The Pomp Podcast - #857 Fan Controlled Football - The Ultimate Fantasy League w/ Sohrob Farudi

Starting point is 00:00:00 what's up everyone this is anthony pompliano most of you know me as pomp you're listening to the pomp podcast simply the best podcast out there now let's kick this thing off so rob farudi is the co-founder and ceo at fan controlled football in this conversation we talk about this brand new indoor football league we also talk about all of the different integrations they have with web3 and why fan participation mixed with sports is so powerful Before we get into this episode, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. Hope that you enjoy this episode just as much as I did. Today's episode is brought to you by Exodus, the world's leading desktop, mobile, and hardware crypto wallet.

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Starting point is 00:01:58 Abra, conquer crypto. Go check it out today. This episode is brought to you by DeFi Technologies. DeFi Technologies represents what's next in the digital economy. They're providing simplified, trusted access to crypto, decentralized finance, and Web3 investment opportunities. Institutions and investors can gain diversified, secure, compliant, and easily tradable access to a diversified set of industry-leading equity products and protocols through a single stock purchase on a regulated exchange.

Starting point is 00:02:27 DeFi Technologies is currently listed on the U.S. Exchange at DEFTF Stock Ticker and the Canadian NEO Exchange at DEFI. For more information or to subscribe to receive company updates and financial information, visit their website at DeFi.Tech. I'm really excited about what these guys are doing. I've become an advisor to the business and I highly suggest you go check them out. Go to their website at defi.tech today. All right, let's get in this episode. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast

Starting point is 00:03:01 are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. So Rob, how are you there, my friend? I'm great. I'm great. Thanks for having me. All right. So we have big news. Joe's going to tell the big news first. Do you know what the news is? No. All right. Maybe we don't have big news. We'll get to it as we go. Fan-controlled football. Sounds like an awesome name. Most people who are watching this have no clue what that is.

Starting point is 00:03:38 Help us understand what you guys are building to start with. Yeah, it's an IRL professional football league. So real players, real teams, real league. But fans call the plays and draft the players and interact with the league like they're playing a video game like Madden. All the way to calling plays in real time and the guys on the field do what the fans want, which is what we all want to see in real sports when we're yelling at the screen. So we've kind of brought that to life. All right. First big thing people are going to ask me.

Starting point is 00:04:08 a big part of our audience is international football. Are we talking football or are we talking football? Which one are we going with here? Are we talking American football? I usually put the American. American football, ladies and gentlemen. I know you guys want to kick the ball around on the grass, but we're playing real football for a second. Yeah, I said real. All right. When we start to think about this, obviously there's people who have always wanted the idea of calling the plays, acting as the GM, all this type of stuff. How do you actually execute on that from a technology standpoint and what can, uh, fans do unilaterally versus do they need the

Starting point is 00:04:41 buy-in from the team management or, or the coaches themselves? Yeah, look, we start with, uh, with new franchises. So we had, uh, four teams in our inaugural season, which was last year in February and March, uh, fans built these franchises from the ground up. They started with, uh, with nothing blank canvas, uh, fans named the teams, uh, all of the logos or fan design logos, uh, that fans voted on and chose uh and then we brought about 100 guys into the league uh for the season fan we did a live draft fans draft the players literally draft the players live onto their roster uh and it's as a group so you are joining a team uh you know we have team owners like marshawn lynch and richard sherman quavo formigos austin eckler a bunch of you know nfl guys and

Starting point is 00:05:26 uh and social media stars um and so as a fan when you join the league you block into a team and now you and your other fans of that team are working together to make these decisions. And what we say is not all fans are created equal. We have something called fan IQ. As you participate, you earn fan IQ, you move up your team's leaderboard and the higher you are on the leaderboard,

Starting point is 00:05:48 the more influence you have over the votes. But it's all fan controlled. We don't get in the middle of play calling. We don't get in the middle of player drafting. this is all uh handed over to the fans to execute on all right now uh obviously an important question how good are these players like you know i played football in college can i go on the field and uh and hold my own or would i get absolutely embarrassed by the players i mean i guess it depends on what college you played at that was a good answer that was a very good answer all right

Starting point is 00:06:21 so where did most of the players uh where did they play did they play college football did they play in the nfl or the amateurs no these are big time guys we had johnny manziel and josh gordon playing the league last season robert turbin uh running running back for seattle seahawks played in the league last season uh we had a couple of guys that their first pro experience was with us out of college and uh sent two guys up to the nfl uh travis toyven and actually got uh signed by the giants a wide receiver uh out of north dakota state uh we had an offensive lineman got signed by the raiders so there's a legitimate football on the field now our game is small it's seven on seven it's on a 50 yard field we play in a single location in a production studio our entire concept

Starting point is 00:07:01 and business model was to reinvent the sport for the digital fan so kind of that fan first and mobile that fan first on twitch uh really creating a rich experience for for the fan at home uh to really watch and play like a video game rather than sitting back and uh you know leaning back and enjoying a three-hour game of football which you know 25 year olds don't do uh and and and the even younger kids definitely don't do um so we really leaned into this idea of a lean forward interactive experience uh that's short and it's a one-hour game and you can get in call plays have a lot of fun and then get out and and do what you want to do all right now uh last year i think you streamed the championship game on twitch and a couple of other venues how many people

Starting point is 00:07:46 watch this thing uh we had over a million viewers uh on on our championship game so that's crazy yeah it was great yeah we've got some great fans right we have rabid fans passionate fans i mean you think about it when you get a chance to call the plays we we had a walk-off game-winning touchdown in our championship game we have thousands of fans that can literally say they called the game-winning touchdown in the championship game right i mean i'm a cow i'm a fan you guys will probably cut me off after this but i mean i i say we we won three superbowls in the 90s i didn't do shit i sat on my couch and watched the team win our fans legitimately called a play and can say that they won right and so that's what we wanted to do we wanted to let fans

Starting point is 00:08:30 actually have some some real impact on the game and feel like they're a part of it and and and help uh give that team to the championship so in the 90s when the giants were winning the three superbowls you didn't do shit but don't worry they haven't done shit since 2000 we have people in the in the comments saying that they would call a hail mary three straight plays and then run a fake pun if that doesn't work. Well, the good news is no kicking, no kicking. So we actually removed kicking from the game completely. No kicking, no special teams.

Starting point is 00:08:58 All right, so you guys recently raised money from a whole bunch of investors. Before we get to who those investors are and all of that, like, why are you so interested in the crypto component of this? And how are you integrating crypto into fan-controlled football? Yeah, I started looking at blockchain back in 2017.

Starting point is 00:09:16 I'm a huge sports card collector, so cardboard cards, passionate about collecting, really saw some unique applications in blockchain from a collectability, digital collectible standpoint, which is what perked me up in the first place. And as I started diving in, what we call what we're doing is a real life video game. And if you think about when you play a video game, mobile game, you're always collecting something, earning gems or gold or diamonds, something in the game that you're then using as that digital currency in that game. So we're looking at integrating cryptocurrency tokenization across the ecosystem as the as the currency, the digital currency of the league. And then as we really lean into blockchain and the technology, the opportunities for digital collectibles, NFT avatars, collectible moments, all of these things come together and build on top of blockchain. So we think there's some really unique opportunities. And then, you know, as we get deeper and deeper into this, you know, DAOs are the new buzzword. I think there's some really unique opportunities for us to work with work with work with DAOs for team governance and team ownership. We're doing governance right now through NFTs, but I think we can really push forward on the DAO side as well.

Starting point is 00:10:33 So I'm excited about just the technology in general. How many teams are there and how do you add a new team to the league? So there were four teams in the first season. We're doubling now. So there'll be eight teams headed into season two. Our first game day is April 16th coming up here in Atlanta. We are managing the additional teams. So we go out and recruit team owners that want to be part of the league. uh we added four teams the four teams we added headed into this season are all uh partner projects in the in the web3 space uh so you know board ape yacht club gutter cat gang knights of dgen and steve aoki and 888 um so we brought uh some really great communities from the web3 space into to be part of this uh the second phase of our of our uh of our league all right uh we have a surprise for the audience a little announcement so rub you already know this

Starting point is 00:11:26 uh joe's gonna say that and then i have a surprise for my brothers but go ahead you go first with this with the surprise for the audience now i'm interested in that but all right so people in the comments are saying that we're asking all these questions because we want a team we don't want a team the surprise is that we invested in the business bang bang bang bang uh and we're super excited about what so robin and the team are building of course uh but now i'm interested in hearing your surprise so april 16th is the opening game and we're going i already got you losers tickets to uh to go there on april 16th barring two things one you have to say i'm the coolest brother you have and and two is when we go you have to carry my bags i'm not carrying

Starting point is 00:12:08 i'm not carrying jack shit bag wise uh but that's funny when did you do that i was literally i meant to text you about that yeah well because i could read mine so we're we're going on april 16th is the opening game it's in duluth georgia is that right can we do it's in it's in atlanta oh in atlanta yeah can we do the uh the coin toss no we do rock paper scissors all right what real questions do you have john how does the economics behind all this work like how how much yeah how do we make money no how much uh how much are players getting based on like league revenues and then how much of that goes back into redevelopments and kind of advancements for the league in total? Yeah. So, I mean, we're really focused. I mean, me and my co-founders

Starting point is 00:12:54 are all startup guys. We've run venture-backed companies before in the past. We're building this kind of like a startup, right? We're in series A. We just raised $40 million round. The guys in the league are paid somewhere between $500 and $1,000 a week plus full room and board. So we take care of every expense that they have and medical as well. One of the things we're really focused on for our players is outside of the game development so we have a team hotel all the guys stay in the in the in the hotel uh for the for the season um and uh there uh we brought in a bunch of people to help them uh build audience and so we're looking for anything about a 21 year old coming out of college uh that guy is uh active on social he's a gamer a lot of these guys are already

Starting point is 00:13:39 content creators so we're helping them really lean into audience building uh streaming on twitch creating their social profiles and social networks um and so that's a big part of what we want to do because our our goal is to connect the players and the fans uh and give these guys something when they're done playing football average career in uh in football pro pro sports uh football is uh is three and a half years um so so give these guys something to lean into uh when they uh when they're out of uh when they're uh when they're done with their their playing careers um and then as far as the economics of the league go uh we are again still in in startup mode we uh we raised a 12 million dollar round uh for our first season if you compare that to aaf and xfl and some of

Starting point is 00:14:24 these other leagues that have come and gone raising hundreds of millions of dollars uh and uh you know and not being able to finish a season um we've really streamlined the entire business our goal is to is to provide a platform and create a platform for other sports uh on top of what we've already built um so fan controlled football fan controlled basketball fan controlled cricket fan controlled baseball these are all uh sports we're going to bring um and we really look at ourselves as a publisher of these new sports so how long does the season last it starts in april and how long does it go for uh it's a nine-week season seven-week regular season four teams make the playoffs and then championship game all right i'm gonna ask i'm put you on the spot right now

Starting point is 00:15:02 we want a team i already got the idea the name of the team and the first person i'm calling we're don't get Saquon to play. This is off season. Hey, listen, come on, man. We need you. Maybe we get Shep to play Daniel Jones. Let's bring the whole giants team seven on seven. We're definitely winning the championship. You're like, Hey, I mean, that'd be a pretty big boom for the, uh, we instantly be the best investors. The whole part where the fans make the decisions. Trust me. If that's what we propose, I think the fans might vote. I want to be a fan of that team no but what is new york with you what is the uh kind of the pitch is it mostly players that either uh are coming out of college don't make it uh in terms of getting

Starting point is 00:15:49 drafted it's players who maybe played some in the league and are trying to either revive their career or still keep playing uh and then do you get like could you get an nfl player in the off season to actually play or how does that work uh so the first three are correct i mean these are really guys if you think about again 21 year old coming out of college that still wants to chase the dream right we're giving them that opportunity and it's great we've proven the path already we had two guys uh that went from you know fan control football into the nfl um so they've seen the quality of the of the play on the field you know a couple of our coaches have super bowl rings um this is this is they're getting really really great coaching and training uh when they

Starting point is 00:16:24 come into the league uh and they get a chance to make film uh which is all these guys want uh is that opportunity to do that to get a chance at the next level um so i mean that's that's the pitch for those guys for yeah we've got uh you know guys that have been in the league bounced around team to team uh maybe we're on some practice squads um nfl guys are not allowed to play outside of i mean if they're out of a contract they could if they were free agents uh they could potentially play uh but they can't play uh in between seasons so i mean it is seven on seven tackle uh it's uh you know it's it's hard hitting fast action football um so there's uh there's obviously risk of injury and things like that so the guys that are on contract would be able to

Starting point is 00:17:01 play i'm lining up at quarterback i want kanye out far left and i want antonio brown out far right and we're going to fail mary every play well tom brady retired so we could get him on brady could play that is true have you guys talked to brady yet we have not uh make that intro but john johnny's playing johnny's coming back so uh we just got druski uh joined the league as a new team owner and he wants to play for druski's team so uh we'll have we'll have some fun man if you want to get you want to line up across from from johnny and go head to head we can probably make that out is that what you're playing beer pong or are we playing football well i'm just saying that you played quarterback in college is that what you were i played wherever they told me

Starting point is 00:17:41 including left bench i'll play whatever i actually uh my brothers think that's funny that's the first time i got to the left in a while all right so what can what can the uh everyday person people who obviously don't have great ideas like we have don't want to get the nfl players to come play what can the average fan what can they do here is it uh just go to a website do they go to an app how do they participate yeah so download the app fcf.io or on or the website it's fcf.io or the fcf app uh download you can choose one of the the eight teams uh the four new teams that we added uh they are it's a governance mechanism uh via an nft so we have something called the Ballers Collective, which you need to own a baller NFT in order to participate

Starting point is 00:18:33 with those four teams. So we really kind of limited that community and that audience of who can actually participate from a play calling standpoint and player drafting standpoint with the four new teams. Our original four teams are all free to play. You can download the app and join and everybody can make decisions. We let fans vote on rules. So they're voting on the overtime format right now uh we've uh we've let you know fans vote on out of bounds you know what's uh is it one foot or two foot um you know we're actually doing a a vote right now uh for a penalty accumulation so again going back to my cowboys who keep getting penalties all the time most penalized team in the nfl we're doing a individual player uh penalty accumulation um so if a guy gets

Starting point is 00:19:16 flagged three times in a game he's done for the game so it's kind of like a red card uh in football we're bringing that concept into american football and so you know we're we're here to listen to the fans we literally changed rules in between games last season because we had a lot of feedback from fans we had some timing rules at the end of our first game uh the fans didn't like the game could have ended really excitingly it ended in a dud because the clock ran out and nobody could figure out how to stop it because fans were calling plays while the clock was running down it was like the hell is happening here this isn't what we were trying to do um so we look at this as an experiment we want this to be built for the fans our motto is power to the fans

Starting point is 00:19:54 um so our goal is to just bring as many football fans as we can uh into this uh participate give us feedback uh and build it with us um and we're moving into other sports so you know this isn't just about uh american football we think there's some really unique applications for for the platform the technology uh for fan control baseball internationally we're looking at cricket uh we've got a version of basketball i think it's going to be really exciting that we'll be unveiling here soon. So I think there's a lot of ways to get involved and help us build.

Starting point is 00:20:25 And that's why I love the Web3 space, honestly. It's a bunch of builders. It's a bunch of entrepreneurs, a bunch of people with big ideas. And, you know, wag me. I mean, we're all going to make it and we all try to do it together. And I love that attitude.

Starting point is 00:20:39 And that's what we've been building since day one. Someone said our team motto should be win or lose, we booze. I almost wore that shirt. I wore the all-fun league, but I've got a winner-lose-me-boos shirt. That's actually Johnny brought that in. That's amazing. I was going to say there's some people that I know that are not very big

Starting point is 00:20:59 Roger Goodell fans. Maybe that would be a prime group to go and get on your side. Seems like you're a lot more likable than – Some good direct marketing right there. Yeah, than Goodell, you know, the no-fun league. It's all right. On top of that, one of our sponsors is 8Sleep. Obviously, we're athletes, right?

Starting point is 00:21:16 We come in here every single day. we perform at the highest levels uh we sleep on the thermoregulated mattress what's your sleep schedule do you get a lot of sleep six hours something like that six we got to jack that up buddy six hours no no you need eight nah you need eight eight sleep the whole point is eight what you got to do is you got to sleep in a cold environment that's what i do you can sleep in a cold environment there's also another secret which is you can drink chamomile tea that has uh what what is the stuff in it? Melatonin. Melatonin, which I didn't get told until after I got the hell is that chamomile tea? Oh, it's the, it's the secret. And you give me shit for

Starting point is 00:21:53 drinking oat milk and you're over here drinking oat milk. Literally oat milk is what I expect. Actually, that's inappropriate to say. Let's just keep going. I was going to say something that was going to just bury you for the rest of the episode. Uh, but, but the, uh, the whole thing around sleep is you got to get enough sleep. Then you get enough energy. It's wild. Obviously, if you get enough sleep, how much more energy you have? Because I used to be like yeah i sleep six hours and you're just like ah you know life is life but then you get eight you know whoa this is different so what's the is it 11 to 7 is that what you're doing is it 10 to 6 i mean ah you know it's it's uh it's up for debate every single night but like whenever

Starting point is 00:22:29 you go to sleep you just kind of wake up eight hours later like you gotta sleep at one like let's just wake up at nine got it that must be nice well the reason why sometimes it's one is because i have a uh a three-month-old baby that's right i explained my baby uh and uh you know sometimes she didn't let you go to sleep right away so you just i'm sleeping for eight hours i hear you i've got a 80 year old and seven year old little girls uh so you say oh eight i'm like an 80 year old little girl i got questions all right where can we send people to uh to find more just go to the actual website that's the best place to send them website's the best fcf.io is the place to go uh follow us on uh twitter um and uh yeah we're we're

Starting point is 00:23:16 we're coming into the season so guys are are coming into camp uh literally uh next week um and uh we we announced a couple things over the past couple of months but we've got a deal now with nbc so games are on nbc lx and peacock internationally they're on the zone um 200 markets uh around the globe still on twitch as well uh twitch.tv slash fcf uh we've got a huge content team we're gonna be bringing tons of content from camp and live streaming practices and look our goal is to let fans get behind the curtain right we all of the things that we never get to see that happen in pro sports we're gonna let fans see we want you to see the the coaches meetings and film review and let you just get into the league in a way that you never have

Starting point is 00:24:01 uh we think there's something really exciting about that and that's why we're we're helping our players uh you know learn how to build audience and and and entertain outside of the lines for us we take football really seriously inside the lines outside the lines i mean it's it's a free-for-all uh we want guys to be themselves we want them to entertain we want them to say what's on their mind uh we we pay bonuses for the best interview uh after the game based on fans paying the player choosing their best interview so guys aren't coming off the They'll go, yeah, you know, just did what the coach said. We executed our game plan.

Starting point is 00:24:32 We, you know, got the win. One team we've worked hard. Who wants to hear that? Nobody, right? So we want to hear what's really on your mind and, you know, why you got your ass kicked or why you won. And so we're really, we're really hyping that side of it up because we're leaning into entertainment

Starting point is 00:24:48 as much as this is pro sports. Damn, we should have invested more. All right, so Rob, listen, I appreciate you. I appreciate you joining us. April 16th, anyone who's not there, you should watch it live streamed on the various platforms. We'll get you guys more information. Maybe Joe will give us like a weekly

Starting point is 00:25:05 update of the league as this continues during the season. But we appreciate you joining us and we'll definitely have to do it again as the league continues to grow. Absolutely. Thanks for having me, guys. Appreciate it. Thanks, buddies. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one.

Starting point is 00:25:21 Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to palmscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to palmscryptocourse.com to learn more, and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.

The Pomp Podcast - #857 Fan Controlled Football - The Ultimate Fantasy League w/ Sohrob Farudi

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