MFL Continues to Grow User Base Via Acquisitions
On Wednesday, MyFantasyLeague.com announced the acquisition of fantasy football league-management site HomeGrownSports.com, a move that MFL owner Mike Hall said is part of a plan to add about 500 leagues to his site’s universe this year.
It was the latest in a series of purchases over the past couple of years that has sought to grow the customer base amid what Hall sees as a shrinking market of hosts.
“We’ve seen a lot of consolidation in the league management space, and we anticipate even more in the near future, so we hope to continue to be an active part of that,” he told FSB.com. “We’ve been actively pursuing other fantasy football league management companies for acquisition over the past couple of years. We’ll continue to seek out other smaller league management companies where possible.”
Home Grown Sports lived for 12 years, and Hall expects that about 90 percent of its existing leagues will be transitioned to the MFL platform. This conversion rate would be in line with what followed the 2008 acquisition of StatsWorld, which joined deals with MyFantasyFootball.com and RotoWire to deliver 1,500 leagues to MFL that year.
“It definitely adds to our customer base, which is admittedly our main goal with these acquisitions,” Hall said. “But we also feel strongly that we are filling a void for these customers that were otherwise going to have to find their own replacement service.”
Hall said his company had been working with Home Grown since March to transition the leagues. Visitors to the HomeGrownSports.com domain are now redirected to a MyFantasyLeague page with an open letter from Home Grown owner John Garber. In it, he explains that converted users will be able to renew their leagues in 2010 for $45 — the same price as their old site, $25 less than MFL’s earliest rate and half the price of the latest annual signup level. After 2010, leagues will presumably move to the regular MyFantasyLeague rates.
The biggest benefit for users who make the switch figures to be the transfer of full league history, an aspect that would generate some concern for folks who have been with a particular site for many years. Hall said this tends to be a key part of each acquisition and transition.
“Some customers have been with HomeGrownSports.com for 10 years, and we were able to keep their historical records for all of those past seasons since our system allows customers to track their complete league history all the way back to 1990,” he said
No financial terms have been released from what Hall said was a private transaction.
Tags: acquisition, fantasy football, fantasy sports, fantasy sports business, fantasy sports industry, home grown sports, league management, mike hall, myfantasyleague
