Company Profile

In 1997, three Northwestern graduates, Peter Schoenke, Jeff Erickson and Herb Ilk, came up with an idea that changed the fantasy sports market forever: to provide real-time news and analysis for fantasy sports junkies like themselves. RotoNews.com was born and revolutionized the industry.

Not long after they launched the site, the founders realized that the demand for real-time information was beyond even their wildest expectations. Suddenly, RotoNews was consistently ranked among the 10 largest sports sites in surveys by both Media Metrix and PC Data, topping such sites as FoxSports.com. RotoNews became so big that the owners decided to chase the same dot-com bubble as everyone else and sold the company to a West Coast corporation in 1999. In 2001 that company's management (which the RotoNews founders were not part of), misjudged the "new economy" and went bankrupt. RotoNews.com was stuck in bankruptcy limbo.

The RotoNews team decided to march on and continue to provide the fantasy news, information and commissioner services that served the industry so well, but as a new business: RotoWire.com. The tremendous changes in the Internet advertising market also caused the business model of the new web site to change (along with the rest of the fantasy industry).

The same editors, writers, and programmers that made RotoNews.com the leading brand for fantasy news on the Web created RotoWire.com. The writing talent is the same: Editors Jeff Erickson and Chris Liss, along with contributors Scott Pianowski, Peter Schoenke, Tim Schuler, Michael Romanowski and Herb Ilk joined the RotoWire.com web site along with the complete network of writers that kept our coverage the best on the web. Since then we've added some new faces, but the core group remains the same.

And today, the two sites are finally one again. However, our goal here is the same: to be the best resource of real-time information and draft preparation for fantasy players anywhere. The business model may have changed, and competitors and knock-off copycats of our original concept may have emerged, but few will argue we still produce the most timely and thorough information on the web.

Team Owner

Jeff Erickson will be representing RotoWire in the SOFA League.