Kelly Perdew

‘Apprentice’ champion turned fantasy sports website into major player by adjusting the game plan.

By Alfred Lee, LA Business Journal link: Game Changer Story with Photos

Monday, June 21, 2010

Today, RotoHog hardly bears a resemblance to the fantasy sports website Kelly Perdew took the reins of in June 2008.

The Westchester company has recently made a name for itself as a creator of fantasy games for other businesses, including Sporting News, NASCAR and Us Weekly. But it was initially launched in 2006 as a stand-alone game site that could compete directly with fantasy sports giants like ESPN and Yahoo Sports.

The 43-year-old Perdew was brought on as the company’s new chief executive two years ago with one main objective: to make it profitable. His resume included running companies such as amateur sports website Eteamz.com, but he’s perhaps best known as the winner of season two of the NBC reality television show “The Apprentice.” He beat other contestants for the chance to work for Donald Trump under a 14-month contract.

Almost immediately after arriving at RotoHog, he put into motion a complete transformation of the company’s strategy.

“I don’t think a lot of people could have pulled it off,” said Kent Smetters, who co-founded the company with his partner David Wu. “Kelly evolved the model into a different kind of company.”

Rotohog.com went live in early 2007 offering fantasy leagues for the National Football League, Major League Baseball and other sports with a twist. To make the leagues more competitive and protect against bad trades among contestants, each player was valued in a unique stock exchange.

However, despite raising about $9 million, the site struggled for nearly two years. The problem? Perdew saw that bigger competitors such as ESPN had a captive audience by virtue of their news content, whereas at the end of the football or baseball season, RotoHog’s users left the site.

“They had spent a significant amount of money to drive eyeballs to the website,” Perdew said, “but there was no path to profitability.”

However, Perdew knew that ESPN and other competitors such as Fox Sports were running their games on older computer platforms that would likely need significant upgrades in a few years. He saw an opportunity for the company to reposition itself from a fantasy sports website to a games provider for other brands, moving from a consumer model to a business-to-business model.

“So I said, OK, we should become a platform that could basically replace their entire back end,” he recalled.

Not only that, Perdew moved for the company to expand its games beyond sports to broaden its appeal to other industries that want to use online games to interact with their customers.

After selling RotoHog’s board on the idea, Perdew had the company hunker down for a year while it developed a new Internet platform that could serve as the template for scores of websites.

Within the first three months, he had let go of 25 of the company’s 40 employees, many of whom had been hired to build content for a website that was no longer the focus. But the head count went back up to about 30 as he hired a new team of software developers.

“Don’t mention that time to any of the guys here,” he said, referring to the turmoil.

In September 2009, after more than a year of development, RotoHog launched its new platform. In the 9 months since, it’s developed 37 games for other companies, including those in the entertainment, consumer brands and gaming industries.

Online future

Among the games are one developed for ABC reality television show “The Bachelor,” which features trivia questions and gives out sponsored prizes, encouraging users to go back and watch old episodes online to get the answers. Another for Us Weekly allows fans to guess who will be featured in the magazine.

“I think more brands and more webites are looking at different ways to engage readers, and gaming for a certain demographic is interesting,” said Romina Rosado, executive producer of UsMagazine.com.

The company has also been working on a fantasy game on Facebook for newly launched Bloomberg Sports, which sells sports analysis to fans and fantasy players. The game will challenge users to pick successful hitters and will go live by the end of June.

Bill Squadron, the head of Bloomberg Sports, said the idea behind the game was to encourage users to buy the company’s baseball analytics for a leg up on the competition.

“Hopefully that’ll both let them know about it and drive sales of that product, and at the end of the day that’s the real goal we have,” he said. “You’re going to see a big number of major brands experimenting with this in different ways.”

RotoHog hasn’t yet reached profitability, but Perdew said the company is “this close.” Competitors such as Fanball also provide fantasy games for other companies, but Perdew claims no other providers cut across as many industries.

Another edge appears to be Perdew himself. He said the recognition from being on “The Apprentice” has helped the company get exposure through media coverage and speaking engagements. It’s even helped get meetings with potential investors.

“We’re pretty much able to get to anybody we need to talk to about stuff,” he said. “It’s a nice icebreaker for discussions. People are always asking me what’s up with Donald’s hair. I never answer that question.”

RotoHog

FOUNDED: 2006

HEADQUARTERS: Westchester

CORE BUSINESS: Creates and manages online games for varied clients.

EMPLOYEES: 30 (up from 15 in 2008)

GOAL: Profitability.

THE NUMBERS: More than $1 million in revenue in the last 12 months.

I hope this note finds you well. It has been some time since we updated you on the progress we are making with RotoHog and our new partners and applications, and with three of our newest partners launching games two in last two weeks for World Cup and one in the very near future for baseball, we wanted to provide you with an update on our continued progress as one of the world’s fastest growing and most efficient developers of white label games for high level media properties both in sports and entertainment.

When I last wrote, we had just launched two very successful games in the entertainment field, one with US Weekly (Season 2 is starting soon: http://bit.ly/bQnAc1) and the other for “The Bachelor.” Those games have been very successful as brand extensions both for the magazine and for the reality show series, and they have led to another series of games that will be announced in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

However as you know our biggest focus has been in the sports world. Our continued work in producing games for NASCAR.com, Pro Football Weekly, Turner Digital and NBA.com has led to more work in the space, with the afore mentioned new partners. In the last few weeks we have been able to secure a deal to develop a Facebook game for BloombergSports, the recently launched consumer arm of one of the world’s most successful business data analysis brands. This new game, which will be launched in the coming weeks, will take Bloomberg’s new consumer baseball analysis product and give all the data a new fan-friendly platform that can be used by millions of followers and fans of baseball on Facebook. It will be a fun and very easy application that we think will expose this high functioning and very elaborate product BloombergSports has created to a new, wider level of engaged baseball consumer, and we are very proud to be working with them on the project.

Our other two new developments are for the coming World Cup. The first is another Facebook application, this one with Sports Illustrated allows fans to handicap their favorite countries throughout the World Cup draw, giving a new legion of digital soccer fans the ability to enjoy the world’s largest sports spectacle online like never before. You can play it here: http://bit.ly/91NADw.

Our second World Cup application is on a more global level with hi5, the largest social entertainment site for games in the world. We launched “The World Futbol Challenge” for hi5’s 50 million global users. The game, which is featured on hi5.com leading into the start of World Cup, is a confidence “pick em’ game, which gives the user the ability to earn added points in a pari-mutuel-like pool for picks they feel are the real value. Make your own picks here: http://bit.ly/bCR7La. Both these games for our two new partners continue to support our plan of global expansion for all of our games.

Soccer is the fastest-growing sport outside the United States in the fantasy space, and by working with these two premier brands to build their games, we are confident that our position on a global basis will be just as strong as we currently are domestically. When the world’s media companies look to build games, Rotohog will be their partner of choice.

Again these are just some of the new projects we are undertaking as the spring continues along. We are having another solid quarter in challenging times, and are looking forward to continued expansion both in sports and entertainment as the year plays out.

As always, thanks for your support and input, it is invaluable as we grow our business and it is very much welcomed. If there is anything we can assist with or questions we can answer please do not hesitate to ask.

Regards,

Kelly

Hello Friends and Colleagues:

March is perhaps the most interesting time of year for sports and entertainment fans in general, as virtually every sport or area of entertainment is engaging its audience at some point. From the NFL Combine to the start of baseball, as well as March Madness, NASCAR and soccer in the sports world to the Academy Awards in entertainment, there is perhaps no busier or more exciting month on the calendar. For all of us at RotoHog, the levels of fan interest and engagement at this time of year are never higher, and all the projects we are now involved with are reflective of both what the consumers are looking for and where we have grown as a company in the sports and entertainment space. Here are some great examples of all the fan engagement areas we are touching in such a busy month:

BASEBALL. In baseball, spring training is now in full bloom, which means fantasy baseball is now upon us. Our crowd favorite Stock Exchange Baseball game is available for those of you that like to “play the market” and we have launched our first ever League Manager Fantasy Baseball game here: http://www.rotohog.com/corporate/baseball/ League Manager 2010 offers traditional commissioner style draft and trade products to the fantasy enthusiast at a reduced price and we also offer our first ever Salary Cap Baseball game on RotoHog. All games include cash competitions!

BASKETBALL. In college and NBA hoops, we launched the March Madness NCAA bracket application for MySpace (Go Wildcats!); and we continue to run the very popular NBA Stock Exchange with our partner Turner Sports.

NASCAR. As NASCAR continues to rev around the country, our recently launched NASCAR Stock Exchange game is doing well on Turner’s NASCAR.com platform.

I’m proud to say our team has created, developed and launched 26 games on our new platform since the last football season.

ENTERTAINMENT. We continue our expansion into the entertainment vertical with the March 2nd launch of the Us Weekly Celebrity Fantasy League. The game challenges user knowledge of which celebs will be making or breaking news. To get in on the action, users create a team of 25 celebrities they think will be in the news the most during a given week. Each week players put 10 stars from their team that they think will make the magazine and be featured on UsMagazine.com on the Red Carpet, while the other 15 hang out in your Dressing Room.

Those are just the latest projects on top of all the other work we are doing building and implementing games and applications for our partners around the world. With all this great work and expansion across so many platforms, we have added some new members to our team, including Jeff Daniel, who recently joined us after helping ESPN and FOX Digital build their fantasy platforms. Jeff’s addition gives us another experienced leader who can help us continue to manage and expand all the work we are doing with such a wide array of partners.

As we have said in the past and it continues to be true, we are still just getting started. A recent piece in the Sports Business Journal pointed to the continued growth of casual gaming, an area in which we will be expanding over the next few months. The World Cup and other international events will provide us with some great opportunities to show the versatility of our platform, and we are looking forward to also expanding even more into the entertainment space. We have seen interest growing for games like we are running for Us Weekly and The Rose Ceremony game we just finished with our TV Network partner.

Yes, March is a very crowded and exciting month for the sports and entertainment fan, and we share that excitement from a business perspective. Our recent work has again shown that our model is working and growing, and we know that will continue with more exciting news and new partners in the coming months.

As always thanks for your time and support, and let us know what else we can do to assist you. Enjoy the games!

Regards,

Kelly

Kelly Perdew
CEO, RotoHog.com

CBS, Rotohog Win Accuracy Awards

CBS Sports set forth the most accurate football player rankings in 2009, while Rotohog was tops in stat projections for both baseball and football.

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Sara Holladay, the Fantasy Football Librarian, and Donnie Campbell of
TheMostCredible.com handed out those awards Wednesday at the Fantasy Sports Trade Association conference.

CBS topped a field of 48 participants — more than double the entries from 2008 — in the second season of the FSTA’s partnership on the Accuracy Challenge. Fantazzle took home last year’s award.

Rotohog’s wins each came in new categories.

Although the competition is obviously done at this point, Holladay and Campbell welcomed anyone who wasn’t included to submit their 2009 preseason rankings and/or projections now to see how they stacked up.

Source: FantasySportsBusines.com

Check out the NBA Stock Exchange Game on NBA.com.

July 1, 2009

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Approximately two months ago I sent along a first quarter “progress report” letter to keep everyone up to date with all the new developments at RotoHog, as we expanded our partnerships and secured the necessary additional funding we would need to take the business to a new level. At the end of the letter I mentioned that more good news was coming, and today I wanted to pass along the latest advances we have made in the business as we continue to make the company into the most innovative fantasy sports gaming developer for major brands and professional sports entities.

Our leadership position in this very competitive marketplace is expanding almost daily. Just in the last few weeks we have been able to announce:

• A landmark partnership with The Sporting News, where RotoHog will build, activate and market all online fantasy games for one of the most established online properties and storied names in sports and entertainment publishing. http://tinyurl.com/necqpo

• A partnership with Chris Russo and the folks at Fantasy Sports Ventures, the fastest-growing independent site on the web, to build games for FSV’s extensive list of sites and ever-evolving business partners, brands and sponsors. http://tinyurl.com/n2kkju

• A strategic partnership with online news and content provider Operation Sports to produce, manage and market their 2009 Stock Exchange Football Game. Operation Sports is a leading news and content provider focused on the sports video game industry with over 100,000 members. http://tinyurl.com/cszvzh

These new deals, in addition to our existing partnerships with the NBA, Turner Sports, FOX en Espanol, Pro Football Weekly, the AVP and others, give us the widest range of strategic partnerships to develop and build games in the industry today, and the best part is we are just beginning to establish our brand.

In the next few months we expect to continue to grow partnerships with additional media entities around the globe, as we shape RotoHog into the ultimate destination for brands who want to provide “best in class” and innovative gaming applications to their loyal subscribers ubiquitously on their sites, mobile, and social media channels.

Once again, we want to thank you for your support and interest, and as always, if there is anything we can help you with, please let us know.

And please come play our famous Stock Exchange Football Game here http://tinyurl.com/nhfw96.

Regards,

Kelly Perdew
President & CEO, RotoHog

By ERIC FISHER
Staff writer
Published June 08, 2009 : Page 27

See full article here.

Fantasy outfit RotoHog has struck a multiyear deal with Sporting News to power the media outlet’s suite of fantasy games.
Beginning with fantasy football this fall, Los Angeles-based RotoHog will develop and operate a set of free and fee-based fantasy games under the Sporting News brand for football, baseball, golf, hockey and motorsports. Of particular note is how the pact aims to extend Sporting News’ fantasy reach into social media and mobile networks, using technologies that allow assets from the games to be easily distributed from SportingNews.com onto platforms such as Facebook and the iPhone.

“In order to take our games to the next level, we wanted to align with somebody intensely focused on the space, was committed to a strong [business-to-business] solution, and wasn’t satisfied with developing the same old off-the-shelf products,” said Jeff Gerttula, vice president and general manager for online at Sporting News.

For RotoHog, the deal extends a run of activity this year that includes a somewhat similar deal with Fox Sports en Español, an alignment with ticketing outfit RazorGator, and the closing of a $2 million round of Series B venture capital funding. “This is a very strong testament to what we’re doing and the platform we’ve developed,” said Kelly Perdew, RotoHog chief executive. “We’re very excited to be partnering with an iconic brand like this and are pleased to be able to have good things like this happening in this economy.”

You can put this Sports Market Ticker(TM) anywhere! Just click “Settings” on the Ticker!

Here is Sean Koerner’s (one of RotoHog’s top fantasy analysts) view of Manny’s impact on fantasy players as a result of his 50-game suspension:

Players who own Manny:

Exchange/Salary Cap – pretty simple…you are going to want to drop him immediately!

H2H league – Don’t Panic. Place Manny onto your bench and don’t take him off until he returns on July 3rd. Hopefully your bench has enough depth where you can place a respectable OF in place of him, if not go scour the list of Free Agent Outfielders and add the best one available. Make sure you take a deep breath before looking at any of the trade offers you may get for Manny, the other owners in your league will be testing you to see just how low cheap you are willing to give him up right now. You are going to have to imitate Manny’s agent Scott Boras and be firm with the other owners and demonstrate that you feel that Manny still has a ton of value. Yes, he will be out for almost 8 weeks, but he will be back in time to produce for your team in the 2nd half of the season and in the playoffs. Speaking of the playoffs, here are a couple of scenarios to consider:

- If the season were to end today and your team were to make the playoffs; go ahead and keep Manny, be patient. Remember that he is suspended (and not injured), so when he returns he will most likely pick up where he left off and help you down the line in the playoffs when it matters most. If may start to slightly slip in the standings, but if you fear your playoff chances are getting more and more grim, you may need to sacrifice Manny to get a quick upgrade for that OF slot.

- If the season were to end today and your team would be out of playoff contention; go ahead and start to get a feel for who you can get for him. Maybe start with players like Adam Dunn (Was - OF) or Ryan Ludwick (STL - OF) and work your way down. It is very important to make it to the playoffs, so you must do everything and anything possible to get there, but it is also important to not give up too much!

Points League – Manny will not be producing any points for the next 8 weeks, so if you don’t have enough depth to sustain that kind of blow, then you might want to consider trading him away. It is important to get a player that would have enough value to start every single day for the rest of the season because that is what you might be missing with Manny being out. A player like Vernon Wells (Tor – OF) or Hunter Pence (Hou – OF) might be the range you can offer Manny for straight up.

Players who don’t own Manny:

-Try to offer ‘buy low’ trades to Manny owners immediately to try to catch them making a panic move. If you can afford to have Manny on your bench, propose straight-up trades for Manny with players playing way over their heads right now (such as Nick Swisher or Adam Lind) and see if you can snag him at a cheap price.

How Manny’s injury affects his teammates:

Orlando Hudson (4th in the NL in runs) will see a decrease in his run production and Andre Either (3rd in the NL in RBI’s) will see a decrease in RBI production. Therefore those 2 players take the biggest hit, but nothing to panic about. As far as Dodger pitchers such as Chad Billingsley and Clayton Kershaw go…yes they will miss Manny’s offensive production, but they will have a better defense behind them without ‘Manny Being Manny’ on the field and can only help their ratios such as ERA and WHIP (walks + hits / innings pitched).

Juan Pierre receives the biggest boost with Manny’s suspension and should be the favorite to fill in for him in LF. Owners who are desperate for steals should pick him up immediately.

April 22, 2009

ROTOHOG, RAZORGATOR FORM PARTNERSHIP FOR 2009 BASEBALL SEASON

One of America’s leading media distribution companies adds leading secondary ticket provider as exclusive partner for 2009

LOS ANGELES (April 22, 2009) – RotoHog, the leading fantasy sports platform provider, today announced an exclusive partnership with RazorGator for the 2009 Baseball season. The partnership will give RotoHog’s Fantasy baseball participants access to RazorGator’s exclusive ticket inventory for live events, as well as other merchandising and promotional opportunities.

“This partnership with RazorGator gives both RotoHog.com subscribers and our baseball platform partners tremendous added value for 2009,” said Kelly Perdew, CEO of RotoHog. “As one of the premier secondary ticketing sites in the marketplace, RazorGator will give our fantasy baseball players direct access to tickets and other opportunities designed to enhance their online gaming experience beyond fantasy play. They are the perfect partner as we find new ways to expand the gaming experience for all involved.”

“We are always looking for the best in class in partners to reach the avid fan, and RotoHog’s games and their partners are a great fit for us,” said Scott Roback, Vice President of Business Development for RazorGator. “This deal will give all subscribers the opportunity to get access to a very unique list of products and services, tailored to their interests, and we think will be very well received by all those playing Rotohog’s games.”

Fans playing fantasy baseball on RotoHog.com will have access to a co-branded ticket sale website. RotoHog will be able to provide its fantasy sports partners with the option to have a fully-integrated, customized ticket sale component into their white label games. This will provide RotoHog’s partners with an additional revenue stream within the games beyond advertising, sponsorships and premium in-game revenue.

RazorGator’s partnership with RotoHog aligns the industry leader in Hard-To-Get® tickets for sold-out sports and entertainment events worldwide with die-hard sports fans which make up a core section of RazorGator’s audience. The arrangement is another in a long line of strategic distribution partnerships cemented by RazorGator following similar associations with Amazon, Yahoo!, Fox Sports.com, CBSsports.com, MSN and more. Also, through its subsidiary PrimeSport, the global leader in hard-to-get event packages and corporate hospitality, it has official partnerships with professional sports teams and organizing committees. PrimeSport counts the NCAA®, Tournament of Roses® Committee, UFC and several NFL teams among its partners.

About RotoHog
RotoHog is the leading fantasy sports platform provider, with partners including NBA.com, Turner Digital, Pro Football Weekly, AVP, Fox Español, RazorGator, GoDaddy, and LG Electronics. RotoHog is privately held, and based in Los Angeles. Investors include Allen & Co, DFJ DragonFund, Mission Ventures and Sports Capital Partners Worldwide. For more information on RotoHog, please visit www.RotoHog.com/corporate.

About RazorGator
RazorGator is the leader in Hard-To-Get® tickets for sports and entertainment events worldwide. RazorGator Interactive Group, which operates RazorGator, PrimeSport, and TicketOS, is a privately-held company headquartered in Los Angeles, California, with offices in Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix, and India. Official partnerships with professional sports organizations include several NFL teams, the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship Tournament, NCAA Men’s Final Four, NCAA Women’s Final Four®, NCAA Men’s College World Series®, NCAA Men’s Frozen Four®, Rose Bowl®, and UFC®. For more information, visit www.razorgator.com or call 1-800-542-4466.

Media Contact:

Joe Favorito
RotoHog
917-566-8345
jfavorito@rotohog.com