Glenneration X wrote:Well deserved Greg, Tom. You two should be very proud. I'm proud to have been part of your contests. Great job and I'm sure you'll be up for a repeat next year.
I'm back on Wisconsin frozen soil today after spending the last three days in Las Vegas for the FSTA Conference. It was a great, great time and it was great to catch up with so many industry friends. This industry is RED-HOT right now and the conference proves that with a record attendance and speakers that included the likes of Maurice Jones-Drew. Very nice.
Anyway, I want to say how proud I am of this latest FSTA Award. A year ago at this time, Tom and I were unemployed and not even sure if we would be able to continue the live events model. We needed a partner to see the upside to this business and to back it long-term. We found the perfect company in STATS LLC and a year later we are here with an industry award for the Best Live Event. AWESOME!!
At times this seems like something we could do in our sleep, but there are other times when I look at two weekends of live events in five cities with hundreds of owners involved and I wonder how we do it. Getting all of these hotel contracts and guarantees and flights and facilitators and payouts, etc., has become a fulltime task. Oh, that and filling up all of the leagues as perfectly as possible. And now with the explosion of the online business, it's just compounded the duties. It really is a project and so being recognized as the best in this field is very rewarding. Thanks again to EVERYONE involved and that includes the players.
Over the years, we've won for the Best Fantasy Baseball Magazine, the Best Fantasy Football Magazine, the Big Business of the Year and now Best Live Events. We're constantly innovating and trying to stay among the best. We were a finalist for the Best Fantasy Sports Contest, but didn't win that honor. I guess that's the next one we'll strive for.
Honestly, we'd love to continue winning the Best Live Events award as we really do believe nobody does it better. Heck, we're currently the only contest that runs multi-city and multi-weekend live events. We do that because we know that not everyone can fly to Las Vegas to draft, so we're doing all we can to bring these events to your region of the country and get you involved with us. It's a big extra cost to do that, but it helps us recruit more players to our contests.
Anyway, THANKS to everyone who helped us stay alive in 2011 and even excel in 2011. I know the best is yet to come. We share this honor with all of you today.
