PATON: Elway ventures back online

By James Paton, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published September 10, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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John Elway may feel a little anxiety as he immerses himself in his new business venture: a Web site catering to fantasy football fans.

The former Denver Broncos quarterback was burned last time he tied his name and reputation to a fledgling Internet operation. MVP.com, the sporting goods retailer launched with Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky in 1999, failed about a year later.

As part of his new pact with Mike Levy's OpenSports.com, Elway is blogging, making weekly predictions, serving up analysis and interacting with football fanatics, a daunting assignment.

"I had to ask what blogging was," the Hall of Famer acknowledged in a phone interview with the Rocky.

Forecasting what is going to happen on the football field also will not be easy. Elway picked the Oakland Raiders to beat the Broncos on Monday. (He was wrong, as Denver fans will surely remind him). Overall, Elway struggled, going 8-8 with his projections for the week.

"People want answers," said Elway, a stakeholder in the company and a spokesman. "But it's hard. There are so many things going on, and there is not a lot of difference between each team. Everyone has talent. It's a matter of finding the little things that are difficult to see from the outside."

A bigger challenge will be drawing fans in a field dominated by Yahoo, CBS SportsLine, ESPN and Fox Sports. One of those hugely popular sites "is more of a nation than a community," according to Elway, who was in California last week touting another one of his businesses, a Manhattan Beach Toyota dealership.

"This will have more of an intimate feel to it," he said.

The burden falls mainly on Levy, who founded SportsLine.com and ran the site until it was acquired by CBS in late 2004. Levy raised $10 million to start OpenSports and is seeking additional funding.

Still, Elway has more than a casual interest in the startup. He has a financial position in the company and his brand name is aligned with the Web site.

"I had a lot of confidence in Mike Levy," Elway said. "I knew he would do it right. I had stepped back away from the game and this gets me back and engaged."

OpenSports has sought to entice people by making its fantasy football product free for life to those who jump in initially, Levy said by phone last week.

Smaller players are hoping to get a piece of the fantasy football pie, too.

Colorado resident and fantasy football fanatic Kevin Goodfellow recently introduced SportsData Hub.com. The Web site aims to give users an edge by allowing them to crunch data and interact with each other through blogs, forums and other features.

While Goodfellow does not believe fantasy football is attracting swarms of new players, "people are playing in more leagues and across many sites."

Goodfellow said the trend is toward creating products that are "open" and allow users to transfer information about their teams to other sites. He looked at OpenSports.com and called it "Facebook meets ESPN."

Elway and Levy have worked together before. Elway's MVP.com had an arrangement with SportsLine.com, but the deal collapsed after the ex-football player's site failed to make a payment. SportsLine in early 2001 bought MVP's assets, including its customer database and list of domain names.

In hindsight, Elway said, MVP.com obviously was ill-timed.

"We were a little late and we ran into the bubble bursting," he added. "When we look back, we wish we had been a little earlier."

Elway has been involved in a number of other businesses over the years. In 2006, car retailer AutoNation ended a licensing agreement with Elway. Roughly a decade earlier he had sold his car dealerships to AutoNation for $82.5 million and had struck a deal allowing the company to use his name at the lots.

The former Broncos star, who also co-owns the Arena Football League's Colorado Crush and has two Elway's restaurants in Denver, said he is "weathering the storm" as a businessman in a tough economy and is relying on what he has picked up in the past.

"You gain from every business venture," he said. "You learn a lesson, whether it's good or bad."

patonj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2544

Back in the car business

* John Elway's Manhattan Beach Toyota Scion: Car dealership in Manhattan Beach, Calif., southwest of Los Angeles, recently rebranded with Elway's name.

* Partners: Elway, Mitch Pierce and Darrell Sperber, operating partner and general manager, purchased the dealership in May 2007. Elway and Pierce also own a Toyota dealership in Ontario, east of Los Angeles.

* Elway's business role: Marketing and promotion. According to Sperber: "John is a financial whiz. He's a very good businessman. He comes down. He has input. He goes through our numbers every month."

• September 10, 2008

  7:42 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  Auroragal writes:

  Great news. My son, in Boston, has always been a John Elway fan. He's also very much into fantasy football. We wish John the best of luck!

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