Thirty years ago this year I came up with an idea for a fantasy sports news website, recruited two friends and soon launched what became RotoWire.com. A few months later I wrote the first ever player news note. This week I wrote my 72,270th update - and my last. My time at RotoWire has ended.
It was an amazing run that began with almost no real-time information for fantasy sports and about 3 million fantasy players, to an industry that has over 250 million fantasy enthusiasts world wide and almost instantaneous information for fantasy players. RotoWire was lucky to play a big role in that evolution and I'm immensely proud of all we accomplished along the way.
Foremost I'd like to thank my co-founders Herb Ilk and Jeff Erickson, along with later business partners Tim Schuler and Chris Liss. And to the many, many RotoWire employees, freelancers and contributors. We had such an amazing group of people to work with over the years.
I joke that I largely built the company on the back of the FSGA (then FSTA) but it's pretty much true. Many thanks to industry colleagues and friends who forged long-lasting business relationships with RotoWire, just gave me a good tip or moment of support.
There are too many people to thank to name, but this is my effort to thank as many as possible. If I forgot someone, please let me know.
Most of all, I'd like to thank all the readers, subscribers and fans of RotoWire. We were just fantasy sports enthusiasts who wanted to find ways to win our own leagues and thereby help the hobby and community above all else. If we did that we figured we could make some money along the way.
Despite leaving RotoWire, I plan to stay involved in the fantasy sports industry. I plan to remain on the FSGA board and continue to lead their Government Affairs efforts. I'm not retiring. So if you have ideas on what I should do next, please reach out.
The idea for RotoNews was hatched at some point in 1996 after conversations with Herb Ilk and Jeff Erickson. Herb wanted to jump on the internet web site wave and start a business. We had a bunch of bad ideas, but I finally came up with the idea of doing for fantasy sports what I did for my day job as a newswire reporter for Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal. We first launched a web site without a domain name in January 1997 and posted a few articles with previews for the AL and NL. Then we debuted our main idea, a player newswire with a searchable database of player news. On February 16, 1997, the first player news note was written.
Many thanks to Mike Rhodes for helping us debut. In 1998, RotoNews debuted the first free online commissioner service. RotoNews at one point in 2000 had about 65% of all online managed leagues. Thanks to Dave Sherrin in his help to build the service as our only friend who really knew how to program a computer.
More to come ....