OPENSports.com
Startup/business
Florida,
United States
http://www.opensports.com
OPEN Sports is a
producer of next generation social-powered sports experiences combining social
media and community tools with traditional sports content and best-of-breed
fantasy sports games. Founded in March 2008 by Mike Levy, founder and former
CEO of SportsLine.com, the Company’s mission is to exploit the highly
compelling market opportunity that has been created at the intersection of
traditional sports, fantasy sports, and social media. OPEN Sports’ applications
and services support a community-driven model that empowers sports fans to
shape the platform and corresponding content with a combination of
community-centric tools. In addition, the Company is leveraging its extensive
experience to develop next-generation fantasy gaming and scoreboard services
that incorporate the viral, collaborative aspects of social media with the
entertainment and reward of fantasy sports games for prizes. For more information, visit www.OPENSports.com
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Latest updates
279 business owner(s)
115 student(s)
362 other(s)
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Business model
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Competitive advantage
OPEN Sports is developing unique and powerful fantasy gaming and scoreboard services built from the ground up that incorporate the viral, collaborative aspects of social media to compete directly with the major sports interactive brands.
OPEN Sports is building a completely new and unencumbered by legacy code and systems Next Gen Commissioner service for 2009, as well as, games for players of all levels. These products will feature truly integrated social applications that will allow participants to see who is online through their Activity Streams and allow users to communicate directly with each other.
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Management Bio
Mike Levy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Mike Levy is chairman and CEO of OPENSports.com, a next-generation sports web site that redefines sports fans entertainment experiences. OPEN Sports is a comprehensive platform of products and services that offer breaking sports news, social media tools, user generated content and multimedia applications.
Prior to launching OPEN Sports, Mr. Levy was the founder and former president, chairman and CEO of SportsLine.com, Inc., a leading Internet sports media company and publisher of CBS SportsLine.com, NFL.com, PGA Tour.com and NCAA Sports.com. Mr. Levy founded the company in February, 1994. SportsLine was listed on NASDAQ from November, 1997 through December, 2004 when it was acquired by CBS.
At SportsLine, Mr. Levy forged alliances with CBS Sports, AOL, the NFL, the NBA, MLB, the PGA Tour, the NCAA, various players’ associations and many superstar athletes including Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, Joe Namath, John Elway, Jerry Rice, Mike Schmidt and Wayne Gretzky.
SportsLine’s initial venture funding was through Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers. Subsequent private investors included Reuters, TCI, US West and NY Life. Mr. Levy took SportsLine public in 1997 raising $32 million. In 1998, SportsLine raised $150 million in a secondary offering and in 1999 raised $150 million in a convertible bond offering. During the Internet boom years from 1998 to early 2000, SportsLine’s market cap routinely exceeded $1 billion.
In 1998, Mr. Levy was featured in a Forbes cover story with several other early internet company founders. He was also the subject of numerous articles in Fortune, Business Week and Forbes, was a frequent guest on CNBC, Bloomberg and CNN, and an invited speaker at important Internet and media conferences.
From 1978 through 1993, Mr. Levy was CEO of Lexicon Corporation, a company he co-founded to develop and market the world’s first electronic language translator. Under Levy, Lexicon went on to develop data communications terminals for the Department of Defense and Fortune 500 clients, and financial transaction terminals for major credit card issuers, banks and large retailers. Sports-Tech International, Inc., a Lexicon subsidiary developed the video analysis systems which were used by a majority of NFL and NBA teams, and over 150 collegiate sports programs.
From 1969 through 1977 Mr. Levy held engineering design and management positions with Racal Datacom and Harris Corporation. Mr. Levy holds six patents for innovative high-tech products and received his Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree from Georgia Tech in 1969.
Mr. Levy was selected as one of The Sporting News 100 most powerful people in sports for three consecutive years (1999-2001). In 1999, he was given the Annual Achievement in Technology and New Media Award by UJA Federation of New York. In 1998, Mr. Levy was inducted by Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering into the Academy of Distinguished Alumni. In 1997, Mr. Levy received the “Florida Entrepreneur of the Year Award” sponsored by Ernst & Young and the “1997 Interactive Entrepreneur Award” by the Interactive services association.
Rob Phythian, President
Rob Phythian founded Fanball.com, the largest fantasy sports, pure play website on the net in 1998. In addition to founding Fanball as the largest fantasy destination site, Mr. Phythian struck several key third-party relationships for Fanball that included major deals with Turner Sports Interactive and AOL. Fanball also powered all of the fantasy games for NASCAR.com and PGATour.com from 2001-07.
In 2005, Fanball was sold to FUN Technologies, a publicly-traded company. Mr. Phythian stayed with FUN after the sale and was promoted to President of the sports division. The portfolio of sports companies that FUN owned -- Fanball, Don Best, Fantasy Cup and CDM Sports -- were managed by Phythian during a period from 2005 until 2007. From 1994-98, Mr. Phythian was the founder and owner of the first weekly fantasy sports magazine, Fantasy Football Weekly. In just three years of publication, FFW grew to a circulation of over 500,000 and garnered one of the highest sell-through rates of all sports titles in the industry.
Mr. Phythian is a Graduate of the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN and holds a bachelor's degree in Business Administration.
Barry Carpe, Chief Product Officer
Barry Carpe is a business, sales and product development executive with over 11 years media, sports and entertainment experience in the Internet and cable television industries. Mr. Carpe most recently was Vice President and General Manager of Biap Inc., where he leveraged his experience to lead all aspects of Biap’s sports business, including strategy, planning, business development, product development, marketing and strategic partnerships.
Before joining Biap, Mr. Carpe spent over eight years with the AOL Sports division, at the time one of the largest online sports properties in the world. During this time, Mr. Carpe held key positions in business, sales and product development. During his time at AOL, Mr. Carpe also worked closely with AOL’s sales organization to develop custom sponsorship, branded entertainment experiences and promotions.
Mr. Carpe graduated with honors from the University of Hartford in 1994 with a degree in Business Administration.
Mark Hennessy, Chief Technology Officer
Mark Hennessy founded GripIron.com in 2007, an innovative fitness website offering the GripIron Fitness Challenge. In 2005, Mr. Hennessy began working for Fanball.com and led the software development for their new SportsMedia division. Mr. Hennessy led the development of the proprietary sports data entry tools used by the SportsMedia division's data entry team to completely cover dozens of sports and leagues.
From 1999-2002, Mr. Hennessy was a senior software developer at SportsLine.com. He developed a proprietary, highly-scalable streaming solution for SportsLine, known as the Live Publishing System (LPS). The introduction of LPS significantly reduced server load dramatically improving the user experience.
Mr. Hennessy is a Graduate of Florida International in Miami, FL and holds Bachelor's degrees in Computer Science, Economics, and Sociology.
Bruce Jaret, Senior VP Sales & Marketing
Bruce Jaret is a 22-year media industry veteran who has played a leading role in the online advertising industry, most recently as Vice President with CBS SportsLine. At SportsLine, Mr. Jaret played a key role in building out one of the most successful and industry-leading sales and sales support groups, which ranged from Sales Development and Advertising Operations to Market Research.
Prior to joining SportsLine, Mr. Jaret was Director of Sales Research and Marketing for Sports at Turner Broadcasting. Earlier in his career, he held sales and marketing positions with Blair TV and Telemundo.
Mr. Jaret graduated from S.U.N.Y College at New Paltz with a degree in Communications.
Dave Marchetti, Vice President, Finance
David Marchetti joined Fanball.com in 1999 as part of the founding group for one of the largest fantasy sports sites on the web. In 2000, Mr. Marchetti became the head of operations for Fanball. In that role Mr. Marchetti helped architect, build, and manage a highly scalable fantasy sports site that produced more than 200 million page views a month during the NFL season. Fanball became profitable in 2002 and grew at a rapid rate until it was sold for $22 million in June of 2005 to FUN Technologies, a publicly traded company.
Mr. Marchetti stayed with FUN Technologies after the sale of Fanball and was responsible for all operations of the FUN Sports group, a division of FUN Technologies. Mr. Marchetti also helped expand the Fanball brand into Europe, and helped grow the customer support department, product monitoring group, Quality Assurance team, information technology staff, and developer team to meet revenue/customer growth.
In 2006 Mr. Marchetti became Director of FUN Technologies' In-game Stats division. In-game Stats was built to be a strong competitor to Stats LLC., by providing a level of service and product unmatched by its competitor. Mr. Marchetti managed the In-game Stats division up to the date of his departure in early 2007.
Ken Mark, Chief Information Officer
Ken Mark has been working in technology for 18+ years and in senior technical management for 13. In 1995 Mr. Mark ran the technology department of a start up internet service provider, Surf Network, which was the 12th company acquired by Verio in 1997. In 1997, Mr. Mark began working at CBS SportsLine leading the design and build out of their network infrastructure and data centers to handle the ever increasing traffic patterns of the various sports seasons.
Since 2003, Mr. Mark has held various senior technical management roles at ABC Distributing, eDiets.com, Blue Frog Solutions and World Avenue. He was also an early proponent and adopter of virtualization technologies.
Mr. Mark is a Graduate of Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA and holds a degree in Computer Information Systems.
Don Silvestri, Vice President, Marketing
Don Silvestri has over 10 years experience as a senior marketing executive with expertise in the areas of marketing, brand management, advertising, lead generation, product positioning, sales program development and partner relationship management.
Most recently, Mr. Silvestri served as Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for IAG Interactive. IAG Interactive is one of the leading providers of performance-based online marketing solutions with a multitude of categorically and demographically targeted websites and affiliate networks.
Prior to joining IAG, Mr. Silvestri spent 6 years with CBS Digital Media / CBS SportsLine.com. As the Director of Marketing, he was responsible for all marketing operations, advertising campaigns and consumer retention efforts for the CBS brands, their Fantasy Sports products and partner websites including CBS SportsLine.com, NFL.com, PGATOUR.com and NCAASports.com. Additionally, Mr. Silvestri played professional football for nine years as a field goal, kick-off and punting specialist.
Mr. Silvestri earned dual degrees in Marketing and Business Administration from University of Pittsburgh where he was an Academic All-American.
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