Matthew Berry

Also known as “The Talented Mr. Roto,” Berry is one of the most recognizable faces in the fantasy industry. His writing combines the statistical analysis required for fantasy sports with humor and personal anecdote. He began his ascent in 1999 as a senior columnist for Rotoworld.com and in 2004 created his own website called The Talented Mr. Roto (TMR). In 2007, ESPN.com acquired TMR and installed Berry as the lead fantasy analyst for all of its sports. The TMR website also launched the careers of many other talented fantasy writers. Berry is the only person to collect four FSWA Writing Awards in a single year (2006), was an inaugural member of the FSWA Hall of Fame (2010), and currently serves as an advisor to the Association’s Executive Committee.

Daniel Okrent

Glenn Waggoner

It was only appropriate that the two people most responsible for the growth of fantasy baseball were the first ones inducted into the Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame. Daniel

Okrent and Glen Waggoner ­ Founding Fathers of Rotisserie Baseball ­ were officially inducted into the Hall of Fame at March’s Fantasy Sports Trade Conference in Orlando.

Okrent, who invented the rules of Rotisserie Baseball in 1979, was in Asia on assignment and unable to attend the event. Waggoner, however, made the trip to Orlando and was humbled by the honor from the industry. The Hall of Fame is being sponsored by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

“On behalf of my fellow Founding Fathers and Mother of Rotisserie League Baseball, I want to thank the FSTA for the great honor being bestowed on us,” Waggoner told the crowd of 100 attendees. “Needless to say, we never had a clue that it would come to this. I distinctly remember the thrill of buying Neil Allen for two bucks at our first Auction Draft in 1980. I also remember buying Gene Richards for $9 and flipping through the Baseball Register to find out who he played for. When Okrent published his seminal article, ‘The Year George Foster Wasn’t Worth $35,’ in Inside Sports in 1981, we basked in our 15 minutes of celebrity. And we figured that was that. But of course it wasn’t.”

Waggoner was the editor of the Rotisserie League Baseball books which spawned the growth of this industry in the 1980s, even if it became more like work each year.

“We had a gang of fun introducing an unsuspecting world to our peculiar craziness in the inaugural edition of Rotisserie League Baseball in 1984,” said Waggoner. “Personally, I had a gang of fun editing the first nine editions, even after it became work. But most of all, we¹ve all had a gang of fun playing the game.”
(From Fantasy Sports Magazine)

Fantasy Sports, Inc. was founded in 1983 by Cliff Charpentier and Tom Kane- both fantasy football players and successful businessmen. They knew the excitement of the game and wanted to bring it to thousands of others. They first developed the book “Fantasy Football Digest” which was first published in 1984 and one of their early tag lines was “Fantasy Sports’ Fantasy Football products are designed by players for players.” In 1998 Cliff came out with his first fantasy magazine, “Fantasy Football Draft Guide Magazine”.

They also produced one of the first league management software tools called “The Kommish Fantasy Football League Manager Software.”

Over the years, Cliff has written for, or has been interviewed by, publications such as The New York Times and SPORT magazine, as well as dozens of daily newspapers and many radio and television stations. Digest readers call Charpentier “the guru of Fantasy Football” and “the best scouting combine the Fantasy Football player ever had.” For four consecutive years, the Digest was rated the “First Pick” among Fantasy Football books by USA Today.

In 1995, Cliff appeared on the nationally televised Fantasy Football Prime Time Sports Reality Check-a show which presented a pre-season look at the NFL for Fantasy Football participants. In addition to Cliff, they featured the likes of Hank Stram, Gil Brant, and additional football experts representing publications such as Pro Football Weekly and The Sporting News.

Greg Ambrosius

Greg Ambrosius is the General Manager of Consumer Fantasy Games at STATS LLC and a 22-year veteran of the fantasy sports industry. Greg is the founder of the National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) and the National Fantasy Football Championship (NFFC), the industry’s only multi-city high-stakes events. The NFBC and NFFC have awarded over $11 million in prizes since 2004, with each contest having $100,000 grand prizes. Greg was the editor of the industry’s first national newsstand magazine — Fantasy Baseball Magazine — starting in 1989 and was a past president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (2004-08) and the Fantasy Sports Association (2008-10). He is a member of the FSTA’s Hall of Fame and the Fantasy Sports Writers Association’s Hall of Fame. STATS owns and operates all of the live event and online contests for the NFBC and NFFC, servicing hundreds of leagues and thousands of the most die-hard fantasy players in the industry.

Bill James

George William “Bill” James (born October 5, 1949, in Holton, Kansas) is a baseball writer, historian, and statistician whose work has been widely influential. Since 1977, James has written more than two dozen books devoted to baseball history and statistics. His approach, which he termed sabermetrics in reference to the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), scientifically analyzes and studies baseball, often through the use of statistical data, in an attempt to determine why teams win and lose. His Baseball Abstract books in the 1980s are the modern predecessor to websites using sabermetrics such as Baseball Prospectus and Baseball Primer (now Baseball Think Factory).
In 2006, Time named him in the Time 100 as one of the most influential people in the world. He is currently a Senior Advisor on Baseball Operations for the Boston Red Sox. In 2010, Bill James was inducted into the Irish American Baseball Hall of Fame.

Innovations
Among the statistical innovations attributable to James are:

• Runs Created. A statistic intended to quantify a player’s contribution to runs scored, as well as a team’s expected number of runs scored. Runs created is calculated from other offensive statistics. James’s first version of it was: Runs Created = (Total Bases * (Hits + Walks))/(Plate Appearances). Applied to an entire team or league, the statistic correlates closely to that team’s or league’s actual runs scored. Since James first created the statistic, sabermetricians have refined it to make it more accurate, and it is now used in many different variations.

• Range factor. A statistic that quantifies the defensive contribution of a player, calculated in its simplest form as RF = (Assists + Put Outs)/(Games Played). The statistic is premised on the notion that the total number of outs that a player participates in is more relevant in evaluating his defensive play than the percentage of cleanly handled chances as calculated by the conventional statistic Fielding Percentage.

• Defensive Efficiency Rating. A statistic that shows the percentage of balls in play a defense turns into an out. It is used to help determine a team’s defensive ability. Calculated by: 1 – ((Opp. Hits + Reached on Error – Opp. Home runs) / (Plate appearances – Walks – Strikeouts – HitByPitch – Opp. Home runs)).

• Win Shares. A unifying statistic intended to allow the comparison of players at different positions, as well as players of different eras. Win Shares incorporates a variety of pitching, hitting and fielding statistics. One drawback of Win Shares is the difficulty of computing it.

• Pythagorean Winning Percentage. A statistic explaining the relationship of wins and losses to runs scored and runs allowed. In its simplest form: Pythagorean Winning Percentage equals Runs squared divided by the square of Runs plus the square of Runs Allowed. The statistic correlates closely to a team’s actual winning percentage.

• Game Score is a metric to determine the strength of a pitcher in any particular baseball game.

• Major League Equivalency. A metric that uses minor league statistics to predict how a player is likely to perform at the major league level.

• The Brock2 System. A system for projecting a player’s performance over the remainder of his career based on past performance and the aging process.

• Similarity scores. Scoring a player’s statistical similarity to other players, providing a frame of reference for players of the distant past. Examples: Lou Gehrig comparable to Don Mattingly; Joe Jackson to Tony Oliva.

• Secondary average. A statistic that attempts to measure a player’s contribution to an offense in ways not reflected in batting average. The formula is (Extra bases on hits+Walks+Stolen Bases)/At bats. Secondary averages tend to be similar to batting averages, but can vary widely, from less than .100 to more than .500 in extreme cases. Extra bases on hits is calculated with the formula (Doubles)+(Triplesx2)+(Homerunsx3) or more easily, (Total Bases)-(Hits).

• Power/Speed Number. A statistic that attempts to consolidate the various “clubs” of players with impressive numbers of both home runs and stolen bases (e.g., the “30/30″ club (Bobby Bonds was well known for being a member), the “40/40″ club (José Canseco was the first to perform this feat), and even the “25/65″ club (Joe Morgan in the ’70s)). The formula: (2x(Home Runs)x(Stolen Bases))/(Home Runs + Stolen Bases).

• Approximate Value. A system of cutoffs designed to estimate the value a player contributed to various category groups (including his team) to study broad questions such as “how do players age over time”.

Although James may be best known as an inventor of statistical tools, he has often written on the limitations of statistics and urged humility concerning their place amidst other kinds of information about baseball. To James, context is paramount: he was among the first to emphasize the importance of adjusting traditional statistics for park factors and to stress the role of luck in a pitcher’s win-loss record.[citation needed] Many of his statistical innovations are arguably less important than the underlying ideas. When he introduced the notion of secondary average, it was as a vehicle for the then-counterintuitive concept that batting average represents only a fraction of a player’s offensive contribution. (The runs-created statistic plays a similar role vis-à-vis the traditional RBI.) Some of his contributions to the language of baseball, like the idea of the “defensive spectrum”, border on being entirely non-statistical.

STATS, Inc.
In an essay published in the 1984 Abstract, James vented his frustration about Major League Baseball’s refusal to publish play-by-play accounts of every game. James proposed the creation of Project Scoresheet, a network of fans that would work together to collect and distribute this information.

While the resulting non-profit organization never functioned smoothly, it worked well enough to collect accounts of every game from 1984 through 1991. James’s publisher agreed to distribute two annuals of essays and data – the 1987 and 1988 editions of Bill James Presents The Great American Baseball Statbook (though only the first of these featured writing by James).

The organization was eventually disbanded, but many of its members went on to form for-profit companies with similar goals and structure. STATS, Inc., the company James joined, provided data and analysis to every major media outlet before being acquired by Fox Sports in 2001.

Acceptance in mainstream baseball
Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane began applying sabermetric principles to running his low-budget team in the late 1990s, to notable effect, as chronicled in Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball).

In 2003, James was hired by a former reader, John Henry, the new owner of the Boston Red Sox.

One point of controversy was in handling the relief pitching of the Red Sox. James had previously published analysis of the use of the closer in baseball, and had concluded that the traditional use of the closer both overrated the abilities of that individual, and used him in suboptimal circumstances. He wrote that it is “far better to use your relief ace when the score is tied, even if that is the seventh inning, than in the ninth inning with a lead of two or more runs.” The Red Sox in 2003 staffed their bullpen with several marginally talented relievers. Red Sox manager Grady Little was never fully comfortable with the setup, and designated unofficial closers and reshuffled roles after a bad outing. When Boston lost a number of games due to bullpen failures, Little reverted to a traditional closer approach and moved Byung-Hyun Kim from being a starting pitcher to a closer. The Red Sox did not follow James’ idea of a bullpen with no closer, but with consistent overall talent that would allow the responsibilities to be shared. Red Sox reliever Alan Embree thought the plan could have worked if the bullpen had not suffered injuries. During the 2004 regular season Keith Foulke was used primarily as a closer in the conventional model; however, Foulke’s usage in the 2004 postseason was along the lines of a relief ace with multiple inning appearances at pivotal times of the game. Houston Astros manager Phil Garner also employed a relief ace model with his use of Brad Lidge in the 2004 postseason.

James is still (2010) employed by the Red Sox, having published several new sabermetric books during his tenure (see Bibliography, below). Indeed, although James is typically tight-lipped about his activities on behalf of the Red Sox, he is credited with advocating some of the moves that led to the team’s first World Series championship in 86 years, including the signing of non-tendered free agent David Ortiz, the trade for Mark Bellhorn, and the team’s increased emphasis on on-base percentage. During his time with the Red Sox, Bill James has received two World Series rings for the team’s 2004 and 2007 victories.

Sabermetrician Martin Bernstein points out on Baseball Prospectus that knowledge is pointless without application. Following the aforementioned Red Sox and Billy Beane’s Oakland Athletics, most major league teams today use sabermetrics and statistic tracking. But although sabermetrics is mostly accepted within baseball, Bernstein says that there is another frontier – the average fan still does not readily use or accept sabermetrics. Beane is such a renowned figure not for his actual innovations in specific statistics or ideas, but for his open-mindedness and application of knowledge that led other’s inside baseball to apply sabermetrics as well. Bernstein concludes that the next most important innovation in the field will be in getting fans to accept and use sabermetic knowledge, and that this goal should be the main focus of sabermetricians until it is accomplished.

The Mind of Bill James, a biography-cum-chronicle of James’s works was published in the spring of 2006. How Bill James Changed Our View of the Game of Baseball was published in February 2007. He was profiled on 60 Minutes on March 30, 2008, in his role as a sabermetric pioneer and Red Sox advisor.

Charlie Wiegert

Charlie’s contributions to the Fantasy sports industry are extensive. In fact, most current industry operators have no idea how extensive. Even before the FSTA was created, Charlie organized meetings in St. Louis to begin the communication process between companies in a very young industry. He and CDM invested heavily and led efforts to help clarify legal and licensing issues, years before the FSTA or the MLBAM lawsuit. Without these early efforts, many of today’s content companies and game operators ­ small, medium and large ­ would not exist.

After 19 years in newspaper ad sales, ­ much of which was also spent competing in fantasy leagues,  ­ Wiegert helped found CDM Fantasy Sports in 1991, starting a career as one of the pioneers of the booming national fantasy game industry. Wiegert turned a small company called Carol’s Fantasy Baseball into a large national service by aligning his company with national publication companies. He first produced fantasy games for The Sporting News and later branched out to include games for USA Today, Baseball Weekly, MSNBC, The Golf Channel and more. Wiegert is also a founding member of the FSTA and the winner of the 2000 FSTA Lifetime Achievement Award. He was inducted in the the FSTA Hall Of Fame in 2001 at Chicago conference.

Perhaps the most impactful segment of Wiegert’s career came in the courtroom. That was where his company ­ in CBC Distribution and Marketing  v. Major League Baseball Advanced Media ­ assured fantasy operators everywhere the right to use player names and statistics in their games without having to pay rights fees to the leagues involved.

“Winning the lawsuit with MLBAM/MLBPA was the highlight of my career, and knowing that fantasy sports games will remain in the hands of game operators instead of the leagues is very satisfying,” Wiegert said. “Most fantasy sports players do not realize that the games they play and love would have been changed and/or eliminated without a positive decision.”

He has followed that up with well over 10 years of devotion to the FSTA Board, serving as a Executive board member and Treasurer.

Charlie’s company, CBC Distribution and Marketing (CDM Fantasy Sports), was acquired by Fun Technologies, and merged with Fanball.  Fun Technologies was acquired by Liberty Media Corporation, and in June of 2011, the operation was closed.  Charlie, with some former partners, acquired the assets of their original Salary Cap games, and began operating them again in March of 2011 as CDM Sports.  Hundreds of Thousands of players have participated in these games since 1991, with over $60,000,000 in cash prizes awarded to the winners.

John Dewan, 2nd from left

Twenty-five years ago, just five years after receiving his Fellowship in the Society of Actuaries, John Dewan left a highly successful career as an insurance actuary to pursue a life-long dream, the development of the most timely and comprehensive computer database in sports.  The fulfillment of that dream was Sports Team Analysis and Tracking Systems, Inc., or STATS, Inc.  During John’s time as President and CEO,  STATS grew rapidly and was recognized in Inc. Magazine’s Inc. 500, a list of America’s 500 Fastest-Growing Private Companies, ranking #144.  In recognition of his leadership role in making real-time sports information available to consumers, John was named to the Crain’s Chicago Business list of key technology players in Chicago and was a three-time finalist for the KPMG Illinois High Tech Awards. The success of the company culminated in its sale to an affiliate of Ruppert Murdoch’s News Corporation and Fox Broadcasting, News Digital Media.

John’s new company is Baseball Info Solutions (BIS).  BIS is totally focused on baseball and collects, analyzes and disseminates the most in-depth data in the industry with more than a dozen Major League Baseball teams as clients.

John’s latest books, The Fielding Bible and The Fielding Bible—Volume II, break ground in an area that has been the least analyzed in baseball: defense.  His new Plus/Minus System and Defensive Runs Saved developed in the books are a direct application of actuarial and sabermetric techniques.  The Fielding Bible—Volume III comes out next spring.

John’s slants on analytics in baseball can be seen at www.StatOfTheWeek.com.

John graduated from Loyola University with a B.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science.  He lives in Chicago with his wife Sue and their two children, Jason and Erica.

John Benson

John Benson is CEO of Diamond Analytics Corporation and editor of johnbenson.com. He is the author of more than 50 books and hundreds of essays. He also helps others as a consultant in writing and publishing for businesses, individuals and educational institutions. His consulting approach is that of a strategist, beginning with identity and mission, and then flowing through organization into programs, products, and services.

John is a columnist for The Sporting News. Previously his regular columns appeared in USA Today Baseball Weekly and Baseball America. During the 1990’s he covered the Mets and Yankees for The Scouting Report and The Scouting Notebook. He has appeared on ESPN/HBO and the NBC News with Tom Brokaw and has been cited in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, Business Week and dozens of other newspapers and magazines. He has frequently been a radio guest.

With a passion for public service, John served eight years on the Wilton, Connecticut Board of Education, including a term as chairman. He was the first-ever development director for the Connecticut Urban Education Fund engaged in fundraising to provide private schooling for the most underprivileged children. John enjoys public discourse and bringing together diverse constituencies. He has been elected to local office four times.

In the corporate world with Fortune-500 firms, John’s career spanned the disciplines of finance, operations, marketing management, sales management and general management. He has held professional and executive positions in the industries of public accounting, mining, manufacturing, and transportation.

John holds degrees in politics, business, and divinity, from Princeton, Columbia, and Yale universities, respectively.

Clients and employers have included:

AMAX Inc.

Anaconda Industries

ARCO

ASARCO

AT&T

Baseball America

Block Drug

Milt Campbell Foundation

Columbia University

Commercial Union

Connecticut Urban Education Fund

Coopers & Lybrand

Copper Range

Emery Worldwide

Goldman Sachs

Haverford College

Jefferson Insurance

Krause Publications

Morse Electro Products

City of New York

New York Telephone

Primary Communications

Princeton University

Revere Copper and Brass

Rutgers University

Sandoz

School of St. John (NY)

Smoky Valley Common

The Sporting News

Times Mirror

USA Today

Yale University

Peter Pezaris

Multiply’s founders were previously partners of Daedalus World Wide Corporation (“DWWC”) which was founded in 1995, and operated some of the first mass-market web sites on the Internet. In 1996, DWWC launched Commissioner.com, a fantasy sports statistics service that was licensed to, and private-labeled or co-branded for: CBS.SportsLine.com, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, CNN/SI, America On-line, Netscape, Excite, the PGA TOUR and others. In December 1999 DWWC was merged into SportsLine.com, Inc., and operated as a wholly-owned subsidiary. In 2004 the DWWC team was inducted into the Fantasy Sports Trade Association Hall of Fame for its influential role in creating the now thriving on-line fantasy sports industry. Having worked together and experienced growth in start-ups through high-profile publicly-traded companies, Multiply’s team is well poised for repeat success.

Ron Shandler

RON SHANDLER began publishing his unique brand of statistical information under the Shandler Enterprises, LLC name in 1986. A fantasy leaguer since 1985 and a simulation gamer since 1971, Ron was the first author to develop sabermetric applications for fantasy league play. He is the author of the Baseball Forecaster annual, now in its 26th year of publication. Ron is also the founder of the industry trail-blazing web site, BaseballHQ.com, and First Pitch Forum conference series.

Ron’s work has appeared in numerous publications and web sites. His “Fanalytics” column has been appearing weekly during the baseball season in USA TODAY since 2008. In fall 2009, he began a periodic blog in the Sports section of the Huffington Post. In 2007, he was a regular columnist for ESPN Magazine and ESPN.com. He has been quoted and cited by many other sources, including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Business Week and Money magazine.

In 2004, Ron was asked to help create and participate in an advisory board for the St. Louis Cardinals baseball club. Many other Major League ballclubs are regular customers of his books and web services.

Ron appeared in the 2010 ESPN documentary, “Silly Little Game,” part of the network’s “30-for-30″ series. The 2002 edition of his Baseball Forecaster appeared in the 2011 movie, “Moneyball.”

Ron is one of the founders of Tout Wars, the national experts competition featured in the 2006 book, Fantasyland, and the 2010 documentary film of the same name. In national experts leagues all told, he has finished in the top three 16 times, including six titles. His 1998 victories in both the AL and NL Tout Wars leagues represent the only dual championships ever achieved in the history of experts competitions.

Among Ron’s notable research contributions to the industry:

• Component skills analysis: The separation of skill from stats by focusing on underlying measures of performance. Ron’s research showed how skills indicators are better predictors of player performance than traditional statistics.
• LIMA Plan: A fantasy draft strategy in which resource allocation is optimized by valuing players using component skills analysis.
• Pure Quality Starts: A measure of a starting pitcher’s effectiveness based on component skills. Uses the “game” as its unit of measure, unlike most other pitching stats that use the “inning.”
• Reliability Grade: A measure of the riskiness of a player’s projection, based on his track record of playing time, health and performance consistency.
• Portfolio3 Plan: An integrated strategy in which players are evaluated based on skill and risk, and slotted into a three-tiered draft portfolio.
• Strand rate: A formula that explains the variance between a pitcher’s ERA and his skill level. Viewed in tandem with “batting average on balls in play,” this indicator can help project ERA by adjusting for uncertainty.
• Base Performance Value: A formula that measures a player’s raw skill.

Ron is a corporate member of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA). BaseballHQ.com won FSTA’s “Best Fantasy Baseball Online Content” award in 2000, 2003 and 2004, and Shandler Enterprises was named FSTA’s “Small Business of the Year” in 2002. First Pitch Arizona won FSTA’s “Best Live Fantasy Event” in 2010. Ron was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the FSTA in 2005, one of only four people in the industry to receive such a honor.

Ron has been a member of the Society for American Baseball Research since 1985 and was published in their Baseball Research Journal in 1988. He was one of 12 industry analysts who each contributed a chapter to the 2007 book, How Bill James Changed Our View of Baseball.

In 2008, Ron sold Shandler Enterprises, LLC to Fantasy Sports Ventures, Inc. He currently continues as a consultant to the Baseball HQ line.

Ron has an MBA from Hofstra University, is a professional direct marketer and forecasting analyst by trade, and held senior management positions with several international publishers prior to starting Shandler Enterprises. A native New Yorker and die-hard Mets fan, he currently lives in Roanoke, Virginia with his wife and two daughters.

Peter Schoenke

Peter is President, Roto Sports, Inc.: RotoWire.com, Mockdraftcentral.com, Databasesports.com

He’s a pioneer and leader in the Premium Player News, Information, and Analysis space. His company has seen success by value their content through a subscription wall (meaning, actually charging online readers for the right to read RotoWire content, as opposed to going the fully advertiser-supported route).

Peter’s also been a very active Board Member in the FSTA and the FSA.

RotoNews.com launched in January 1997 and published its first player note on Feb. 16 1997. RotoNews revolutionized how fantasy sports information was presented on the web with the innovation of the “player note” which were snippets of information every time a player got hurt, traded, benched or had a news event that impacted his fantasy value – all search-able in a real-time database. Most sites today follow how RotoNews had a “news” and “analysis” element to each player update.

“Back in 1997, Peter and his crew launched RotoNews.com (now known as Rotowire.com), giving us fantasy owners a wondrous gift: the player news application. You know, here’s an update on a guy, and here’s the fantasy spin on that news. This changed everything. The days of feeling like a moron because you started a quarterback who, unbeknownst to you, had frayed his septum? Over. And you have Peter to thank.”

Within two years RotoNews had become one of the top ten most trafficked sports sites on the web, according to Media Metrix, ranking higher than such sites as NBA.com. RotoNews.com also launched the Web’s first free commissioner service in 1998, quickly becoming the largest league management service.

“The Internet has been a god-send for fantasy-leaguers. Updated information is just a mouse-click away, while instantaneous box scores make the morning paper seem like the Stone Age. How did we ever play fantasy baseball before the Internet? The same question can be asked of an online service that is changing the face of the industry. In just two short years, RotoNews.com has become the industry leader for news and stats.

RotoNews.com was sold to Broadband Sports in 1999, which went belly up in 2001. The company would re-emerge as RotoWire.com. RotoWire.com moved from a free model to a pay model in 2001.

RotoWire.com is the largest independently-owned fantasy sports web site and syndicates content to such companies as ESPN.com, Yahoo! Sports, NFL.com, FoxSports.com, Sirius XM Radio (hosting a daily three-hour show) and Sports Illustrated. RotoWire is the successor to RotoNews.com which was a pioneering web site in sports, developing such innovations as real-time fantasy player notes and free commissioner services.

Rick Wolf

Rick Wolf is the founder and President of Full Moon Sports Solutions, a company dedicated to delivering solutions to major media consulting.  Originally started in 2001 with clients like FOX, USA Today, AOL and Topps, Full Moon led Strategic Partnerships for Allstar Stats until it was acquired by NBC Universal in August of 2006.

Wolf was previously Director of Business Development for NBC Sports Digital. In this role, he focused on creating partnerships that expand the sports businesses of NBC, including NBCSports.com, the fastest growing major media sports site; Rotoworld.com, the largest pure-play fantasy sports site on the Internet; and NBCOlympics.com.  NBC Sports Group went all the way to number six (6) on the Comscore sports list while Wolf was leading Business Development.

Before that Wolf ran Full Moon Web Solutions and provided consulting advice for Allstar Stats. His deep contact base, coupled with product creativity, delivered many great partnerships including USA Today, FOX Sports, NHL.com, CBS Sports, MAXIM and Head2Head Sports. Wolf defined a business model that balanced Business-to-Business services with Business-to-Consumer products and content allowing Allstar Stats to grow into a favorable acquisition target of major media companies. In August 2006, NBC Universal purchased Allstar Stats Inc.

In 1998, Wolf was a founding Board Member of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA), a non-profit organization with the mission of raising awareness worldwide for Fantasy Sports. From March 2002 to July 2006 he served as FSTA Chairman. Rotoworld.com and Allstar Stats have received twelve (12) FSTA awards since awards began in 2002. In 2001, the FSTA recognized Wolf as their Executive of the Year.

Wolf also served as Chairman of the Fantasy Sports Association (FSA) from 2007-2010, a non-profit association whose mandate, different from the FSTA, was to raise awareness for fantasy sports among sponsors, brands and advertisers. Wolf’s efforts at SBJ’s November conference each year, kept Fantasy Sports in the forefront of the minds of major media sports executives. The FSA closed in December 2010.

In 1995, Wolf was hired as the 13th employee at SportsLine.com to direct their digital product. In 1997, he became GM of Fantasy Sports and designed a plan for the consolidation of the Fantasy Industry under the CBS SportsLine brand. In 1998, Wolf created the partnership with Commissioner.com that led to building the most robust fantasy sports suite on the Internet and spearheaded relationships with both MLB and NFL for official Fantasy Products.

From 1987 to 1995, Wolf was a Sr. Programmer for PRODIGY. Wolf was part technology team that built the production tools used to put ESPN on PRODIGY in 1992. Wolf was also part of the technology team at PRODIGY that produced the first online Fantasy game, Baseball Manager. Wolf was the sole maintenance programmer from 1991 when it launched until he left PRODIGY in 1995. The game was ported to an all web platform and still exists today.

Wolf also loves to play Fantasy Sports, especially baseball. Wolf and college friend Glenn Colton have won three USA Today LABR American League titles and three FSTA Fantasy Football titles. Wolf and Colton also compete in Tout Wars AL since 2007 and are still fighting for their first victory.

Wolf lives with his wife (Jeanne) and three sons (Matt, Bryan and Stephen) in Pleasantville NY.

Bill Winkenbach, far right

Bill created the first fantasy baseball and fantasy football leagues that we know of. In the late 1950s, Bill started the S.T. SIHRT – Superior Tile Summer Invitational Homerun Tournament. In August 1963, he had the first draft of the GOPPPL – the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators league. He also dabbled in fantasy golf in the late 1950s. The GOPPPL’s purpose was to promote the Raiders and the AFL.

Winkenbach was also a 10% limited partner of the Oakland Raiders.

Bill, as we know it, is the father of fantasy sports.