Company: Fantasy Judgment, LLC
Launch date: April 1, 2009
No. of employees: 5

Want a sign of the growth in the fantasy sports universe? There are multiple outlets around to offer dispute-resolution services to fantasy leaguers. Michael A. Stein brought Fantasy Judgment to the marketplace in 2009 and told FSB.com recently about what he hopes to accomplish.

1. First of all, please explain what your company does.

Fantasy Judgment is an independent, expert dispute resolution service for fantasy sports leagues. It comprises a five-person panel of expert judges who impartially render professionally written decisions (which are modeled after U.S. Supreme Court opinions) resolving any and all issues, disputes or conflicts that arise within fantasy leagues. Fantasy Judgment helps maintain the integrity of fantasy leagues by providing neutral decisions in lieu of a potentially biased league commissioner or a flawed league-voting process.

2. What brought you into the fantasy sports industry?

I have been playing fantasy sports since I was 6 years old in 1985. My father started a fantasy football league in 1979, and then in 1985 he created a junior division of the league where the league members’ kids drafted teams and competed against each other. I learned at that very young age how beneficial it was to have a QB-WR pairing on a high-powered offense when I won the league thanks to Dan Marino, Mark Clayton and Mark Duper. Ever since then, I have been hooked on fantasy sports. (I got into fantasy baseball with my father in 1989.)

In 2008, an issue came up during the first week of the playoffs in my fantasy baseball league, which happened to involve my own team. The issue centered on C.C. Sabathia’s one-hit shutout that Brewers manager Ned Yost challenged the official scoring of after the game. I made a decision that I know was correct and was the fairest option for everyone involved. However, I received some criticism and backlash from a few league members for making the decision in the first place. That is when I first wondered whether there was a third party or independent arbitrator that could have intervened and ruled on the issue. After doing some research and seeing that there were a couple entities that provided this service for fantasy sports leagues, I decided that I could do it even better. And that is when the concept of Fantasy Judgment was conceived.

3. What did it take in the way of startup cost and time to get Fantasy Judgment up and running?

I did my due diligence by searching business databases and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to make sure no other company or business was using the name, or anything similar. Once that hurdle was cleared, I purchased the domain and began the process of building a web presence.

I didn’t have much of a budget for this new venture, so I needed to be very cost-efficient with every decision I made. After getting several quotes for web design and development from various graphic designers, I thought outside the box and contacted a technical school in New Jersey. I spoke to the graphic arts professor and asked whether he had any qualified students looking to build their portfolio, and he set me up with a graduating student who agreed to build my website from scratch for $500. I also expended money on purchasing a trademark for Fantasy Judgment and forming a LLC.

After two months of planning and tossing ideas around, my website was completed by April 2009. Then it became a matter of advertising and promoting the brand, which I continue to actively do today.

4. What kind of space/growth potential do you think there is for your service?

I see big things for Fantasy Judgment in the future. (No, I didn’t steal the DeLorean to purchase Grey’s Sports Almanac). With the continued growth and prosperity of the fantasy sports industry, people take their participation in leagues extremely seriously. People generally spend hundreds of dollars per year on fantasy sports, so the need for accurate and expedited resolution of league issues is crucial. Dispute resolution in fantasy leagues is still a relatively new concept and has not yet been embraced as a necessary feature to be integrated within a league. I think this perception will change over time due to how seriously people participate nowadays.

5. With several other dispute-resolution services available, what differentiates Fantasy Judgment?

When I initially researched fantasy sports dispute resolution services in 2008, I was not overly impressed with what I found. I had no idea who the people were that made the decisions, nor did I know anything about their qualifications. That formed the basis for my approach to Fantasy Judgment: transparency. I think it is vital to introduce myself and my background to potential clients so they know what and who they are paying for should they retain Fantasy Judgment’s services. My background as a lawyer has provided me with professional writing and analytical skills, which help in authoring documents that are worthy of being paid for. That, coupled with my 25+ years of playing fantasy sports and running my own leagues demonstrates my knowledge and experience in this field. These two factors best qualify me to act as the chief justice and independently evaluate any issue, whether it is a trade dispute or a scoring discrepancy, and then collectively with my associate justices render a decision within 24 hours. The documents we write leave no room for interpretation and hopefully resolve the issue for the customer.

I advertise my own email address on my website, as well as all of my social networking sites and blogs. I invite people and prospective clients to contact me directly, either via email or phone. I want customers to feel comfortable when they entrust their league’s fate in our hands. I believe that dedicated and constant customer service clearly sets Fantasy Judgment apart from its competitors. I enjoy having a dialogue with clients and other fantasy sports players about various issues.

6. How have you gone about introducing your company to the industry? To consumers?

After Fantasy Judgment was launched, I felt it was necessary to first establish my presence within the fantasy sports industry. I immediately researched as many fantasy sports websites as I could and created a database of contact information. I reached out to dozens and dozens of people who either ran these websites or wrote about fantasy sports, including newspapers, magazines and law journals. I then joined the Fantasy Sports Trade Association and attended the conference last summer in Chicago. That was a great experience as I got to meet, in person, almost all of the prominent businesses and figureheads of the industry. I also tried to do as much writing as possible to build up a body of work that could define me as a credible resource within the industry. (I also joined the Fantasy Sports Writers Association.)

Once I built up these credentials and made enough contacts, I began trying to reach the masses through social networking and promoting everything I possibly could. One of the best avenues I have accessed is being featured on SiriusXM’s Fantasy Sports Channel on the RotoExperts morning show with Scott Engel and Adam Ronis. I made a few appearances with them where I heard on cases on the air from multiple parties and then settled their fantasy sports disputes in a mock trial.

7. What role have partnerships played in the life of Fantasy Judgment to date? What’s your goal on that front going forward?

I am a realist and fully accept the fact that I cannot succeed on my own. Fantasy Judgment is a specialized, niche service. I don’t provide content, statistics, rankings news updates or advice columns on FantasyJudgment.com. It is crucial for me to engage well-known businesses and websites in partnerships in order to help expose Fantasy Judgment to a wider audience.

In the summer of 2010, I came into contact with the owners of FantasyAlarm.com and Fantazzle.com. We formed a mutual alliance/partnership to collectively run high stakes fantasy football leagues at the 2010 Superdraft event in Las Vegas. Even though our efforts did not translate into hosting any $10,000 leagues, it was a great experience to collaborate with intelligent and innovative entrepreneurs in the industry on such a project.

8. What’s the nature of your affiliation with NFL.com, and how did that relationship come about?

This is the best example of how partnerships have helped Fantasy Judgment and continue to shape its direction. Over a year ago, I found the right person to get in touch with at the NFL regarding their fantasy football products. I pitched some ideas and concepts to them about how Fantasy Judgment can be incorporated with NFL.com. After several months of exchanging correspondence, eventually the NFL asked Fantasy Judgment to enter into a revenue-sharing agreement where Fantasy Judgment was advertised and featured on NFL.com’s new fantasy marketplace. I am hopeful that this relationship will continue, and I am looking forward to developing similar types of arrangements with other known brands and entities.

9. What role does blogging play in your efforts?

I run a blog where I post Fantasy Judgment decisions and also write about various topics in sports, fantasy sports and occasionally other things as well. Blogging helps keep my writing skills sharp and gives me an outlet to express personal feelings and opinions about various issues. I like to write about real life issues in the fantasy sports industry, including legal matters, because it is an extension of my law-sports dichotomy. Recently, I became a writer for The Hardball Times where I write a column called “The Verdict” about fantasy baseball league issues, disputes, and other relevant topics. Doing all of this writing in a blog format is great because it is personal and promotes ongoing debate and conversation about topics that I am passionate about.

10. What’s your ultimate goal for Fantasy Judgment?

My goals have fluctuated since I first conceptualized Fantasy Judgment. Initially, I admittedly was delusional thinking that everyone who plays fantasy sports will easily pay for Fantasy Judgment’s services to resolve their disputes. As time went on, I realized this would not be the case and I needed to re-evaluate where I wanted things to go. In an ideal world, Fantasy Judgment would get purchased by one of the large fantasy game providers and integrate its services into the league commissioner package, or I could be hired to provide Fantasy Judgment’s services in that capacity. Realistically, my goal is to slowly build up the brand and show the fantasy sports industry that dispute resolution services are necessary for all leagues to have. Once that is accepted, I can convince them that Fantasy Judgment is the highest authority in fantasy sports jurisprudence and is unparalleled in experience, quality and customer service. If that happens, then Fantasy Judgment can potentially become a sustainable business.

Company: Draft Sharks
Launch date: June 1999
Became full-time operation: 2000
No. of employees: 4

Back before he co-founded the World Championship of Fantasy Football, Lenny Pappano launched his fantasy football content site, DraftSharks.com. Although much has changed throughout the fantasy industry since then and free content abounds, Draft Sharks has stuck to what it set out to do: direct its unique brand of fantasy football insight to a smallish, loyal set of paid subscribers. Pappano recently took the time to answer some questions for FSB.com.

1. What led you to create Draft Sharks back in 1999? Why did you settle on that name for your site?

At the time, I was working as a copywriter at a political fundraising firm in the D.C.-area (part of the vast right-wing conspiracy). It struck me that a lot of the fantasy sites that existed were being run by tech geeks and not by anyone who could write well or had any background in journalism. I convinced my wife to drain our bank account to build a site and put some ads in a couple fantasy mags. We got a fairly large and loyal following in the first few years, and the rest, as they say, is history. We came up with the Draft Sharks name because I also moonlighted as a hold ‘em poker player 4 or 5 nights per week (back in the day of no kids). So I went from being somewhat of a “card shark”… to being a “Draft Shark.” The name had a ring to it, and a friend of mine came up with a pretty sweet logo, which we still use today.

2. What led you to charge for access to Draft Sharks content when so many free sites exist?

Back in the late ’90s, almost every fantasy site was free. I guess I’ve always felt that our opinions and analysis were worth paying for. And I never wanted to have 100,000 people following us. I always envisioned our community being a bit more exclusive, and one way to do that is to charge. At bottom, if you’re giving advice to everyone for free, what good are you doing your readership? Anyone and everyone can come and read your stuff — and they’re competing against each other, so there isn’t a competitive advantage for your readership. I understand the free model, I’ve just never been a big fan of it.

3. Has it been difficult at any point to stay the pay route? Have you considered turning free?

Nope, never really considered it. It always seemed to me that counting on ad revenue to pay the bills was a bit too unnerving for my tastes. And again, I didn’t want a community of “anyone and everyone.”

4. What kind of costs (in time and money) went into launching the site? How did you go about introducing your site to the marketplace — to potential subscribers?

A lot and a lot. Our model was to have a small selective group of writers. The downside to that model is that it takes a lot of time to produce content. But I have to say that it is very gratifying. As for introducing the site to the marketplace, we dropped close to six figures in the first 2-3 years on advertising. Word of mouth also helped a lot.

5. Looking back, was there a particular event or time that indicated Draft Sharks had “arrived”?

Yeah, in the very first year, I wrote what has been become one of our marquee articles — our “First Round Bust Candidate.” We called out Steve Young, who was coming off a monster year in 1998, and warned our subscribers away from drafting him. That preseason, we started to get some emails from readers who loved the pick — and some flames from readers who thought we were nuts. I knew then that we were relevant and that folks were reading our stuff — and it was making them think outside the box. As I recall, Young got knocked out by the Cards on a Monday night game in Week 3 — and that concussion forced him into retirement. I actually cheered when it happened. I met Young 5 or 6 years later. And after talking to him for a few minutes, I didn’t feel bad for having cheered when he got hurt!

6. What other sources does the site derive revenue from beyond subscription fees? What kind of business partnerships have you had along the way, and what role have they played in revenue generation?

Our revenue beyond subscription fees is minimal. We’ve gotten a few advertisers here and there for 2010, but after trying to capture advertising revenue the past couple years, we’ve come to the conclusion that it simply wasn’t worth having the site look like a banner farm.

7. How important are the customized cheatsheets to your platform? How long did that system take to develop, and how quickly did it catch on with users?

It’s pretty popular, as we get quite a bit of positive customer feedback on it. The rankings are based on a Value Based Drafting system — which is to say, it measures relative player scarcity at each position based on the particular scoring rules of your league. Conceptually, it’s something that came from Rotisserie Baseball and was introduced to fantasy football by Joe Bryant. I think I’m right in saying that Draft Sharks was the first site to have a VBD tool, as it was part of our original site in 1999.

8. What was Draft Sharks’ relationship with the WCOFF when you co-founded the event and during your run as co-owner?

Ironically, there really was no relationship to speak of. The WCOFF advertised with Draft Sharks, but Emil (Kadlec) and I made a conscious decision not to co-brand our other businesses or to leverage those brands to help the WCOFF. One of the reasons is that I didn’t want to blur the line between Draft Sharks as a content site and what the WCOFF did. I’ve always been diligent in keeping Draft Sharks as a fantasy football content site only. Again, I want Draft Sharks to have the best fantasy football analysis and content available — but I’m not trying to be all things to all people. That might not be the smartest business model, but in the long run, I think it’s only fair to your customers to have a single focus.

9. How have things changed over the years in terms of what customers expect and what your site has to do to stay competitive? Have there ever been thoughts of expanding to include other sports?

People are far more tech and Web savvy then they were a decade ago. We took a long, hard look this offseason at where our site was in terms of design and functionality and found there was a lot to be desired. We did a complete redesign of the site this spring and just re-launched this week. So far, the response has been fantastically positive. As for doing other sports, we had a sister site for a few years that did fantasy baseball. In the end, we decided it was best to stick with just fantasy football — since that was our passion.

10. What do you envision for the future of DraftSharks.com?

Good question. I’ve seen a lot of changes in the industry since 1999, and my biggest concern is that the industry used to be defined by a bunch of regular guys who were passionate about fantasy football. What I see now is a corporate takeover of the industry. Look at how many sites have been bought out by billion-dollar, multi-media corporations. Look at how ESPN, NBC, CBS, and even the NFL itself, have entered into the marketplace. Maybe it’s me, but it just rubs me the wrong way at times. There seems to be a “sameness” that infects the landscape of fantasy football content. That said, maybe all the movement toward the corporatization of the hobby has helped more clearly define who we are at Draft Sharks. We don’t want to be everywhere on the Web. We don’t want to be all things to all people. We don’t want to become a mega-site that churns out words by the pound. In the end, we’re just a small, tightly knit group of writers who drink beer in the office, work crazy hours, and absolutely love what we do. I always tell our writers: “Think outside the box. Be bold. Make people think. Tell them something they don’t already know.” We’re a bit like the show LOST. If you get it, you’ll love it. If you don’t, you’ll walk away scratching your head. And, ya know what? I’m good with that.

Company: FantasyPros
Launch date: July 1, 2010

With so many folks strutting around the Internet claiming to be fantasy experts these days, it’s only natural for some to start testing their merit. An increasing number of outlets have started to do just that, but David Kim says FantasyPros.com goes beyond that. This week, he took some time to tell FSB.com some specifics.

1. What was the impetus for creating FantasyPros.com?

A couple years ago, we thought it would be cool to track and score the advice of a few popular experts (just to be able to dominate our own fantasy leagues). After pulling together a monster spreadsheet for just a couple experts over a couple weeks, we had two major takeaways. First that the data was very cool, and second that no one in their right mind would do all this work just to figure out which expert to trust! Anytime you find something very valuable but tough to do, it’s a sign of a potential opportunity. The idea really took off (in our heads) when we later realized that accuracy was just one use for the data. We figured out that we could aggregate and organize the information in a way that made it faster and easier for players to get the specific recommendations they needed. As recent dads with less time for fantasy but no less desire to win, we knew there would be a huge market for tools that could save you time and make you more competitive.

2. Aggregating, tracking and grading a bunch of self-proclaimed fantasy nerds seems even nerdier. What kind of background and skills did you bring to this effort?

Hey, are you calling us nerds? I guess our backgrounds are a bit nerdy, so I won’t argue. We’ve run a successful consulting practice for the past five years that helps clients find and exploit opportunities to generate website traffic and optimize conversion rates. Prior to starting the consulting firm, we both launched successful internet businesses that focused on aggregating and organizing information. I was the VP of Online Marketing at Hotwire.com, a subsidiary of Expedia Inc. My partner was also on the launch team at Hotwire.com, and later co-founded Gifts.com, an IAC company. The travel and gift industries are obvious examples of how services that simplify the research and buying process can be very successful, as long as they provide value to both customers and suppliers. We hope to take a similar approach - we want to help both fantasy players and fantasy professionals, by making their “jobs” easier and more rewarding.

3. How have you chosen which analysts to include, and how is their material collected?

We identified the most popular experts based on reputation and traffic to their sites. We also included a few favorite “bloggers” that may not be as well known but offer a good amount of weekly fantasy advice to their readers. Now that more experts know about us, we’ve been receiving a lot of requests for inclusion and we’re excited about expanding our reach next year. In terms of how we collect the rankings, we have some partners that provide a feed to us, some that use our proprietary ranking tool, and others that we pull in through our own automated tools. I should note that we ask for explicit written permission from sites that require a paid subscription to access their rankings. We’ve been very pleased with the response we’ve had from the expert community.

4. What do you offer to consumers beyond ranking the “experts” for accuracy? Is there anything in it for “experts,” particularly those not lacking for online exposure?

Accuracy scores are really just one component of what we offer to fantasy players. Our most popular product is a start/sit tool that instantly shows which player each expert would start, along with other helpful information in a side-by-side comparison. We’re on pace to do almost one million “Who Should I Start?” requests in our first season! Another popular tool is our Cheat Sheet Wizard which lets users create custom consensus rankings from a combination of experts that they choose to include. We also recently launched a fantasy advice portal that aggregates and organizes news, articles and tweets from over a hundred sources.

For fantasy professionals, we offer a level playing field, exposure and referral traffic. We also offer a few tools to make their jobs easier, such as a drag/drop player ranker to quickly create and publish weekly rankings. For experts that don’t need any of the above benefits, we offer an unbiased way of earning some “street cred” from naturally skeptical fantasy players and industry peers. Also, we believe that fantasy professionals have an inherent desire to compete, no matter how popular they are. Tiger Woods doesn’t need the money or the fame, but he plays in golf tournaments to compete against the best golfers in the world. I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume that the best fantasy minds want to compete against their peers as well. Oh yeah, we’ll be offering shiny trophies this year too.

5. What is PAY?

PAY^TM stands for “Prediction Accuracy Yield.” It shows how much benefit the expert’s predictions provided on meaningful start/sit decisions. Our system turns each expert’s weekly rankings into thousands of individual “who should I start” recommendations. We then score whether the expert’s picks were correct and how beneficial the advice was, based on the net fantasy points obtained by picking the right player. A 100% PAY^TM means the expert selected the right player for every meaningful start/sit prediction. A “meaningful” prediction is one that is not unanimous among our experts. We do this so that we’re scoring advice that you realistically might seek out (not obvious advice like starting Chris Johnson over Donald Brown). This is why PAY^TM percentages tend to be lower than what some people would expect.

6. What is FAST?

FAST^TM stands for Fantasy Advice Search Tool. We’re working on integrating several of our current products and adding in some new features to create one cohesive search tool. This is a product that’s currently in development.

7. How have you gone about positioning your site in front of consumers and those around the fantasy industry?

It’s a cliché, but based on feedback from our members and our high repeat usage rates, we really believe that our product markets itself. From an awareness perspective, we’ve been very fortunate to be featured in articles and e-mails from Yahoo!, FootballGuys, NY Times and a number of popular fantasy blogs. From a positioning standpoint, we let consumers and industry professionals know that we’re an unbiased third party. We want to objectively promote the best fantasy experts in the industry, which is why we’re excited about presenting our accuracy awards at the next FSTA conference in January (primarily because the FSTA provides a large audience of fantasy professionals, but also because the conference is in Las Vegas!).

8. FantasyPros.com says in more than one place that services are “currently” offered for free. Is there a plan for that to change? What kind of paid subscriber base do you think you could realistically expect? What other methods are in place or in the plans for generating revenue?

There’s no plan for charging for what we currently provide for free on the site. However, we do have several new products and features that we’re developing that could require a subscription next year. This inaugural season was all about proving our concept and generating significant organic growth. We exceeded our own aggressive expectations for these two objectives, but we know we have a ton of work to do in the off season to be able to keep the momentum going. We think there’s a large opportunity in the space to create significant value for both consumers and fantasy professionals. As long as we can demonstrate this value, we’re confident that there will be multiple revenue streams available.

9. What differentiates FantasyPros.com from other “expert”-tracking sites that have arrived over the past year or two?

We don’t know of any other sites that offer the type of aggregated and organized advice that our core products provide, but we do know of a small number of sites that track expert accuracy. Regarding accuracy tracking, our main differentiators are:
- We are completely open about our methodology, while other sites consider it to be a “secret sauce” of sorts. We believe that if we’re going to grade the experts, it’s only fair that we tell the experts how we’re coming up with the grades.
- We do not claim to offer better advice. Instead, we seek to organize the best advice from the best experts in a way that provides value to both advice seekers and advice providers. Sites that claim that they offer xx% better advice are always welcome to participate in our accuracy study to prove it.
- Whenever possible, we try to track the individual expert that’s creating the rankings and projections, instead of just the site. For example, “Andy Behrens” instead of “Yahoo!.” Getting down to the expert level helps provide year-to-year continuity.
- Our service is FREE. From what we can tell, all the other sites we know of all charge for their accuracy information.

10. What is the ultimate goal for FantasyPros.com?

We want to become the hub for fantasy advice. A site that helps advice seekers and advice providers share fantasy insights and recommendations in a much more efficient and effective way. Our current tools reflect a small but significant step towards this vision.

Company: FJ Fantasy Sports
Launch date: May 2002
Became full-time operation: 2004

Even if you weren’t aware of FJ Fantasy Sports, you’ve probably seen their products. Those big cardboard displays with the multi-colored player stickers standing at the center at events such as the WCOFF and FSTA conferences? You’re looking at FJ. Co-founder Jeff Peters, who left a career in corrugated cardboard for another in decorating it with player names, took some time recently to share his company’s story with FSB.com

1. Let’s start at an obvious point: What does FJ stand for?

FJ is pig Latin for Jeff. When I was a kid, my best friend and I talked in pig Latin so his mother couldn’t figure out what kind of devious plans we were hatching. He was Ike-May and I was Eff-Jay. When it came time to choose a business name, Mike and I were sitting around trying to figure out a name, and this memory came back to us. It instantly became the business name.

2. Your site says that the boards came about when Mrs. Peters was charged with creating a grid for a baseball draft in 2002. What inspired her to create the board that launched the business, and what did the league like about it?

I knew she was a good artist, so I asked her to make me a grid for our upcoming baseball draft. The previous year we used an easel, but it was too small for anyone to see. So I asked her to make me a large grid, about 5 feet by 5 feet. I brought this piece of white corrugated home from work, and she decorated it beautifully with our league name and all the team names. We still have this “original” draft board.

3. You’ve been playing fantasy sports since 1990. What were those leagues doing for their drafts those first 12 years before requesting the board?

Back in 1990, during my first football draft, we used two gigantic pieces of brown corrugated. They were about 10 feet wide by 8 feet high. We had index cards with all the player names on them. All the cards were posted on one board (with push pins), and the grid was on the other. You’ve got to remember, we all worked at a corrugated box plant, so getting our “draft board” was easy!

4. How quickly did you envision a business sprouting from this board?

My wife, Pam, first brought the idea up. We had no idea if anything like this existed. We started checking ads in fantasy magazines and looking online to see if anyone made these. We found a few companies that did paper sheets. We knew that we had the resources to make a standup corrugated display that would not require any wall space. So we designed a draft board for 14 teams and 23 rounds, took a chance and invested some of our own money into the business and started with a small production run.

5. Describe the background in corrugated cardboard and the artistic skills that combined to make this happen. What has each meant to the creation (and sustainability) of FJ Fantasy Sports?

My background in selling corrugated for 30 years gave me the knowledge of what was possible to design and make out of corrugated. The company I worked for had some of the top designers in the industry, so I tapped their skill and knowledge, gave them the parameters of what I was trying to do and let them come up with the design. Everything was designed around UPS size limitations for shipping packages. Pam drew the design for the first FJ draft board grid, and we have stayed with it. It is a unique grid that allows us to use four different-sized labels on the same draft board.

6. How did you go about getting the business rolling back in 2002? How did you find that first round of customers (or how did they find you)?

When we started in May of 2002, it was already too late to buy any magazine ads for that football season. So we concentrated on trying to get our website recognized on the Internet. This is a tricky process when starting out, and we made a lot of mistakes. But we eventually got placement on Google, and that’s basically the only search engine you need to be on, since most others are fed by Google. In 2003, we bought some ads in fantasy magazines, and the business started to take off. But the biggest and best thing that happened to us was being found by Lenny Pappano, an original co-founder of the World Championship of Fantasy Football. Lenny needed a free-standing draft board for his Las Vegas tournament in 2003, and we had the makings of what he needed. He prodded us to develop the “Jumbo” board, and we ended up getting great exposure through his tournament.

7. What steps did you take to grow the business from there, and how quickly did growth come about?

Growth came quickly the first few years. We tried to introduce new products and features every year, such as adding 10-, 12-, and 16-team draft boards to our menu. We also added “Stands,” which turn the draft boards into 30-rounders. In addition, we added four more label sizes to the one that we started out with. So we now have a draft board for almost any size and type of draft.

8. The Internet had already made fantasy gaming so much easier by the time FJ was launched. What do you think still made your product so appealing to this marketplace? How has business changed in recent years with the array of fantasy-targeted products constantly widening?

The appeal of the FJ draft boards is that you don’t need a big wall to hang a paper sheet on. You can use our board anywhere in a room, and we have a label size that can be read from up to 35 feet away. This was ideal for the WCOFF tournament, and all the other tournaments picked up on it. Soon, all their customers wanted a draft board like they used at their high-stakes tournaments, and we were the only ones doing this. Because we do all the tournaments, our player label lists are the most extensive in the industry by far. We do not want to be embarrassed at a high-stakes tournament by having a lot of write-ins. The final “slice” of our success pie is customer service. Hundreds of our customers know us personally, and thousands more know us from talking on the phone. And they know they can trust us to do things quickly and correctly.

9. How have your products and your catalog changed to fit demand over the life of the business?

As mentioned (earlier), we added different sizes of draft boards, which would accommodate almost any league sizes. We started with a 14-team, 23-round board. Now we can handle any number of teams 10 or beyond, and up to 32 rounds. And most can be had in 5 different label sizes. So there is something for every league. We have added ancillary products such as draft clocks and Personal Draftlogs, tools to help in conducting a fantasy draft. We also branched out from the original football-baseball idea to now include hockey and basketball.

10. Any new directions that you plan to go or envision coming into play in the near future?

We constantly look for new ideas and ways to make things better for our customers, but we feel that we are in sort of a “mature” stage of our business evolution. We have kicked around the NASCAR idea for years but just can’t seem to get a handle on what to do with it.