The Big Lead Gets the Last Laugh

Yep.

I don't agree with everything he did but I don't begrudge him anything. He found a niche, he worked it hard and it paid off. One of his former bosses is a friend of mine. The boss is old school like me (and spnited) and he raves about the guy.

Good for him. And, if the Tigers Woods saga and other celebrity issues in recent months have shown us anything, it is indeed that the public eats up all kinds of gossip (truth or not) about the rich and famous.

 

I am so dubious about the page hits and the real worth (and price he got), but I have no clue what the website is worth or how much traffic it really gets.

I do know Chris Russo, Evan Kamer and Clay Walker from from the company that bought the site, Fantasy Sports Ventures. Russo and Kamer used to be at the NFL. Russo ran the NFL's new media and publishing ventures until a few years ago and Kamer worked for him. Clay Walker used to do licensing for the marketing/licensing wing of the NFL Players Association. When they first launched, the idea was to buy websites related to fantasy sports, aggregate them into one network with one website, and try to sell advertising from the combined hits. At least that was my understanding of what they were trying to do. I guess they broadened that and have been buying and aggregating hundreds of sports-related websites, and not just focusing on the fantasy sports aspect. Those guys are loaded with the big corporate sponsorship contacts to try to sell that sort of thing, so I am curious about how well they have been doing. Is there really that much money to be made in buying up lots of small websites and blogs, aggregating them and selling advertising? If anyone knows that business and is familiar with how their company has done, I am really interested.

Russo has a reputation as a pretty sharp guy and a tough negotiator, so if Macintyre really got seven figures, his site was worth that and then some. I really don't get it. I find the site so uninteresting and focused on things I don't care about (except when he's been clownishly wrong when he's been fooled with wrong info, and then I pay attention for the unintentional comedy factor.). But someone is going to that site a lot, so it's not for me to get, I guess. Good for him.

 

Machine, Russo and those guys are REALLY well connected. I remember Chris and Clay being on Sports Business Journal's Forty under 40 list when they were still with the NFL and NFLPA. And they both sort of basked in the limelight of that world. I am sure they had have that kind of money for acquisitions, because I am positive that when they decided to head out and start their own company they were able to raise a boat load of venture capital money -- they started the company in 2005 or 2006, while money was still flowing, and they (particularly Russo) were really well respected in that sports marketing world. Chris developed hundreds of millions of dollars of deals in online rights and sponsorships when he was with the NFL. Everything from starting a bidding war to run NFL.com and deals for sponsorships to a wireless deal with Sprint. Clay saw how big a business fantasy football was going to be pretty early on and made the NFL Players a mint by developing the licensing program that sold the players names for the games everyone is playing on Yahoo! and other fantasy sites. When they went out on their own, they had no problem raising money. The question isn't whether they have the money, it's whether whatever investments they have been making have been (or are going to) pay off. I am as curious as you are.

 

While I do like Jason a lot and am happy for him, I can't resist. He knows it is in good fun:



FUCKIN' AYYYYY! Time for a new cell banana! Maybe a banana droid or a BananaBerry?
HELL YEAH!

 

Do they make ibananas?

 

ibananapads, too.

Before I stopped working it because I had barely more subscribers than Newsday, my Web site showed a value of 300.45. Should have stuck it out a little longer.