SportsHub Technologies Acquires MFL10s

[Greg Ambrosius]

We are VERY HAPPY to announce today that SportsHub Technologies has acquired the MFL10s from My Fantasy League and will launch the MFL10s on our platform in February. MyFantasyLeague.com started the MFL10s five years ago and has built this contest into one of the largest pay-to-play contests in the fantasy football industry. More than 80,000 teams were part of that contest in 2017 and we expect a big bump in participation in 2018.

We will be working with Mike Hall, Geoff Stein and all of the guys at MyFantasyLeague.com to promote this contest to all of our great customers over the next year. Very little will change with this format as we recognize that these $10 offerings are quick, easy and enjoyable for owners who hope to turn $10 into a nice league prize. We'll continue to pay the Top 2 teams and continue to have the same unique scoring format and lineup construction. It will fit nicely into our growing Draft Champions portfolio, which now includes NFFC 25s & 50s, and our NFFC Draft Champions National Championship at $150 and $400 per team. It's a perfect fit. More to come on all of that in the coming weeks, but expect a February launch just like the MFL10s provided throughout the last five years.

The big news with our acquisition is that more players will now have a chance to play MFL10s in 2018. MyFantasyLeague.com was not licensed in states like New York, Virginia, Indiana, Missouri and Tennessee and with states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and others adding state licensing fees the list was about to grow. SportsHub Technologies is licensed in all of those states and thus now more players will be allowed to participate in these contests. In fact, some players had winnings on their accounts and couldn't use them for the MFL10s and now they will be able to use those balances and free entries to purchase teams in 2018.

One other bit of good news is that we'll also add stand-alone drafts each night once the off-season kicks into high gear. We will continue to offer the "slow draft" format that the MFL10s have always had, but in 2018 we'll also offer two nightly time periods for drafts at 1 minute per pick. With the NFFC $25s and $50s, we held them every night at 8 and 10 pm ET. A similar format will be offered for the MFL10s, allowing folks to draft 12-team, 20-round leagues each night in less than two hours. We think this will grow the MFL10s and allow more people to play.

MFL10 winners from 2017 have already been notified of this move as their prize winnings from 2017 are being paid by SportsHub Technologies. That announcement was made on Friday and payments are already being processed through LeagueSafe. Congrats to everyone who won prize money in 2017 and welcome to the SportsHub family.

More news on all of this will be coming soon, but let's get to the facts and the details first. Here's the official press release that was announced today.


MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--As part of its ongoing commitment to build and grow fantasy sports products enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of sports fans every day, SportsHub Technologies, LLC (“SportsHub”) has announced today that it has acquired the MFL10s line of business (“MFL10s”) from MyFantasyLeague.

Fanball parent company SportsHub Technologies acquires MFL10s business from MyFantasyLeague

The acquisition marks the sixth transaction completed for SportsHub, which purchased CDM Sports and Sports Technologies in 2016. It followed these initial deals with the acquisitions of LeagueSafe, National Fantasy Championships and WhatIfSports in 2017. This latest move strengthens SportsHub’s product portfolio with MFL10’s innovative best ball draft-only leagues and will be integrated into SportsHub’s high stakes business unit.

“The regulatory environment for the fantasy sports industry has changed drastically over the course of the past two seasons,” said Founder and CEO Rob Phythian. “Games like MFL10s are now required to be licensed in many states, and the cost and requirements of compliance have become burdensome and prohibitive for companies with limited resources. With our integrated platform that manages user identity, gaming compliance, and global wallet, we have the scale and expertise to add properties like MFL10 to our growing portfolio.”

SportsHub will continue to grow through both organic growth and M&A and anticipates several additional announcements in the future. “SportsHub will be a great home for MFL10s,” said Mike Hall, President of MyFantasyLeague. “SportsHub is fully compliant and licensed in all states that require a license. They have a growing user base and list of game offerings and are committed to keeping the MFL10s game format in 2018 and beyond. This will allow all MFL10s customers to continue enjoying MFL10s without a disruption in service.”

About SportsHub Technologies

SportsHub Technologies was founded in 2015 by a team of veteran fantasy sports industry insiders including Rob Phythian, a former member of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association Board of Directors and a member of the Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame. SportsHub owns and operates real money gaming sites and is on a mission to level the playing field for daily fantasy sports fans. In addition, SportsHub specializes in helping sports media companies develop strategies, products and innovative solutions to drive deep customer engagement with highly interactive games and mobile applications. For more information, please visit http://www.SportsHubTech.com.

About MyFantasyLeague

MyFantasyLeague.com was founded in 1994 by the late Kevin Austin, and continues to build on his vision of offering the most customizable Fantasy Football League Hosting service for commissioners that require a high level of flexibility and customer service for their private leagues. MFL specializes in features that cater to dynasty leagues and other complex league formats, and also offers free mock drafts and free best ball style draft only league hosting throughout the year. In addition, MFL offers an Open Developer’s API that enables and encourages independent third party developers to build tools and add-ons for its commissioner platform.

[Greg Ambrosius]

While I know that this is an acquisition that affects our fantasy football division, this is also good news for the NFBC community. Here's how:

* The MFL10s had Auto-Round Ques for EVERY ROUND. The Ques allowed you to actually set players aside for Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, etc. throughout the draft. This is something we will need to build and have ready for the February launch. We are using the NFFC-style draft room for the MFL10s, so anything being built there will be available for the NFFC, NFBC and NFBKC. Oh, and for our debut hockey product this Fall as well.

* The MFL10s use an average pick per user in each draft and we'll likely embrace that as well. The average time per pick is used for each draft and not carried over into other drafts, so we are looking at that now.

* The MFL10s had tens of thousands of unique users over the last five years and we will reach out to those players to see how many would also have an interest in baseball, basketball and hockey. Even a small percentage of new users would be a good conversion to baseball as we are always looking to bring in new players to this community.

* The MFL10s use email and text alerts to send recent draft picks. Adding text alerts will be critical to the launch of the MFL10s and will spur us to add them here as well.

The online fantasy sports business just continues to grow and grow, so it's critical that we get every aspect of drafting online down to perfection. This acquisition makes us focus even more on making the online drafting experience a smooth one. We're on it and we're working on the experience right now. Thanks all for all your feedback and input.

[DOUGHBOYS]

I'm confused. Just a few questions....

Does this mean auto1 or auto-whatever round won't be here till February?

Does this mean that SportsHub programmers are not doing auto1, that it is now being imported from the new place?

Why doesn't average draft time be carried forward?
Can this be changed for our purposes?
If in a draft with a slow drafter, I don't need to see his time to know that he is slow.
What I would like to see is how slow his times are BEFORE entering a draft with that slow drafter.

It seems as if the NFBC is going the direction of cheaper and cheaper drafts.
Are we headed from high stakes to penny-ante?
Is that the plan?

[jdryan]

It seems as if the NFBC is going the direction of cheaper and cheaper drafts.
Are we headed from high stakes to penny-ante?
Is that the plan?

I hope not that’s what is feels like ..

[Yah Mule]

It feels like the priority here was to grow the customer base, which would be fine if there weren't ongoing technical issues plaguing the current users that are extremely frustrating.

Promising a bigger and better auto-one while announcing another delay is borderline antagonistic. When you take someone's car and give them a bus pass, they're really not interested in hearing about the great car they're going to get days/weeks/months from now.

In addition to the huge swaths of empty space, why have user unfriendly designs like the X that removes player names right next to the scroll bar that advances them? This is present both on the ranking pages and in the draft room. It's easy to hit the X inadvertently and then you have to figure out who you just accidentally removed. The new ranking method is tedious enough already.



Average time of draft is meaningless if it's only available in-draft, unless you want to incentivize being fastest in some way. What people want is some foreknowledge of who's in a particular draft. Maybe this is something you're ambivalent about because you're concerned people will avoid drafts full of slowpokes and slow down total sign-ups.

Besides the level of competition, personal service is what has set the NFBC apart from other fantasy sites. The possible addition of thousands of $10 players is not exciting to me. I actually find it kind of ominous.

[Greg Ambrosius]

I'm confused. Just a few questions....

Does this mean auto1 or auto-whatever round won't be here till February?

Does this mean that SportsHub programmers are not doing auto1, that it is now being imported from the new place?

Why doesn't average draft time be carried forward?
Can this be changed for our purposes?
If in a draft with a slow drafter, I don't need to see his time to know that he is slow.
What I would like to see is how slow his times are BEFORE entering a draft with that slow drafter.

It seems as if the NFBC is going the direction of cheaper and cheaper drafts.
Are we headed from high stakes to penny-ante?
Is that the plan?

No. Auto Round 1 is being done now. We hope to test it tomorrow and have it live soon.

No. We're doing it now and testing this week.

Average draft time has never been a badge of honor on MFL10s. Is it anywhere else? I don't agree with that assessment, but that's okay. Knowing average pick per user during a draft does seem to have some value, at least I think so.

Bad assumption. All these years everyone is asking us to attract more users and when we finally attract tens of thousands of current pay-to-play season-long game players that's a negative? For some people $150 is high-stakes. For others it's $10,000. $10 isn't high-stakes, but if they can win $100 it can lead them to play higher priced games. This is all a stepping stone to getting more players into all of our price points.

Oh boy. No, that's not the plan, but thanks anyway. We are adding to the high-stakes division and strengthening season-long pay-to-play games. Sorry that not everyone is as excited, but the fantasy football community sure is and we'll just prove the baseball audience the same. It's all good boys, trust me (which you don't always do).

[Greg Ambrosius]

It seems as if the NFBC is going the direction of cheaper and cheaper drafts.
Are we headed from high stakes to penny-ante?
Is that the plan?

I hope not that’s what is feels like ..

NICE. Don't jump on that bandwagon Jody because it's wrong. Why would we lower the price point of ANYTHING we're currently doing when every high-stakes contest sells out quickly? Geez. We're adding more season-long players to our family, strengthening a very solid product and growing as a company.

The real story is why was this product for sale when it's so successful? Ask the government, which is making it so tough for strong industry companies to stay afloat in the pay-to-play space with these state-by-state licensing fees. It was supposed to be consumer protection and now it's just a money grab that is hurting entrepreneurs. Sucks. But this shows why we became licensing in every state and I doubt this is the last company that will join forces with us.

That's good. For you. For us. For the industry. Hope that helps.

[Greg Ambrosius]

It feels like the priority here was to grow the customer base, which would be fine if there weren't ongoing technical issues plaguing the current users that are extremely frustrating.

Promising a bigger and better auto-one while announcing another delay is borderline antagonistic. When you take someone's car and give them a bus pass, they're really not interested in hearing about the great car they're going to get days/weeks/months from now.

In addition to the huge swaths of empty space, why have user unfriendly designs like the X that removes player names right next to the scroll bar that advances them? This is present both on the ranking pages and in the draft room. It's easy to hit the X inadvertently and then you have to figure out who you just accidentally removed. The new ranking method is tedious enough already.



Average time of draft is meaningless if it's only available in-draft, unless you want to incentivize being fastest in some way. What people want is some foreknowledge of who's in a particular draft. Maybe this is something you're ambivalent about because you're concerned people will avoid drafts full of slowpokes and slow down total sign-ups.

Besides the level of competition, personal service is what has set the NFBC apart from other fantasy sites. The possible addition of thousands of $10 players is not exciting to me. I actually find it kind of ominous.

ANTAGONISTIC?? Dan announced the delay. Not me.

Geez, next time I'll invite you skeptics to the IT meeting. 1 Round Auto hopefully will be added this week or early next week. Online auctions are also being worked on and hopefully will be added by end of month or early next month. Until then, we are hosting online auctions on RT Sports. Over $3 million in NFFC prizes are being added to Player Accounts this week.

Great. Now we have an average time per draft controversy. Okay. We can either discuss all the merits or just move on. I don't mind a thoughtful discussion, but yes we weren't making this a badge of honor, which in turn would just lead to people slamming anyone who signed up for a contest with an average pick time of over 15 minutes. That's not the plan if that's the question.

Carry on. I'm here to answer any questions....and even assumptions.

[DOUGHBOYS]

Now, I've gone from confused to aggravated....
Thanks for the answers?

[ToddZ]

Great news Greg and Tom.

I just hope you can get along with that Stein dude again.

[Gekko]

Seems like good news to me.

Maybe most people are oblivious to what the fantasy landscape has become with the introduction of license fees, etc

Consolidation was inevitable. Again, on the surface this looks good

[DOUGHBOYS]

ANTAGONISTIC?? Dan announced the delay. Not me.

Announcement? I asked a damn question, Greg.

[JohnP]

Congrats. Good to be aligned with the company that is growing / acquiring. Couple questions:

* What is the relative size in terms of $ for MFL 10 compared to NFFC or NFBC?
* Will the Feb 1 MFL launch date affect the resources dedicated to the current NFBC product? There seems like so much work to do yet.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Seems like good news to me.

Maybe most people are oblivious to what the fantasy landscape has become with the introduction of license fees, etc

Consolidation was inevitable. Again, on the surface this looks good

Yeah, and we're the ones buying, not selling. That's good news.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Congrats. Good to be aligned with the company that is growing / acquiring. Couple questions:

* What is the relative size in terms of $ for MFL 10 compared to NFFC or NFBC?
* Will the Feb 1 MFL launch date affect the resources dedicated to the current NFBC product? There seems like so much work to do yet.

About 30 percent of either sport, but they also exempted many states, including New York, Missouri, Indiana, Virginia, etc. We will add more players this year because we are licensed in all of those states and we'll add more leagues because of nightly drafts. They stopped taking signups in mid-August because they were all slow drafts at 8 hours per pick. We'll add 4 hour and even faster drafts to grow the business. And maybe one other nice wrinkle that folks will love!!

MFL10s will launch a week or two AFTER the Super Bowl, not Feb. 1st. No, we have separate programmers working on the NFBC right now. We know what is needed to be done to launch the MFL10s and a lot of that work was already scheduled to get our NFFC Draft Champions leagues live in March. We will get both done.

[Greg Ambrosius]

ANTAGONISTIC?? Dan announced the delay. Not me.

Announcement? I asked a damn question, Greg.

You're right. You asked if there would be a delay until February: Does this mean auto1 or auto-whatever round won't be here till February?

Again, NO. Our goal is to have 1 Round Auto done for the NFBC by the end of the week. I hope we can do that.

[mkieffer]

I will say I appreciate growing the fanbase and think this is a positive.

I am 33 years old and have been playing in Fantasy Baseball Leagues since I was 12, often times being those $10-$50 leagues.

It has been from my successes in small to mid stakes leagues that afforded me the opportunity to play in the Main Event for the 1st time last year, and again this year. I could have pocketed more of the money but after doing really well in those smaller money leagues, I wanted to challenge myself more and last year was definitely a challenge as I got my butt kicked. Basically I had to choose whether to play in a lot of small to mid stakes leagues or play in less leagues with more of a challenge.

You never know: a small stakes player now might be a future high stakes player in the future.

[jdryan]

Greg, I wasn’t jumping on anything, I love this site is the place to go for high stakes games I’ve seen many companies/websites
get bigger and lose sight of what really got them going .I hope I’m wrong but I wasn’t jumping on anything .. I take offense to that.. I’ve my own opinions ..

[Greg Ambrosius]

I will say I appreciate growing the fanbase and think this is a positive.

I am 33 years old and have been playing in Fantasy Baseball Leagues since I was 12, often times being those $10-$50 leagues.

It has been from my successes in small to mid stakes leagues that afforded me the opportunity to play in the Main Event for the 1st time last year, and again this year. I could have pocketed more of the money but after doing really well in those smaller money leagues, I wanted to challenge myself more and last year was definitely a challenge as I got my butt kicked. Basically I had to choose whether to play in a lot of small to mid stakes leagues or play in less leagues with more of a challenge.

You never know: a small stakes player now might be a future high stakes player in the future.

If we had a LIKE button on these Message Boards I would LIKE this post.

Absolutely 100 percent dead on. EXACTLY what we think. Great post and thanks for joining the NFBC family.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Greg, I wasn’t jumping on anything, I love this site is the place to go for high stakes games I’ve seen many companies/websites
get bigger and lose sight of what really got them going .I hope I’m wrong but I wasn’t jumping on anything .. I take offense to that.. I’ve my own opinions ..

No offense intended. I can 1000% GUARANTEE YOU that we haven't lost sight of our core business, which is the high-stakes model. NOTHING is changing there. We are totally focused on the NFBC right now and we are so happy to be paying more than $3.2 million to our NFFC players now. Heck, we have an NFFC Post-Season Contest that has a $100,000 grand prize right now that is selling like hot cakes. Why would we ever take our eye off the ball with this area of our business?

As you know this business isn't just Tom and me anymore. Darik is full time with us. We have Accounting, IT, management and other staffs separate from our Wisconsin office. We can continue to do what we do best and still add this new business to our side of the ball. There are plenty of other folks involved in making that happen. It's all good.

I don't take offense to the questions or assumptions, but some are seeing the glass half empty and others are seeing the glass half full. Thankfully, others see the glass completely full. I'm in that camp and I think most people would too if they understood how important the MFL10s are to the fantasy football industry. We are adding tens of thousands of unique season-long fantasy football players to our contests and adding software tools that we don't have here right now. What could be wrong with that?

Again, no offense intended and thanks for expressing your opinions.

[Tom Kessenich]

Greg, I wasn’t jumping on anything, I love this site is the place to go for high stakes games I’ve seen many companies/websites
get bigger and lose sight of what really got them going .I hope I’m wrong but I wasn’t jumping on anything .. I take offense to that.. I’ve my own opinions ..

Jody, SportsHub has been nothing but supportive of our business since they bought us and the emphasis has always been on growing all three contests and making each an even better one for the players. They are giving us all the tools we are asking for to make improvements STATS would never make. Now, not all of the improvements are going to come right away and as quickly as some may want but they are being worked on. We are in the best position we've ever been in and it isn't even close. Plus, as Gekko said, the realities of this industry and all the regulations that are in place put a huge emphasis on being part of a larger company that can build in the fee payments that are necessary to keep these contests afloat and available to as many people as possible. SportsHub is giving us all that and then some.

As far as this new purchase it opens the door for new customers to see our contests and perhaps try them out and hopefully if they do enjoy them and continue playing in the future. Also, and this is vital, as part of this purchase MORE customers can now play the MFL 10s than was possible before. That's how important this was for that contest in particular.

Also, the MFL 10s have been referenced often in terms of technology upgrades that our customers would like to see with our contests. We now have opened the door for that to occur since that contest and ours are working together. So from a tech perspective this is huge in terms of what we can offer the NFBC, NFFC and NFBKC players moving forward.

So no matter how you look at it, this is a hugely positive development for everyone. For our parent company, for all those who play the MFL 10s and for our contests as well. We haven't been swallowed up by some giant behemoth that doesn't care about the customers. We are now part of a company that has put an emphasis on the fantasy players first by offering a wide variety of contests (from season-long to weekly to DFS) under one roof. Everything that's happened since SportsHub bought us has been hugely positive for our three contests and we are very excited about what's to come.

Personally, I feel that for the very first time in our history we now have an opportunity to do all of the things we've long wanted to do in terms of really shaping and improving our contests. This is a good day, guys. Honest it is.

[CC's Desperados]

Great to see you added some lower end Fantasy players. Some of these will grow into High Stakes players via winnings or life path in the job market. The overall and missing part of the high stakes market in the NFBC and NFFC over the last few years is the depth of owners to separate the long time owners from each other in the overall events. Any new players options will be good for the overall game at all levels.

Congrats....I hope the conversion rate is high to next level of events. It will take some baby steps over time, but there will be an upside explosion at some point in the near future in the high stakes market in the season long games. Wouldn't it be great to see the NFBC main event make a push to a 1,000+ teams. It will be harder to win the overall, but I won't have to knock heads with 12 or more veteran players in each league.

[jdryan]

I will say one thing I hope it works out.. NFBC and the personal touch is awesome .. I hope that stays the same, The great live Events , Best Hotels , Good Draft software and maybe even draftroom on this site for auctions
best of luck and hope it all works out. Now back to work so I can pay for all these fantasy games!!

[fwicker]

When can we expect the “like”button?

[Greg Ambrosius]

We talk about the acquisition of the MFL 10s on today's podcast:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/hsfa

Enjoy.