"Wall Street's $1 Million Fantasy Football League" (Hedge Fund/Highroller's Fantasy!)

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Wall Street's $1 Million Fantasy League
by Jon Weinbach
Saturday, October 18, 2008provided byWSJ

Top Financiers Compete to Build the Best Pretend NFL Team; Trash Talk on the Chat Board

The financial crisis has been scorching investors around the globe. But through it all, some of the world's wealthiest financiers still have enough money to play in one of Wall Street's most exclusive and secretive competitions: A fantasy football league where the total purse is $1 million.
More from WSJ.com:

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The list of participants in the league, which has existed since at least 2002, includes Paul Tudor Jones, the legendary trader who helped build the hedge-fund industry; Raj Rajaratnam, the Sri Lanka native who founded Galleon Group, one of the world's largest hedge funds; Chris James, the head of Partner Fund Management in San Francisco; Jim Pallotta, a former associate of Mr. Tudor's who is part owner of the Boston Celtics; and Michael Novogratz, a former U.S. Army helicopter pilot who is president of Fortress Investment Group, the publicly traded firm that says it manages approximately $35 billion in assets.

Stanley Druckenmiller, the 55-year-old founder of Duquesne Capital, who recently made a bid to buy the Pittsburgh Steelers, was one of the fantasy league's original members. When he quit the league before this season, his spot was taken by John Griffin of Blue Ridge Capital, a protégé of hedge-fund titan Julian Robertson.

According to one league member who declined to be identified, the participants have decided not to expand beyond 10 teams, and there's a waiting list to get in. "We're not trying to exclude people," the person said. "It's just boys being boys."

The league has been the subject of water-cooler chatter at several Wall Street firms, including Goldman Sachs. Michael Daffey, a partner who runs the firm's European equities group from the London office, won the league last year and is widely regarded as its unofficial gatekeeper. Mr. Daffey declined to comment.

According to two participants and several business associates of league members, each of its 10 teams pays $100,000 to enter. The winner takes home a grand prize of $600,000, with $300,000 going to the second-place finisher and $100,000 for third place. These sums dwarf the typical pot for a fantasy football league, where each member antes up somewhere between $250 and $500 and the winner's prize rarely exceeds $3,000.

Participants say the winnings are donated to charity. The top three finishers choose which philanthropies receive their prize money. A spokesman for Goldman Sachs said Mr. Daffey donated his share last year to charities related to "children's causes," although he would not identify which ones. In 2004, when Mr. Rajaratnam won the league, he says all the prize money was donated to Tsunami Relief Inc., a charity he founded to benefit victims of the storm that killed nearly 200,000 people in southeast Asia.

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Thanks to an exemption in Internet gaming laws, fans can wager on fantasy football and use the internet to participate in leagues that award prize money. Unlike sports betting or casino-style card games, fantasy sports are considered games of skill rather than games of chance, and are therefore sanctioned by government gaming authorities.

The easy availability of online statistics and real-time scoring "comissioner" services has made it much easier for fans to play, and ESPN, Yahoo, CBS Sportsline and the National Football League now host millions of leagues on their websites. This season, nearly four million fans will play Yahoo's free fantasy football game, up 300% from 2002.


Mr. Jones, a Memphis native, named his team "Tennessee Studs." The team belonging to Mr. Pallotta, who recently moved into a 21,000-square foot mansion in Weston, Mass., is known as "Boston Attitude." The league hosts an annual postseason dinner, which in the past has been held at Rao's, an Italian restaurant in Harlem.

There's plenty of trash-talking, especially on Sundays, when the most active owners post comments, and occasional insults, on the league's private message board on ESPN.com. The participants also share many of the traumas that all fantasy leaguers endure: Last December, when Philadelphia running back Brian Westbrook took a knee near the goal line instead of scoring a touchdown at the end of a game against Dallas, he cost one owner in the Wall Street League a precious touchdown and ended his title hopes.

Thanks to an exemption in Internet gaming laws, fans can wager on fantasy football and use the internet to participate in leagues that award prize money. Unlike sports betting or casino-style card games, fantasy sports are considered games of skill rather than games of chance, and are therefore sanctioned by government gaming authorities.
The easy availability of online statistics and real-time scoring "comissioner" services has made it much easier for fans to play, and ESPN, Yahoo, CBS Sportsline and the National Football League now host millions of leagues on their websites. This season, nearly four million fans will play Yahoo's free fantasy football game, up 300% from 2002

hobby has long attracted numbers geeks in business and finance, who are accustomed to tracking the performance of their portfolios to the hundredth of a percentage point and keeping track of the competition. Rick Conklin, a managing director at a wealth management firm in Chicago, presides over a league that includes several top executives and has a total prize pot of about $40,000. At the end of the season, Mr. Conklin says, the owners gather in Las Vegas on Super Bowl weekend. The league champion must contribute $3,000 for a party at the Bellagio hotel. "It's the new poker," Mr. Conklin says.

The members of the $1 million league have not give interviews about the league or sought publicity. Participants say Mr. Druckenmiller, a rabid football fan who has attended Pittsburgh Steelers' home games with his face painted in the team's yellow and black colors, quit the league largely because of concerns that the size of the prize pool, if it became known, could hamper his bid to buy the Steelers. Mr. Druckenmiller declined comment.

This season, participants say there's been a little less chatter on the message board. "The last thing you want to do is talk about is the financial crisis," says one owner. "But I would all bet we're all spending a lot less time on football these days."

-- Jenny Strasburg contributed to this article

more at.........
http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/105973/Wall-Street's-%241-Million-Fantasy-League

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