Perdew Says RotoHog Layoffs Part of Focus Shift
RotoHog CEO Kelly Perdew has confirmed that the company recently laid off somewhere “in the 20 percent range” of its staff, as previously reported right here.
Rather than a signal of financial trouble, though, Perdew told FSB.com that the decision came out of ”a few weeks of planning and figuring out what makes sense for our business.” He says that a stronger focus on the company’s business-to-business operations is what RotoHog has determined makes sense going forward.
“We were very much going down the path of two different business models,” Perdew said, referring to the split focus of delivering products to business customers as well as straight to consumers via RotoHog.com. He said that the singular focus offers the “highest likelihood of reaching profitability as soon as possible.”
The change means the company will focus more on building games and selling its technology to fantasy providers. The NBA, for example, will run two RotoHog-powered games through the league website this season. Less attention, in turn, will be paid to the company’s site, which hosts its own games. Perdew says that RotoHog will continue to deliver content through the site but will use the portal more as a technology testing ground on which to find out what works and what needs to change within its game technology.
Perdew said that there won’t be much of a focus on developing anything “overly creative” for RotoHog.com, which is why the layoffs came mostly in the area of content creation.
“It wasn’t a comment on performance,” he said.
Tags: fantasy basketball, fantasy sports, fantasy sports business, fantasy sports industry, kelly perdew, nba, rotohog
October 23rd, 2008 at 8:52 am
“The change means the company will focus more on building games and selling its technology to fantasy providers. The NBA, for example, will run two RotoHog-powered games through the league website this season. Less attention, in turn, will be paid to the company’s site, which hosts its own games.”
Does this shift in focus imply that the operating cost to run stand-alone games out-weigh the pursuit of independence and building a brand?? Interesting. Last year a very reliable source gave me the impression that RotoHog was looking to break free from the NBA once their contract agreement was up, but now it seems like they are going the other way. What does this mean for the smaller brands with products? Should we focus on selling our technology as well? Just when I thought fantasy offerings would spread beyond the major media companies like ESPN, Yahoo, and NBA.com, it looks like we are headed the opposite way.
October 23rd, 2008 at 4:55 pm
Is this a real shock? Look at his previous company proelite
October 24th, 2008 at 1:44 am
Perhaps, Scott Philp was wise.
“Joining the Play Hard team was one of the easiest career decisions that I’ve made,” said Philp.”
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Play-Hard-Sports-898404.html
October 25th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Grab a life raft. Nuff said…
http://my.nba.com/thread.jspa?threadID=5700021539&start=0
Mr Loomer ,, I hate to inform you but it’s still not working correctly.
The draft applet came up for my 30 team league today Oct 25th , however there were several problems.
1. for the first round, the first 15 teams in the draft order came up twice to draft in that round taking all 30 spots. which in turn put the remaining 15 teams in round 2 doubled up. This was setup in the applet like this for every round.
2. it wouldn’t draft any players whatsoever, even on autodraft. I reset the draft 4 times, problem 1 still existed and still no players drafted.
Now I had to back out of that and get a new date which now pushes my scoring into week 2 of the season, if it works on Tuesday night @ 6pm est.
Other problems still exist :
1. Pre Ranking players will only let you rank 20 players and no more
2. Setting the initial draft order will not let me set an order past 15 without major major issues.
I AM TIRED OF THIS , THIS IS THE WORST SITE I HAVE EVER SEEN FOR FANTASY BASKETBALL. AND I THOUGHT YAHOO WAS BAD……. THIS IS THE WORST !!!
And you want to be associated with this site ??
October 26th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
RotoHog refuses to pay their bills to my website, so I think “Rather than a signal of financial trouble” is a lie. I think this company is in big trouble.
October 29th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Bubble has bursted, putting my fantasy money on RotoHog to finish like Proelite…..downward spiral.
October 31st, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Yeah, the NBA UFC is the biggest piece of garbage ever. They still don’t have the standings working, the roster is screwy (you lose points by switching players), the live scoreboard doesn’t auto-update, drafts were majorly messed up, the list goes on. The list goes on and on, check out the nba.com fantasy forums to really see the problems. Rotohog destroyed NBA.com’s UFC.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
What the HELL ROTOHOG.
The UFC isn’t working. And it isn’t just a minor bug or what. It’s a complete failure. Did you hire a Bio Graduate to design your interface? Or is your programmer drunk?
You can’t add players, can’t see the schedule, can’t trade players, can’t get players off the waivers, draft sucks.. list goes on. Basically you can’t do anything!
What the hell.
YOU CUT 20% of your CREW and you lose NBA.COM/FANTASY (no one is ever gonna play there anymore). That’s a MAJOR loss.
Worth it? I don’t think so.
Your system sucks. After a promising year last year.
What happened?
This has got to be sad.
Reputation damaged can never be fixed again.
November 4th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Who is to blame for this deadpool? Their marketing department sucks