Otis
Footballguy
Dear Joe,
I'd like to make an offer to buy Footballguys.com
Well, portions of it.
My interns have worked with our outside accounting firm to look at your financials and the business case as a whole, and we're prepared to make what we believe to be a very fair offer.
We began with publicly-available valuations, and noted a number of prominent audited valuation websites, which valued Footballguys.com in the ballpark of $265,000.
Now, there are a number of pieces we won't need. I'd like the FFA, and the Shark Pool. You can keep the Assistant Coach's Forum, the IDP forum, the Baseball forum, and the Soccer forum. My offer will require the right to relaunch the Test Forum, possibly under new branding, and I'll want the ability to open a gambling forum and politics forum should we decide to go that route. You can also have all the Daily Fantasy Sports-related content; our compliance guys have assured me that won't float two years from now anyway. Also, we won't need any of the apps or dominators or matrices and the like.
Based on a word-count and Google Adwords hash analysis--which I'm willing to share under NDA should our discussions go forward--I'm informed that the portions we're talking about make up approximately 32.4% of Footballguys.com. Accordingly, this pegs the fair market value of this portion at approximately $85,800.
In terms of personnel/employment issues, we won't need a number of your folks, and so you'll be able to maintain most of your team. Obviously, you'll be relieved of your post; I would like to keep on Dodds in an advisory capacity, on a contract basis that we will renegotiate with him annually (frankly, I don't know that we'll require his services beyond 2018, but we can take that as it comes). I'll need Chase given his connections with national media outlets; those will be important for what I have planned. I'd like to keep on Maurile, I'll need the IT department (Keith), and I'd like whatever existing contract rights you hold with Shick!; I'd like to make him an offer to reinstate him as lead board moderator. We won't need most of the remaining staff: Pasquino, Tefertiller, MoP, et al.,* though I would like the right to at last have conversations with Aaron and Clayton about staying on with us, and I'll need rights to retain, at least as an independent contractor, the "first off, how are you" interview guy. But you can keep the rest of the staff to continue to build out your Baseball and IDP content, along with the daily fantasy golf content.
My employment advisors inform me that, on a headcount basis, we are only looking at approximately 5% of your staff; on a value basis, the figure that would fairly be applied to these folks is on the order of 45%. That said, I'm willing to compromise and only cut on a 30% basis here. That brings fair market value to $25,740.
In terms of content, I'll need all mine back. The annual Coach Otis Hawk Writeup, I understand, drives a substantial percentage of your August traffic, and I'll need to maintain rights to that going forward. You can continue to release your Draft Dominator; frankly--and this is not intended to be disparaging--I don't think you're really offering a competing product there anyway. The FFA content is worth more to me than it is to you, and I'm aware of that. My interns have a file--and I mean a complete file--documenting the number of times you have been on the cusp of shutting it down entirely, so we're aware this is not, at least in your view, a significant portion of the business. But the content there matters to me. I'm willing to stipulate that the content I and the FFA are driving probably make up 80% of what matters in terms of content; on a word count basis, timschochet's verbosity is matched by the QBBC and IDP articles in combination with the DRAFT KINGS advertisements, so word counts are close. Given all of the content we're leaving with you, we're looking only to reduce another 25% -- to a total of $19,305.
I don't know if you have interns, but I won't need them. My folks have been trained up in recent years, and they will do. I'm willing to consider this a wash.
Bottom line -- and you know I value this place greatly, a fact I will not hide -- I'm willing to offer a premium on these portions of Footballguys.com, for a limited time only, to the tune of $21,450.
Let me know your views when you have a chance. I'm not saying this is a "take it or leave it" offer; I'm willing to have a discussion. But frankly, you'll have a lot of work ahead of you in evidencing values beyond this. And I also cannot promise this offer, or my interest generally, will remain on the table very long. But it's here now.
Thanks for your time and consideration--I look forward to hearing from you.
Best regards,
Otis
Member #340
*NOTE: I'll also need the rights to use that doctor who sends out an e-mail once a year when Adrian Peterson gets hurt, predicting that he probably tore his ACL. He has a girl's name; or maybe it is a girl. Anyway, I'll need that person.
I'd like to make an offer to buy Footballguys.com
Well, portions of it.
My interns have worked with our outside accounting firm to look at your financials and the business case as a whole, and we're prepared to make what we believe to be a very fair offer.
We began with publicly-available valuations, and noted a number of prominent audited valuation websites, which valued Footballguys.com in the ballpark of $265,000.
Now, there are a number of pieces we won't need. I'd like the FFA, and the Shark Pool. You can keep the Assistant Coach's Forum, the IDP forum, the Baseball forum, and the Soccer forum. My offer will require the right to relaunch the Test Forum, possibly under new branding, and I'll want the ability to open a gambling forum and politics forum should we decide to go that route. You can also have all the Daily Fantasy Sports-related content; our compliance guys have assured me that won't float two years from now anyway. Also, we won't need any of the apps or dominators or matrices and the like.
Based on a word-count and Google Adwords hash analysis--which I'm willing to share under NDA should our discussions go forward--I'm informed that the portions we're talking about make up approximately 32.4% of Footballguys.com. Accordingly, this pegs the fair market value of this portion at approximately $85,800.
In terms of personnel/employment issues, we won't need a number of your folks, and so you'll be able to maintain most of your team. Obviously, you'll be relieved of your post; I would like to keep on Dodds in an advisory capacity, on a contract basis that we will renegotiate with him annually (frankly, I don't know that we'll require his services beyond 2018, but we can take that as it comes). I'll need Chase given his connections with national media outlets; those will be important for what I have planned. I'd like to keep on Maurile, I'll need the IT department (Keith), and I'd like whatever existing contract rights you hold with Shick!; I'd like to make him an offer to reinstate him as lead board moderator. We won't need most of the remaining staff: Pasquino, Tefertiller, MoP, et al.,* though I would like the right to at last have conversations with Aaron and Clayton about staying on with us, and I'll need rights to retain, at least as an independent contractor, the "first off, how are you" interview guy. But you can keep the rest of the staff to continue to build out your Baseball and IDP content, along with the daily fantasy golf content.
My employment advisors inform me that, on a headcount basis, we are only looking at approximately 5% of your staff; on a value basis, the figure that would fairly be applied to these folks is on the order of 45%. That said, I'm willing to compromise and only cut on a 30% basis here. That brings fair market value to $25,740.
In terms of content, I'll need all mine back. The annual Coach Otis Hawk Writeup, I understand, drives a substantial percentage of your August traffic, and I'll need to maintain rights to that going forward. You can continue to release your Draft Dominator; frankly--and this is not intended to be disparaging--I don't think you're really offering a competing product there anyway. The FFA content is worth more to me than it is to you, and I'm aware of that. My interns have a file--and I mean a complete file--documenting the number of times you have been on the cusp of shutting it down entirely, so we're aware this is not, at least in your view, a significant portion of the business. But the content there matters to me. I'm willing to stipulate that the content I and the FFA are driving probably make up 80% of what matters in terms of content; on a word count basis, timschochet's verbosity is matched by the QBBC and IDP articles in combination with the DRAFT KINGS advertisements, so word counts are close. Given all of the content we're leaving with you, we're looking only to reduce another 25% -- to a total of $19,305.
I don't know if you have interns, but I won't need them. My folks have been trained up in recent years, and they will do. I'm willing to consider this a wash.
Bottom line -- and you know I value this place greatly, a fact I will not hide -- I'm willing to offer a premium on these portions of Footballguys.com, for a limited time only, to the tune of $21,450.
Let me know your views when you have a chance. I'm not saying this is a "take it or leave it" offer; I'm willing to have a discussion. But frankly, you'll have a lot of work ahead of you in evidencing values beyond this. And I also cannot promise this offer, or my interest generally, will remain on the table very long. But it's here now.
Thanks for your time and consideration--I look forward to hearing from you.
Best regards,
Otis
Member #340
*NOTE: I'll also need the rights to use that doctor who sends out an e-mail once a year when Adrian Peterson gets hurt, predicting that he probably tore his ACL. He has a girl's name; or maybe it is a girl. Anyway, I'll need that person.
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