Business Profile: FSWA
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
Organization: Fantasy Sports Writers Association
Launch date: 2004
The close of the NFL season ends the busiest portion of the calendar for many around the fantasy sports industry, but it opens the most hectic stretch for the FSWA. Board members are working feverishly to process entries for the association’s fifth annual writer awards, which will be given out later this month. Even so, President Mike Beacom — who succeeds Ryan Houston and Kirk Bouyelas in that position — managed to find time to sit down and answer some questions for FSB.com.
1) What was the motivation for the formation of the FSWA?
Ryan Houston and Kirk Bouyelas — both of Fantasy Asylum at the time — started the effort with Emil Kadlec and Bob Harris of Fantasy Sports Publications. The group felt that there was nothing that recognized writing in the industry. There are so many writers, and there wasn’t anybody to represent them. It’s been our mission to recognize excellence in fantasy writing ever since.
2) How did you enter the picture?
I stumbled upon the site in the early days in 2004 and noticed that there was no chairman, so I offered to serve in that capacity. We had several meetings, got things organized and before long we had a major sponsorship in place (a Ford fantasy contest).
3) Why is it important to represent fantasy writers?
Writers are the little guys in the industry. They don’t do it to make money. They do it because they love fantasy, and because most of them love to write. We’re a community, and we try to give a little bit extra to the writers. We’re trying to build a place for them to come together.
4) How did the FSWA go about building its membership?
It’s a grassroots organization. Unlike the [Fantasy Sports Trade Association] and most other trade organizations, we’re writers more than businesspeople. We had to put out the product, and, slowly but surely, people came to us. Companies such as Rotowire and Talented Mr. Roto really pushed the importance of the organization with their staff and encouraged their writers to join.
5) How strong is membership today?
Close to 100 new members have joined this past year alone. We’re thrilled with that number. We’ve pushed FSWA membership harder, but I don’t know if I could attribute the growth to any one thing. There’s growth in the industry, and now we’re more established. We had a long list of things we wanted to offer from the beginning, and more of that is coming to fruition.
6) How important is the board of directors?
Our board is really important and is a huge part of who we are. The members care about their staff and about strong writing in the industry. Peter Schoenke (Rotowire), Matthew Berry (ESPN), Gregg Rosenthal (Rotoworld) — those are people that have been on the board for a long time. This year we added Michael Fabiano (NFL.com) and Brandon Funston (Yahoo), both of whom we’re thrilled to have. It’s been important to us to not only have names but people who support writers in this industry.
7) What has the FSWA accomplished so far?
Like the FSTA, one thing that we’ve done is to help create discussion among people from different sites. It’s one place that a discussion can occur among sites of different sizes.
8) What was the impetus for the creation of the annual FSWA awards?
It was a no-brainer. There were no awards for individual writing categories. There were people contributing an incredible volume of content, but there was nothing to recognize it. We’re very happy to have a strong relationship with the FSTA (at whose winter business conference the award winners are announced), and we do what we can to give back to that relationship.
9) How integral have they become to the FSWA’s image and mission?
It’s one of the things we do. It’s probably recognized as the biggest thing we do as far as the members go. Certainly in the future we want to do more and more, but it’s our big show. It gets a lot of recognition inside and outside of the industry, and that’s good for us. By recognizing those in the industry, I think we have gotten people excited. I don’t think that people write to win awards, but it’s nice to get recognized for your work.
10) Please describe what goes into deciding the recipients.
First of all, [FSWA technical director] George Kerwood plays an important role in posting all of the entries to the site. He burns the candle at both ends to get everything set up for the judges. Same is true of the rest of the executive committee. This year we had more than 800 articles submitted, easily a record number. Last year, we had a record, and it was a little more than 500. After everything is in place and categorized it becomes a two-step judging process. Our board reviews all of the nominations, and the finalists are reviewed by an independent panel of judges (two college journalism professors and a longtime sports columnist at a major market newspaper).
We go to large measures to keep it anonymous, which is very difficult when you have a community like ours where many people are familiar with each other and their writing. But we do everything we can to keep this awards process honest. No names on the articles, no titles, and we scan through each article to identify and remove any site references. It’s a lot of work, but the contest continues to grow each year so it means it’s worth all of the effort.
(Note: Beacom also serves as the publisher of SportsBuff.com, part of the same company that owns this site.)
