Anyone who plays fantasy sports will love Larry Schechter’s new book “The History of Fantasy
Sports: And the Stories of the People Who Made It Happen.”
It’s not written as a boring research paper but rather tells the stories of the entrepreneurs who
created an industry that has gone worldwide. There’s never been a book like this and it’s getting
rave reviews, such as:
“Simply fascinating read from start to finish.” —MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
Schechter spent 18 months researching and interviewing dozens of key players to uncover their
stories. The book covers everything from the precursors of fantasy sports, the invention and
spread of fantasy football and fantasy baseball, news services, stat services, magazines, and radio
shows through legal issues, daily fantasy sports, and worldwide expansion. Everything from Peter
Pezaris creating Commissioner.COM taking 30-second freezing showers in an office that should
have been condemned to how Monica Lewinsky may have saved the fantasy industry.
The History of Fantasy Sports: And the Stories of the People Who Made It Happen.”
The following is an excerpt from Chapter 13
Fantasy Insights
James Serra was a programmer in Las Vegas who started putting projections in Excel and created
software to help for his fantasy football drafts. He figured he could sell it to others, founded a
company called First Place Sports Software, and in 1993 advertised it in some magazines. To the
27-year-old’s surprise, about 200 people bought it for $25 each. This was one of the first, or
possibly the first, draft software to be sold, and included Serra’s own player projections.
Many customers asked if he could make commissioner software, since what was available was
not very good. So, in 1994 he wrote commissioner software, advertised it along with the draft
software, and sold 100 copies at $80 each, with the draft software sales increasing to about 350.
He made enough money that he decided to stop his consulting business for the next year, do this
full-time, and see what happened.
In 1994, he launched one of the first fantasy football websites. It was originally NFLFantasy.com
until he received a cease-and-desist letter from the NFL and changed to FantasyInsights.com. By
the late ’90s, his website offered news, depth charts, player rankings, mock drafts, and more.
And Serra had a few thousand customers using his draft software and commissioner service.
Serra remembers, “I went to Wells Fargo to set up a credit card account and they said, ‘You have
to get a storefront,’ and I said, ‘My business is on the internet,’ and they said, ‘What’s the
internet?’”
A MLB All-Star pitcher was in a fantasy football league that used his service, and one
September night Serra was watching him pitching on TV while monitoring the website. The
pitcher was replaced by a relief pitcher and headed for the locker room. A few minutes later,
Serra noticed the man who had just walked off the mound—and wouldn’t have had time to take a
shower—made a transaction for his football team.
We will never know, but perhaps the conversation went something like this:
Manager: “Can you give me another inning?”
Pitcher: “No, I gotta make a fantasy football move.”
But the job included stress. Serra would get e-mails from customers arguing that he didn’t score
a play correctly. Someone might say, “I was watching the game, he ran for nine yards, not 10.”
They didn’t understand the stats came from the NFL, not from him. Once, a guy called and told
him, “The commissioner of our league has died, please give me his username and password so I
can take over managing it.” It turned out the guy was lying and deleted the entire league because
he was mad at his league mates. (Serra was able to restore the league, but not without a lot of
effort.)
These types of events caused stress and ate into his enjoyment of running the business. And it
became worse, as the industry went from weekly scoring updates to daily updates, to hourly, and
then every few seconds. It was very stressful needing to constantly monitor that everything was
working properly. He had employees but they were never reliable or skilled enough, so he had to
monitor everything himself. If he went to a ball game, he’d have to take his laptop with him to
monitor the real-time scoring. If anything went wrong, he had to go to his car where there was
better Wi-Fi reception to fix the problem. Then the NFL added Sunday night games, then
Thursday night games, and some Saturday games, so that even more of Serra’s time was needed
to monitor stats.
Serra depended on STATS, Inc. to send data every few seconds. Around 2008, there was an NFL
game with two players with the same name—Adrian Peterson—one the Bears running back and
the other the Vikings running back—and this caused a glitch in the STATS delivery. There was a
45-minute delay in the live scoring being updated. E-mails started coming from dozens and
dozens of his clients. They started with, “Just to let you know, the stats haven’t updated in a few
minutes.” Then they started getting angry: “The stats haven’t updated, what’s wrong with you
people?” Eventually, they escalated from “I want a partial refund” to “I want a full refund” to
“I’m going to sue you.” After 30 minutes, it was “I’m going to start a class-action lawsuit” and
then “I think you should fire everybody,” “I hope you get cancer,” and “I hope all your family
gets cancer.” Over 1,000 angry e-mails. Despite him telling them he was at the mercy of STATS,
they didn’t care. That’s when Serra knew he couldn’t do this anymore. He thought, “I’m getting
mentally abused by people who can’t deal with the fact that their stats are a little late.”
Serra started talking to other companies about selling Fantasy Insights. The stress from this
incident and continued monitoring of real-time scoring caused Serra to develop a twitch in his
left eye. He finally sold to RT Sports in 2010. The same day he closed the sale, the twitch went
away. Serra left the fantasy industry and finally went back to consulting. But as of 2023, he still
plays in his original fantasy league, with six of the original owners still playing more than 30
years later.
(“The History of Fantasy Sports: And the Stories of the People Who Made It Happen” is
available on Amazon and most book sellers’ websites, both paperback and eBook.)
