Name: John Diver (pronounced like “river”, not “diver”)
Nickname: “Div”
Job title: Director of Product Development, ESPN Fantasy Games
Full-time in fantasy: 15 years
Age: 40
Education: Washington ‘92 (English)
Family status: Married two kids (Ellie 6, Gavin 4)
Favorite fantasy sport to play: ESPN Fantasy Football
Favorite sport to watch: College Football
Favorite team (any sport): Washington Huskies
All-time favorite athlete: John McEnroe
Years playing fantasy: 20

I got my start in the fantasy industry when: Early in 1996 a friend who was working for a Paul Allen startup (Starwave) over the lake in Bellevue called and said they were looking to build online fantasy games. My interview consisted of showing the rules pages and spreadsheets from the “paper” leagues I’d been running. They explained how live stats, roster locking, standings, etc., could all be automated and managed real-time over the Web. I was hired and started the same day, writing the rules for what would be ESPN’s first fantasy baseball game.

Since then, my fantasy résumé includes: Almost every possible role other than writing software code. In all I’ve contributed to the launch of over 300 fantasy games titles for ESPN and probably won as many leagues. Here are the official job titles I’ve held:

Senior Director, Product Development - Digital Media
Director, Fantasy Games
Production Manager, Fantasy Games & Go Communities
Product Manager, Fantasy Games
Associate Producer, Starwave League Sites
Associate Editor, ESPNet SportsZone

Three questions

1. What were ESPN’s plans for and expectations of the fantasy games unit at the start back in 1996?

From the business side back then it was primarily about subscription revenue. As such our first task was to build a unique player-ownership fantasy game engine that would support the four major sports in a pay-to-play model. Our first year of fantasy baseball (1996) we had just over 7,000 teams join with an average price point of about $20. Fantasy football brought in about 15,000, the next season of baseball matched that and we created a nice little revenue stream for ESPN.

When the games started drawing sponsorship interest, we diversified and built “minigame” engines, i.e. “pick’em,” “challenge” and “bracket.” The first of such games was the salary-based Baseball Challenge 1997, and our strategy was to get users first into the free games then upsell and convert them to play the full-season pay games. Around 1998, the TV producers started to see the upside in creating games to help drive promotion/ratings for their products, and we extended the engines to work for such events as The ESPYs, Summer/Winter XGames and NFL Draft. By 2000 we were releasing over 25 game titles per year.

2. At what point did ESPN decide to get into offering commissioner-based games? What was the logic in making the games free to play?

The initial development for commissioner games started soon after we moved the group back East in 2002. At this time all our fantasy games were “standard,” in that everyone played with a fixed rules set and we played commissioner (ruling on protested trades, etc.). Our two main competitors — SportsLine and Yahoo — both offered users the ability to customize their league settings, so we started development of our own “League Manager” platform. At first we took the SportsLine model of charging on a per-league basis and launched Fantasy Football League Manager in 2003. However, after a couple of (difficult) years with little growth we changed direction and decided our best long-term strategy would be to offer both standard and custom leagues totally free of charge. SportsLine was charging about $120/league and Yahoo was still charging about $10/user for live stats, and we figured by going free with our marketing reach and brand name we would eventually win the never-ending battle for market share. The first year under this free model, our fantasy football unique users increased over 1,200%, and each year since over 25%.

3. What’s different about developing and producing fantasy games today from 1996? What hasn’t changed?

On the product side, the biggest difference is definitely scale. In the mid ’90s, we only had about 100,000 users playing fantasy football. By 2009, that number had increased to more than 3 million. As such we needed to re-configure our data models and hardware to match the load. Another thing that’s changed — especially over the last 3-5 years — is the acceptance of fantasy as a viable subject matter for TV content. Back in the ’90s ESPN never would’ve thought of producing an hour-long TV show on Sunday mornings dedicated exclusively to fantasy football.

On the “what hasn’t changed” side, fantasy football is still king. Fantasy football traffic rolled up is about equal to all our other games combined. Also, to this day, the single most-important factor in any fantasy product’s success is stability — especially when it comes time to do online live drafts and having accurate real-time stats on NFL Sunday’s. We’ve spent countless days/months/years working to ensure the games work to the level of quality users expect from an ESPN product.

Bonus: How long did it take before ESPN allowed fantasy guys to eat in that cafeteria we always see on the Sportscenter commercials?

Well really about 7 years, since the entire fantasy group was based in Seattle until one day in 2001 when we were told our operation was moving east to Bristol, Conn. Since then we’ve been allowed into the café where on any given day you’ll find yourself in the sandwich line with the likes of Hannah Storm, Bob Ley, Karl Ravech, Scott Van Pelt, Jamal Mashburn, Jalen Rose, etc. Every month or so you’ll see the Wieden+Kennedy folks filming a commercial for the This is SportsCenter campaign. And every now and then you’ll even see some random college mascot roaming the halls.

Name: Brandon Funston
Nickname: The Gamer — the moniker used for several years at ESPN (online and magazine)
Job title(s): I manage the editorial group of Yahoo! Sports Fantasy
Full-time in fantasy? Full-time in fantasy for 13 years
Age: 39
Education: Attended Western Washington University
Family status: Married (Diana - wife) with 2 children - girl (Genesi — 6 years old) and boy (Jonas — 3 years old)
Favorite fantasy sport to play: Football
Favorite sport to watch: Football
Favorite sport to play: Basketball
Favorite team (any sport): Seattle Mariners
All-time favorite athlete: Gus Williams, Seattle Supersonics
Years playing fantasy: 26 years

I got my start in the fantasy industry when: I was 13 years old when my friend’s priest hired us to co-manage his fantasy baseball team for the sum of $100 apiece. He would come out on the balcony of his church living quarters and float dollar bills down to us so we could run off and buy research materials.

Since then, my fantasy résumé includes: I started my profession on a more permanent basis in 1996 as one of the first few hired on at ESPN Fantasy Games. I worked for ESPN for 9 years, spending several years managing the fantasy sports content group and the final two years playing a more prominent role as an on-air/online analyst. I also contributed a few years as a regular fantasy columnist for ESPN the Magazine.

I made the move to Yahoo! in 2004, again taking on the role of managing the fantasy content group. This is the (ever-expanding) role in which I reside presently.

Three questions

1. What was the demand for and treatment of fantasy content like back when you first joined ESPN? How quickly did you see things start to grow?

I think insatiable has always been the best way to describe the thirst for fantasy content, then and now. There used to be very few places you could look for an “expert” take online, but the industry has grown, as has the means by which opinion can be flaunted by anyone and everyone.

From a professional presentation point of view, I know that fantasy content, at least at places like ESPN and Yahoo!, has evolved to the point where it’s nearing the same level of internal editorial scrutiny as that of its traditional sports media components. As far as growth, it seemed steady for several years after I began in the industry, but it seems to have skyrocketed, in terms of industry breadth, in the past few years.

2. What brought you over to Yahoo! Sports, and how did your role differ from what you did at ESPN?

Frankly, I had a very good thing going at ESPN, but I spent the final couple years of my tenure there in Bristol, Conn. And the reputation of life in that Northeastern town is deserved. Admittedly, I’m a West Coast kind of guy — born and raised in the moderate, albeit rainy, northwest corner of the country. While in Connecticut, we lived in a classically beautiful New England town of West Hartford, but that didn’t overcome my desire to be back on the West Coast — closer to the family, friends and way of life I was accustomed to. It was tough to leave the ego-boost that comes from getting to rub elbows with sports celebrities on a daily basis in the halls of the Bristol campus, but after two years, my vanity had run its course. And Yahoo!, another monolith in the fantasy industry, offered me a great opportunity to get back to “my” side of the country without having to take a professional step down to get there. I made the move with no regrets, and it’s the same six years later.

3. How do you balance the various sports that you cover, and how does user feedback break down among them?

I have a love for the big three: football, baseball and basketball. But because of just the massive audience that football brings to the table, it garners the majority of my focus. So, while I have a passion for fantasy hoops, I have to slight it in terms of my personal content contributions to the site because its season comes midway through the football season, a time at which I have literally no extra time to give. Baseball gets a little more love from me because it begins as basketball ends and football is still in hibernation. But, with all things — be it managing writers, contributing my own content, or managing the relationship of our content partners — it’s just a matter of prioritizing. That said, I work from home, and the gravitational pull of an office only steps away from my bed can have me at my computer at all hours of the day.

As far as the breakdown of feedback goes, I think it’s proportionate to the audience of that sport. In any fantasy sport, I think there is a somewhat similarly sized (percentage-wise) subset of that participation group that is passionate to the point of actively engaging in message boards and other modes of feedback.

Oops. Guess I should have checked the schedule rather than trying to jump on posting.

Make that five awards for ESPN on the first day, with the company taking the Fantasy Sports Trade Association plaque for Best Ad (print or online).

Additionally, after a one-year hiatus, CBSSports.com once again took the award for best commissioner product. MyFantasyLeague.com grabbed the honor in 2009, but CBS owned the category every year prior to that.

Thus ended the first day of FSTA industry awards — for real.

ESPN started the Fantasy Sports Trade Association conference by winning nearly half of the nine awards handed out.

The “Worldwide Leader” won Industry Recognition awards for Best Online Draft-Style Contest, Best Video Podcast, Best Fantasy Sports Broadcast and Unique Contest for its Streak for the Cash game. That marks a solid jump from the one award that ESPN garnered a year ago.

The other five plaques handed out on Tuesday went to …

– CBS Sports, Best Online Draft Room

– Head2Head Sports, Best Online Salary-Cap Contest

– Fantasy Sports Channel/BlogTalkRadio, Best Audio Podcast

– WCOFF (Gridiron Sports), Best High-Stakes Event

– Baseball HQ’s First Pitch Arizona, Best Live Event