Some would call it luck--being in the right place at the right
time. But if you ask Patrick Hughes, he's likely to call it
destiny. The 42-year-old Reston, Virginia, publisher of fantasy
sports league administration software and his wife, Cheryl, 35,
expect to see their company's sales top $3 million this year--a
far cry from the spring of 1994, when Fantasy Sports Properties
Inc. found itself staring failure squarely in the eye.
Years earlier, the business had made a promising start. Hughes
had been playing fantasy football (a fantasy draft of actual pro
players where, if "your" players do well in games, you
score) with his buddies for years when, in 1988, he read about the
inventors of Pictionary and their multimillion-dollar sale of the
game to a Fortune 500 company. Hughes, who owned an equipment
leasing company, imagined himself reaping the benefits of fantasy
sports' allure--and set to work turning his dream into a
reality.
Hughes invested $150,000 in his new venture and found partners
in his brother, Michael, who designed the software's original
mathematical flow, and product designer Chris Yager, who tailored
the software to fantasy sports administration. The program
downloads actual sports statistics from the Internet and assigns
points based on the fantasy league's guidelines.
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The company sold only 200 copies of the software that first
season, but Hughes was undaunted. He patented his product and
secured a licensing agreement with the NFL Players Association and
NFL Properties, which was followed by the company's first big
break: After Hughes submitted a proposal to Miller Brewing Co., the
beer giant signed on as a corporate sponsor in a lucrative one-year
contract with a two-year renewal option.
With Miller's backing, Hughes soon boasted product placement
in 6,300 sports bars across the country as the 1989 Miller
Franchise Football season (fantasy leagues played in local taverns)
got underway.
The company got another boost, says Hughes, when he and Cheryl,
an architectural engineer, married in 1990. Together they formed
Fantasy Sports Properties Inc. (FSPI), and while continuing to run
her own commercial construction project management consulting
business, Cheryl began handling FSPI's books and personnel
matters. Meanwhile, Yager was made head of product design and
development, while Michael Hughes left to pursue other
interests.
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