In this episode, we have a special guest, John Latella, who is the mind behind On Demand Fantasy Sports. John’s journey is not just inspiring but also full of interesting twists. From owning a major food manufacturing business to diving into the technology of fantasy sports, John brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to our discussion.
On Demand Fantasy Sports is a unique platform where you can play fantasy sports anytime, not just during the sports season. This means you can enjoy drafting and competing all year round, using historical data from past athletes. It’s a new way to experience fantasy sports without having to wait for live games.
Today, we’ll explore how John’s background helped him create this platform and dive into how it works. So, stay tuned, enjoy the show!
Ryan Knuppel:
Hey, what’s going on, everybody? Ryan Knuppel here, Knup Sports Show, episode 217. Welcome to the show. Thank you for giving us a little bit of your time today. Excited to bring another amazing guest in sports business. We have John Latella today of On Demand Fantasy Sports. I cannot wait to hear from him. He has an interesting story and an interesting product and something I think you guys are going to enjoy.
Ryan Knuppel:
First off, before we jump into the interview, hopefully you guys are going to be at the SBC event that’s coming up here in May. I’ll be there. So looking forward to meeting all of you guys, SBC North America up in New York, New Jersey. We do have a promo code for that. If you have not signed up for that event, make sure to reach out to me. I’ll put the promo code in the show notes of this. So you’ll get a little discount and all the above. So we’re media partners with them and excited to promote their awesome events. They’re such a good time and you connect with a lot of awesome individuals in sports business. So that’s the first piece of housekeeping, but I’m not going to bore you with that. Let’s jump right into our interview. Let’s get John on board here. John, are you with me, John?
John Latella:
I’m here, Ryan. Can you hear me?
Ryan Knuppel:
I can. How are you doing today up there in Michigan?
John Latella:
Living the dream, buddy. Living the dream.
Ryan Knuppel:
Awesome. Everything’s good. Good, good. Thank you for giving me some of your time. I’m excited to hear a little bit about On Demand and dive right in. But first off, I want to hear what makes you tick, John. Give me a little bit of your background. You have a fascinating background. I was looking into you a little bit on LinkedIn, but I’d love to hear from you where you’ve been and what brought you to where you are today.
John Latella:
Well, sure. So I’m a lawyer by trade and I come from the food manufacturing business. Shockingly enough, I have nothing to do with tech other than the fact in terms of sports, I’m a huge sports lover. Actually played Division III college basketball for a very short period of time. Before I realized I wasn’t going pro, so I have a huge love of sports. But I actually owned one of the largest manufacturers of all-natural salsa company in North America called Garden Fresh Gourmet and was blessed to sell that company to the Campbell Soup Company in 2015 and then kind of dovetailed into, of all things, sports tech and fantasy sports and all this good stuff now that’s going on.
Ryan Knuppel:
That’s amazing. So, I mean, I can’t imagine the business experience you have, you know, with an exit of that sort. Congrats on the success, first of all. And we’ll get into a little bit more about business in general later. But congrats, first off. I mean, I’m sure there’s some just great experiences there. Not everybody can say they have a major exit to a major company like that. That’s amazing.
John Latella:
Yeah, very, very blessed. I luckily you could see the hair that I have. It’s actually still it’s still here, mostly gray. It used to be a lot blacker. Let’s put it that way.
Ryan Knuppel:
There you go. Well, we can talk about this offline, but where’d you play college basketball at?
John Latella:
I played at a small school here in Michigan called Albion.
Ryan Knuppel:
Oh, I’m very familiar. I played at Elmhurst College up near Chicago. So we played Albion a little bit back in the day. So us old guys talking our old basketball hoops. Now I can only shoot. There’s no running involved. So as long as I can stand still and keep my one spot on the floor, I’m good.
John Latella:
That’s right. The knees just hurt, the ankles hurt, but that shot never goes away, right?
Ryan Knuppel:
Exactly. Awesome. Well, John, let’s dive into the company itself. So On Demand Fantasy Sports. Tell us a little bit about what it is and what you guys are up to.
John Latella:
Sure. So obviously when people hear fantasy sports, especially in today’s climate and market, the very first thing they think about is sports betting and gaming. I think everyone’s kind of been conditioned now with the DraftKings, the Fan Duels, Underdog. I mean, I can go on and on. We are kind of a pivot from that, actually. We looked at kind of like what I did, quite honestly, with Garden Fresh. Salsa was already being sold in the grocery aisle. We took it and made it all natural and with no preservatives and put it in the deli. People told us we’re crazy. So we kind of in the same token to, you know, analogize it here. We didn’t want to go into the sports betting and gaming space. But we still wanted to do fantasy sports, so we found a niche within that, which is, quite frankly, kids can’t play necessarily, or they’ve got to be on mom and dad’s phone. Kind of what fantasy sports was originally created for, which is… family engagement, friends back and forth playing like that. So we set out to do that. And then we set out to to answer the age old questions that a lot of us who had parents or dads or moms that were in the sports and we come from different generations. Who’s better? You know, it’s very is Barry Sanders better than, you know, Emmett Smith or whatnot. And so we kind of wanted to answer that question as well. And that was the evolution of on demand. And then the biggest thing, which is every other platform in the world, I was going to say the country, but in the world is reliant on one thing. And that one thing is a live sporting event. And we set out to change that as well. So we’re the only daily fantasy or fantasy sports platform in the world that is not reliant upon live sporting events.
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Ryan Knuppel:
That’s a very interesting concept like that. People listening, I want them to wrap their head around what you just said there because I think that is the differentiator here that I see that’s like, whoa, like what? Say it again. Explain that piece of it a little bit further and what you mean. It’s not surrounding live sporting events.
John Latella:
So obviously if you want to play fantasy football, now you have to wait for the NFL season to be live and be playing on our platform, hence the name On Demand. What we have done is we have partnered with Sport Radar is our data provider. We’ve partnered with Sport Radar. And what we utilize is the historical play-by-play data of retired athletes. Not a game, not game data, but historical play-by-play data. So technically, we’re not even, you know, I’ve heard some people utilize the term simulation when they’re talking about what we’re doing. And it’s a hybrid to a certain degree, but it’s not a simulation. We are using the true historical play-by-play data of retired athletes. And then through machine learning, and we’ve got several patents pending and artificial intelligence, we’re able to extract that historical play-by-play data, have those inputs and recreate an actual game, but based on a player’s real life career.
Ryan Knuppel:
Very interesting. So these people can come in, they can create these leagues and literally… play games at any time in the day, season, whatever.
John Latella:
At a nutshell, that’s what we’re doing here. You nailed it. Again, utilizing the name On Demand. You can play 24-7, 365 days a year regardless and you can set up as many games and play as long as you want. There’s essentially three ways and then it’s really cool because we’ve created three ways you can play. Obviously, there’s the On Demand way you and I Ryan we could play a game right now we could set it up set it set the time the start time for what is it 11 10 47 eastern time right now we could set it up and play a game that starts at 11 a.m
The second way you can play is obviously during a live game, right? We want people to still be able to play and use those contests.
And then the really cool way, which I think is kind of the coolest thing that our platform offers, is when you are in season, so the NFL’s typical 17-week season, you can do a hybrid on our platform. So I’m in Detroit here. So you could have, let’s say it’s the first week of the season, I can have Jared Goff as my starting quarterback. And it’s utilizing Jared’s, you know, play-by-play from that game that Sunday. And then I could have Herman Moore, who happens to be one of our co-founders and a partner, former All-Pro wide receiver with the Lions. I could have Herman as my wide receiver. I could have another Lion great wide receiver, Calvin Johnson, as my other wide receiver. And then I could have Amon Ross St. Brown as my third and then use his stats from that day. So it’s really cool. So it really opens up – A lot of things. Fandom brings in the retired players. It’s a very interesting concept. And like you said, it’s something that’s different from the traditional platforms that are out there. Very cool concept.
Ryan Knuppel:
So which sports are you currently live for? I guess backing up, where are you at in the product lifecycle of this?
John Latella:
So the product lifecycle, the product is… We literally, so what I call a soft launch, probably about a month ago, but you can get it. It’s in the Google Play Store. It’s in the Apple, you know, the iOS store, on-demand DFS. If you go search for that, you’ll find it. You can download it. You can start playing. You get a 30-day free trial when you sign up. And then it’s a subscription-based service, again, as opposed to a gaming or gambling product. So kids can download it, kids can play it, kids can have it on their phone. And then we’re really gonna be doing some cool stuff
In terms of, we offer a reward system. So you’ll get reward points based on just playing and utilizing the game. And then what we’re going to do is memorabilia is such a huge thing right now. So we’re going to offer contests on a weekly basis. So right now, you’d ask the question. So right now we have NFL and NCAA football. So with NFL, our historical play-by-play data goes back to 2000. So you can pick any player that has played from now currently uh through 2000 and then college we have college football which is really cool our college historical play-by-play data goes back to 2014 so we have over 30 000 players you can choose from yeah that represent over 298 different schools that’s cool that’s really cool neat
Yeah, so it’s pretty cool. And then we’re going back to the rewards with the memorabilia. So with NFL, we’ll be we’ll be hosting a contest once a week with NFL. Well, you’ll be able to win if you enter that contest, you play it, join that contest on the platform. You’ll be able to win the the weekly prize will be like one hundred something of one hundred dollar value piece of memorabilia, whether it’s a sports card or an autographed mini helmet. But it’ll be something that’s relative with NFL football. And then on a monthly basis, we’re going to be given away. We utilize a leaderboard type as opposed to the 1-0 or 2-0 or 1-2 type. When you’re playing in a league or you’re playing in contests, the leader for the month will be given something that has up to like $1,000 value. So maybe an autographed jersey or something like that. We hope to partner with some athletes, get them on the platform where you can actually play in a contest against some of your favorite athletes, which is really cool. Retired guys.
Ryan Knuppel:
Yeah. Pretty neat. That’s awesome. And so back to the, I guess the economics of it, you know, you mentioned it’s a subscription service, which is a different mindset than most have when they’re thinking daily fantasy sports or fantasy sports in general. Typically it’s a, Oh, I’m going to pay to be in this league or on a, you know, a pay. And then there’s a price at the end of that or whatever. This is purely subscription, correct? Is that, explain that a little bit further and how that’s working.
John Latella:
Yeah. So there’s as many leagues as I want after I have a subscription or. The subscription opens you up to everything that the platform has and the platforms. Actually, we built it out. So it’s all inclusive for everything when it’s eleven ninety nine for the year. So less than less than a dollar a month. Yeah. Unbelievably. I know everyone’s in a different situation, so I don’t mean, you know, sign. But I think it’s relatively inexpensive in terms based on other things that are out there and what you’re going to get for it. with the potential to win thousands of dollars in memorabilia and different things that are out there and play against different celebrities and athletes. Then it’s also a full-blown social media platform as well. We’ve set it up. It’s literally all-inclusive. We’ve made it so that when you get on there, you do not literally have to go anywhere else to do anything you want to do. So if you want to talk to your friends, you can do that. You want to post, you can do that. That’s on there. You even want to, we’ve partnered with Fantasy Pros. So you want up-to-date scores. You want up-to-date news on who’s going to be active for the live games and what’s coming on. We’ve got what’s called DFS IQ that you can go in for that. Even when you click on DFS, the players right underneath their name when you’re picking your lineup, it’ll pull up their page to show you what they’ve currently been doing in fantasy or what they’ve done historically. Even the jerseys on the page, we purposely took the players image out of the uh out of the equation and so instead of looking at their face you’re actually looking at a jersey with their number cool and if you click that jersey that jersey is going to be hard linked through to fanatics that you can buy you can buy that jersey if that’s who your favorite player is nice Then leagues, again, like you had asked, you can join as many leagues as you want. You can invite as many people as you want. Obviously, they’ll have to subscribe. Sure. But then you can essentially utilize it as your own white label and create and do whatever you want within there. Chat with people in your league, anything.
Ryan Knuppel:
That’s awesome. A really cool concept. Really cool. I’m excited to play around with it myself. And I’ve downloaded it on the phone, but I haven’t got a chance to play with it. So I’m excited to play with it and I’ll dive in myself. But what’s the future look like for you guys? So assuming more sports, I mean, I’m assuming that’s kind of one of the next steps. But give me give me the roadmap. What’s next for you guys?
John Latella:
Yeah. So in terms of sports, you nailed it. So we should by the end of the summer, we should have all sports out there, you know, all your major NBA games. Major League Baseball, soccer, hockey, all those. Shockingly, the next sport that’s going to be launched here probably within two to three weeks is, you’ll never even guess if I were to ask you. Slap fighting.
No, actually, that might be a good one. But because the platform, again, because we’re non-gaming, we don’t necessarily have to worry about all the regulations that a lot of these other platforms do, which allows our platform to be worldwide. So within two to three weeks, cricket.
is going to be yep going to be the third sport that um that we come out with cool there’s a huge huge huge uh fantasy following in india in india um and then literally just just acquiring that user base and and growing you know growing growing that user base out and then You know, like any other company, you and I had a chance to briefly talk before. And, you know, like anything else, if there’s, you know, any, you know, hopefully form some partnerships, maybe partner with some teams, some leagues. Anybody else that’s out there that’s looking for something that’s innovative and a really cool way to engage fans? family, friends like that, just continue to grow it. And then hopefully, you know, either exit it or, you know, find somebody much younger that wants to grab the reins and push forward.
Ryan Knuppel:
There you go. There you go. That’s awesome. Well, yeah, I encourage everybody that’s listening to this, please take a look at this and reach out to John. I’m not done here with you, John, but how can they get ahold of you if they do want to get ahold of you and talk about it and talk about what you got going on?
John Latella:
So, I mean, I’m on LinkedIn, really easy to find me on LinkedIn. My phone number, I don’t know if you want me to give my phone number out here.
Yeah, I mean, listen, I’m fine with it. My phone number is 586-549-5050. There you go. You know, and again, the easiest way is, you know, other than getting unsolicited business things on LinkedIn, it is an easy way to get a hold of me and or, you know, email me at john at legacyfantasysports.com is another easy way. We’ll put all that in the show notes as well so people can just click on it and get right to you. Real quick here before we get off here, you’ve mentioned two, three, four times in this show directly that this isn’t a gambling product, right? This isn’t a gambling product. This isn’t very clear, and that’s a very clear distinction you’re making with this. What I want to ask you, and this is maybe not necessarily tied to On Demand and all that, but have you found as you’re going down this path that –
Ryan Knuppel:
Those lines are just so blurred these days, meaning that like I feel like here in the US, especially the culture now, everything’s like like sports is gambling, like sports and gambling are one. It’s like the same conversation. Are you finding some blurred lines there, you know, with as you go down this path from a legalization and regulation and all the above? How difficult has that been? Are you finding it as a kind of a blurred line?
John Latella:
It’s a very blurred line. And quite frankly, everybody has been so conditioned for gambling and sports betting. We’re finding that even with people that are coming into the platform, there’s an educational aspect of it that we have to educate them that this is not a gaming and or gambling platform. And it’s kind of funny, right? You and I both know that even though there’s a ton of people utilizing, you know, sports apps and sports books and different things to gamble, most of the gambling and gaming goes on between friends behind closed doors, right? It’s not in public. It’s not through a platform or a website. But here’s the funny thing, Ryan. And, you know, again, as we heard, I’m a businessman at heart. And our platform, we’ve actually, although we are not a gaming or gambling platform, our technology is 100% applicable to the gaming and gambling market.
kind of market yeah and the best way I could put this is you know when you look at a fan duel a DraftKings or any of the other platforms that are out there that are doing that I’ll use NFL as an example there’s only 77 days you know give or take um a year of live sporting events of NFL games where they can monetize on our platform and with our again we have we have patents pending and we have We actually won an award out at the FSGA Winter Conference. We can monetize fantasy football 365 days a year through our platform. So although we’re not gaming and gambling, potentially if there’s somebody out there that’s listening, partnerships, we are more than open to discussing that.
know different licensing options and or other other business propositions that they may have with regards to the technology that we have.
Ryan Knuppel:
Thank you for answering that candidly yeah I mean I agree it’s just such a blurred area and I just I still can’t get over it in my mind how there is even a difference of conversation between some of this stuff like you know I don’t know I just gambling versus fantasy sports and skill and all the above I don’t know I just got I it but blows my mind that there’s still this this this law and blurred line in between it all?
John Latella:
Well, in March, if you look at March was March was responsible gaming month. There’s an entire month. And if you look now, DraftKings, Fando, all the platforms now and good for them, they’re all now launching and they all have an entire department. dedicated to responsible gaming, right? So they’re taking it serious. So, hey, why not have a product, quite frankly, and that’s where we come into the mix, right? I don’t want to be there, but I fill this other void. We’re the responsible gaming alternative to their other products, right?
Ryan Knuppel:
Yeah, yeah. Awesome, John. Well, I’m going to let you go here in a minute. I want to ask one more question, and this has nothing to do with on-demand. This is more, I want to tap into your business brain. I want to ask you, over the years, you’ve had all sorts of business experience, successes, failures, I’m sure. Maybe what’s one or two business tips you could give a young entrepreneur, young entrepreneur, somebody that’s maybe wanting to start out something, getting into some product, some service. They want to be an entrepreneur. They want to run a business. I don’t know, what’s just one tip that you would give somebody?
John Latella:
So the first one I’ll give is, and we all have a hard time with this, especially us more type A personalities, is I say listen, right? Listening is probably the one, I try to tell my kids this every day. When you’re talking, a lot of times you can’t be listening. So when you’re young and you’re trying that you go to these conferences or you’re meeting with people that have other experiences, listen all you can and try to soak up all the information that you can. Right. And then I think I’d mentioned this that I’ll give you another quick, you know, quick one, too. You know, at the end of the day, we it doesn’t matter how good your product is. It doesn’t matter what accomplishments you’ve had in your life or any any other thing that you are. Essentially, we are our our number one.
how do I want to put this? Advocate. Regardless of your business, who you are, be trustworthy. When you promise somebody something, come through on it. If you can’t, at least reach out. You know what I’m saying? Just communicate because at the end of the day, your reputation is more important than any of those extraneous and other things that are going on because that’s what people are going to remembe
Ryan Knuppel:
Very, very, very good tips there, John. I really appreciate that. Yeah, I always say, I don’t care if you don’t like what you’re going to communicate, just communicate it.
It’s better to communicate something negative than to not communicate it at all in business in general. You may not like it. It may not be good news, but it’s better than just sweeping it under the rug and saying, I don’t want to talk about it. So business all day, I believe John, but for lack of time, we won’t, I won’t keep you here doing that. But man, John, I really appreciate the, the knowledge you brought here today and wish you nothing but success with on-demand fantasy sports. And I’m excited to see where it goes. And I encourage everyone out here to, reach out to john touch base he has a lot going on a lot of a lot of cool stuff here a lot of opportunities as well from a business side so I encourage you all to connect with him and see where that might lead uh in the industry so thank you for being here john
John Latella:
ryan thanks for having me appreciate it man
Ryan Knuppel:
any last words anything we we missed or forgot
John Latella:
No, I’ve got the masters on the back. We’re going to see if Scotty Sheffler can come through for, you know, he seems to be the betting odds on favorite here. So there you go.
Ryan Knuppel:
Awesome, John. Well, I appreciate it. We’ll get the show notes. We’ll have all that information in there. Can’t wait to have you on in a couple of years with more successes with the product.
John Latella:
Thanks, Ryan. Thanks again.
Ryan Knuppel:
All right, that was John Latella, On Demand Fantasy Sports, episode 217. What a great show. Great business guy. Awesome product. I can’t wait to play around with that. And, man, I’m going to get some of my old-time favorite players in a lineup. I can’t wait to mix and max some lineups. That actually sounds really fun. So excited to do that and jump in. Hey, I wanted to say thank you to all of you listeners, watchers, however you’re consuming this content. Thank you for giving us support. We’re at episode 217. It’s crazy. Excited to bring some more awesome sports business leaders to you through this channel. We’ll see what we can do. But like I said in the beginning of the show, if you’re going to be at SBC North America, please reach out. I’d love to chat with you, sit down, talk, have a drink, whatever we can do. All right, that’s episode 217. Until next time, stay safe. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.
Relevant Guest Links
- Learn more On Demand Fantasy Sports.
- You can connect with John Latella on LinkedIn.
More Knup Sports Links
- I refer to Knup Sports often in my show. That’s our sports passion site. Check out KnupSports.com here.
- If you are looking for sports content services you can find more information on the Knup Solutions website.
- Listen to more episodes of the Knup Sports Show.
- Want to be a guest on our show? Setup a time that works here.
- Subscribe to the Knup Sports Show on iTunes here.
