If through ads, what ad network do you use?

We have a combined revenue model: Ads, Subscriptions, and B2B white labeling of our tools. Fantasy Sports Ventures is our ad network.

How have your marketed your site?

As a start up we have a very small budget, so we have to spend our marketing money wisely. We have focused primarily on native search rankings, since they are relatively inexpensive to attain and can be grown if you have the time and knowledge. Our alpha site was up for a year prior to our beta launch for just this purpose and has resulted in our site being highly ranked in related search terms.  We are also including a small amount of print advertising in fantasy related publications, online banner ads, e-mail advertising, and some direct marketing near NFL events. Our schwag has been popular, with Post-it notes and fliers the size of a business card instead of something bulky.

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

To date we are self funded with team members, friends, and family investments.

Are You currently looking for funding?:

Yes. Depending on our success, we will be looking for a growth sized investment near the end of the year. This investment would be to grow faster and bigger than we could do on our own.

What type(s) of technology do you use?:

Top Secret.  However, we are big supporters of open source and without the open source community this concept would have been impossible. In fact, this concept would not have been possible just last year….it is that bleeding edge.

What is your favorite feature on your website?:

I like our analysis tools, they are the heart and soul of our site. I blow my own mind every time I use them.

Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?:

I think what we are doing at SportsDataHub.com is opening a new door of high technology tools for the sports consumer. Anything to get an edge…

RotoHog

Website:  RotoHog

Interview With:  Chris Austin, Director of Marketing

Is their more than one founder? If so, who are they?

Yes, David Wu and Kent Smetters are co-founders of our site and the unique stock exchange platform that most of our games are based on. David and Kent met as student and teacher at Wharton. There’s actually an interesting story about it at http://www.rotohog.com/web/guest/content?id=NEWS_16 from Entrepreneur Magazine.

What is your background and qualifications?

I spent 12 years in the agency world as a Creative Director, Writer and Business Development person before moving into the fantasy sports industry. It helps to be a big sports fan and love what you do. Between advertising agencies and now fantasy sports, I’ve never really worked a day in my life. I get paid to get people to play games. Not a bad way to make a living.

What does your website do?

We offer fantasy sports in baseball and football as well power fantasy games for NBA.com and several other major brands and sports leagues around the globe. We’ve also significantly expanded the content and community side recently at RotoHog.com. More sports will come online in the coming months too as we ramp up NASCAR, soccer and more.

How do you generate revenue? If through ads, what ad network do you use?

Through advertising and development fees. We are currently partnered with the Fantasy Players Network.

Does your experience with ad agencies allow you to close more advertising deals or do you pretty much deal with Fantasy Players Network Exclusively?

We take display advertising for our site exclusively from Fantasy Players Network. We have developed numerous relationships with brands via agency connections for unique sponsorships. Those should start to be prevalent on our site in ’09.

How have your marketed your site?

A lot of different ways. We’ve done everything from the offbeat (tigersapple.com) to the traditional (Fantasy Draft mags). Gone are the days when a few channels brought the masses in. We have to open up hundreds of channels to build the user base we want. Lots of trickles versus one big stream.

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

VC- Allen & Company, DFJ Dragon, Mission Ventures and Sports Capital Partners.

Are You currently looking for funding?

We raised a Series A of $10M

What type(s) of technology do you use?

I just leave that to the tech guys. I do know we have a universal platform that operates our brand and scales for major media partners and leagues.

What is your favorite feature on your website?

The Stock Exchange Fantasy Football game. It’s really unique, it’s free and you can win a lot of cool stuff, but I just think it’s a lot of fun.

Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?

I think we will see the continued convergence of sports and content to all screens – mobile, TV, web, etc. – and see fantasy sports games better integrate across all of those, and even unite them. I think you’re seeing that now with the Fantasy Football related features in the new Madden game, and that’s just baby steps of what is to come. I know all the fantasy sports groups are working to put new games in new places. Should be a very interesting go at things over the next few years.

Other Fantasy Sports Features:

Score OS: Open Source Fantasy Football Management System
KO Fantasy Boxing
Fantasy Sports Live: Daily Fantasy Sports for Profit
Fantasy Sports Update
Draft Mix: Weekly Fantasy Football/Baseball for Money

Website: UFN

Name: Jonathan Joseph

When did you launch Ultimate Fotball Network?

The Ultimate Football Network is still pre-launch.

Is their more then one founder? If so, who are they?

I’m the only founder.

What is your background and qualifications?

I’m a former venture capital investor and social media consultant. 

What does your website do?

The Ultimate Football Network (UFN) is a free social media resource for the Fantasy Football market or for casual fans looking for the hottest news about their favorite teams. UFN aggregates, organizes and ranks football content making it easily accessible and customizable for football fans. Fans can add, rate and comment on the content in the UFN news stream. The Ultimate Football Network automatically tags content with the teams and players mentioned, giving users the option of filtering the content to find the hottest news about any team or player with one click. So when users are trying to figure out whether to start or bench a particular player on their fantasy roster, they can quickly find the hottest news about that player whether it comes from ESPN or a fan’s personal blog or a fan discussion thread on a message board.

The Ultimate Football Network also organizes the social media landscape by tracking data about social media content. Based on fan feedback and participation, we track which authors and sources produce good content, which fans add valuable content and commentary and which fans know about certain teams and players. We’re working on building out additional features that make this content and data more useful to fans looking to use UFN to manage their fantasy rosters.

How do you generate revenue? If through ads, what ad network do you use?

For now, UFN generates revenue through advertising and we use Adbrite. Going forward, we will have a different strategy with respect to advertising and other non-advertising revenue streams coming from features under development.

How have your marketed your site?

We haven’t done any marketing yet as we are pre-launch.

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

Self funded to date

Are You currently looking for funding?

We’re talking to some angels at the moment.

What type(s) of technology do you use?

Ruby on Rails and Postgres

What is your favorite feature on your website?

My favorite feature is definitely the ability to rank fans and authors. When there are enough users voting on content, I’m really excited to see which authors fans will think are the best. For example, I’m looking forward to seeing whether fans think the guys at ESPN (John Clayton, Len Pasqaurelli, etc) do better work than the guys at CNNSI (Peter King, Don Banks, etc) and I’m wondering who will be the first “fan” to break through to stardom using UFN. It would be a great story if an independent blogger ended up getting hired somewhere like ESPN because his blog consistently got more votes than say, John Clayton.

If you ran a large sports network like ESPN or CBS, besides your website what indpendent website would you acquire first and why?

Not an easy question to answer. Even though ESPN and Yahoo, in particular, have done a pretty good job with their online sports properties to date, the world of media (and not just sports media) is going to undergo such a dramatic shift that they will all have to make major moves. There are a handful of “startups” in the sports 2.0 space but I don’t know that I think any of them have gotten it right so far. In fact, a few that have emerged so far as early “leaders” have, in my mind, huge, fatal flaws in their business models so I think everything is wide open for start-ups at this point.

Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?

I have bold predictions for what technology is going to do to almost every business in existence, so yes I think the sports world will also get turned upside down over the next 10 years. All sorts of industries are trying to figure out how to incorporate the “social” trend but no industry has a more natural affinity for social trends and user engagement than sports, so yes there will be big changes on the horizon. I was amused recently at the brouhaha over the Bob Costas Live panel on the future of Sports media (see the UFN blog for my complete thoughts). For what was supposed to be a panel of experts, it was abundantly clear that none of them had even a basic understanding of the changing landscape, so it’s clear we’ re still in the first inning of the game here.

Via Techcrunch Citizen Sports is teaming up with Sports Ilustrated to develop Facebook Apps devoted to sports enthusiasts.  The apps will include stat tracking, live draft capabilites, and other features that fantasy players use.  Originally the group who created Pro Trade is now Citizen Sports and Pro Trade is one of the companies underneath Citizen Sports.  Pro Trade is basically a stock market for sports players based on fantasy stats.

Citizen Sports is led by Jeff Ma who was one of the original MIT blacjack players that inspired the book Bringing Down the House and Mike Kearns. 

It is really interesting that Citizen Sports has moved away its focus from Pro Trade.  Landing the deal with Sports Illustrated was probably key in orchestrating the new company which will devote a lot of its time towards Facebook apps.  With fantasy sports being such an interactive experience we find it hard to believe that a facebook app would be how people compete.  We see destination websites being much better at fantasy sports.  They are probably more likely to attract the passive fantasy player.

AOL has purchased Fleaflicker for an undisclosed amount of money. Fleaflicker had one solo founder, Ori Schwartz, who built the site from the ground up. AOL and Ori have both been tight lipped on the purchase price but according to Roto Nation the price tag easily could of been high six figures or low seven figures.  Its great to see a solo founder with no venture capital or outside investment get a pay day like this.

It will be real interesting to see how AOL can scale the Fleaflicker fantasy platform.  As most people are reporting AOL purely bought the Fleaflicker product for its technology and not its users.  AOL previously was using Fan Ball for its fantasy application so this has to be a huge blow to Fan Ball.

According to Dnxpert, Mike Levy, the founder of Sportsline.com which is now CBS.Sportsline.com is preparing to announce the Open Sports Network.  Straight from the website “At OPEN Sports, we are creating the next generation social powered sports experience that combines social media and community tools with a fantasy sports gaming marketplace and traditional sports content.”

“Our goal is to create your ULTIMATE SPORTS DESTINATION… a place where you can compete against other passionate fans with next generation fantasy games, participate in a new kind of social experience around gameday, get the latest sports news and information from around the web, and become your own sports editor – organizing and seeing only the content that you care about.”

This should be real interesting to see what type of product Mike comes up with here.  He did a great job building Sportsline which was a first generation fantasy site so one can only assume the Open Sports Network will do some amazing things.

This is pure speculation here but I am thinking that much of the same team that built Sportsline is probably building Open Sports Network as we speak.  It has been a while since CBS acquired Sportsline so my guess is Mike’s non compete is about to run out.  I am sure CBS we be keeping an eye out on this one.

Website:  Score OS

Interview With:  Randy Burgess

Contact: info@scoreos.org

Is their more then one founder? If so, who are they?

The SCORE OS project was founded by Don VanDemark (Lead Developer), Randy Burgess (Lead Developer), and Jim Burgess (Business Manager). Don has worked with fantasy sports statistics retrieval and fantasy sports management systems for almost a decade. Randy has developed and hosted fantasy sports management systems for fantasy college football, college basketball, and major league soccer for the past eight years. Jim Burgess has run the business operations of Pre Pro Sports for the past four years. The SCORE OS is a side project for all three founders in addition to their normal day jobs.

What is your background and qualifications?

Don has worked with both open source and closed source technologies with IBM and Microsoft technologies prior to learning open source systems and has a business degree from the University of Florida. Randy has worked with ASP.NET, SQL Server, MySQL, PHP, and Drupal technologies and has a Business/MIS degree from the University of Georgia. Jim has a management degree from Georgia Tech and is a Certified Public Accountant. All three of the founders have played fantasy sports for the past 10-15 years.

What does your website do?

SCORE OS is an effort to develop an Open Source Fantasy Sports Management System for businesses and hobbyists, alike. The goal is to develop a technology foundation for any fantasy sports game that would need a database and a web-based interface (i.e. hosting, user management, scoring, roster management, waivers, database, messaging and communications, etc), which would then give developers more time to create new, innovative games for the fantasy sports industry. From your typical head-to-head fantasy NFL games to your Major League Soccer niche roto league manager to your combined MLB and Minor League baseball player stock-trading game, the SCORE OS platform will be designed to help develop them all by laying the groundwork.

How do you generate revenue?

After the SCORE OS platform is developed further, we expect that revenue could be generated for business-quality technical support, site/application hosting, or from custom fantasy game development for specific firms. However, the higher goal of SCORE OS is to provide a means for other firms to utilize and develop the technologies with which to drive their own revenues and make the entire fantasy sports market better for small business owners and fantasy sports consumers.
 
How have your marketed your site?
 
Thus far, we have only sent out a single press release and we have started a weekly blog to discuss news related to progress being made on the SCORE OS project and the fantasy sports technology industry.
 
Funding: Self funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?

Self-funded at this time, but always looking for contributions in development time and technology resources.
 
Are You currently looking for funding?

Not at the current time, but we would be open to offers.
 
What type(s) of technology do you use?

Our next system will run on a LAMPD stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Drupal). This system will give the SCORE OS platform the benefits of security and design by the thousands of developers who work to improve the Drupal CMS system while SCORE OS developers can work on the fantasy sports management system core.
 
What is your favorite feature on your website?

At this point, we haven’t released the application, but we are looking forward to releasing a League News Feed and Team News Feed that works similar to Facebook, FriendFeed, and Twitter: A continuous RSS Feed that can be subscribed to and retrieved in an RSS Reader or elsewhere that provides details on Fantasy League news, chatter, and transactions.
 
Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?

As the bandwidth of the broadband pipe grows and more consumers use Internet-based tools for their entertainment and social networking, we expect Sports Technology to increase the amount of live data streams, audio, and video feeds available for both current and archived sporting events based on fans/users preferences. We also expect to see a trend where fantasy sports games and highlights/clips will be delivered in “customized packages” based-on fantasy owners’ specific rosters and player choices.

Website: KO Fantasy Boxing

Interview With: Alex Pierpaoli

What is your background?

I worked for about seven years in customer service and I have always wanted to do something that involved writing. i have been a boxing fan for decades so the fusion of internet, writing and boxing seemed like a comfortable fit..

What is the story behind starting KO Fantasy Boxing?

It was purchased as a partnership at first back in 2005 and then in June of 2006 it became a solo operation. The idea was to offer the fantasy game and to also offer some press releases and boxing news.

What does your website do?

KOFantasyBoxing allows visitors to create and monitor their own virtual boxing gyms by picking up professional boxers before big fights and then scoring points for their gyms when their fighters win or lose in the ring. Unlike football or baseball where a myriad of statistics are tracked KOFantasyBoxing tries to be as realistic as possible with the statistics available to fight fans. When fighters are kayoed or injured they go on a disabled list due to the mandatory suspension period approved by the association of boxing commissions. Kayoed or injured fighters are then able to be swapped at no charge. Prizes are awarded on a monthly basis to the top point scoring gyms and there is a cash prize at the end of each fantasy league as well.

When did you launch?

Officially launched as Webhead Entertainment, LLC on 6/6/06 which is hopefully not as demonic a date as it might look.

How do you plan on building your community?

satisfied customers, enthusiastic visitors, and t-shirt giveaways at the boxing hall of fame weekend

What types of marketing do you utilize?

So far just google and yahoo and word of mouth at fights

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

Customers playing the game

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

self funded

Are you looking for more funding?

no

What is your favorite feature on your site?

The fight results page is pretty cool. I like seeing how extensive we are in covering so many fights that take place all over the world between known and unknown fighters. It has really been fun for me as a fan of the sport.

Any bold predictions for sports and technology in the future?

I see an all-steroid dog fighting league with pay-per-view reality show style coverage. There would be profiles of each dog, visits to their respective dawg pounds, etc. The program would be hosted by Cesar Milan and of course Jeff Probst.

STN’s Take:

KO Fantasy Boxing is a cool concept but the website needs a ton of work. For those of you that are boxing fans this is the ticket to really get into your sport. We really like that you get to manage your own gym. We think it may be a good idea to add MMA fighters as well and maybe do a rebrand called KO Figthers Fantasy or something like that. We think that boxing is kind of on a downturn and MMA is on a big upswing with many more passionate fans.

In regards to the website, we really don’t think its a good user experience. On the signup page it says you can pay by Paypal, credit card, cashiers check, or money orders. The only problem is that we can’t seem to find the Paypal link anywhere to sign up. When people find something cool, a website has to have the fastest way possible for them to sign up or you are just going to lose them. We think that Alex’s best shot to succeed is to find a good UI designer to help him redesign the site and ad MMA fighters. He has a good niche. He just needs to make it easier to use and attract more people.