Support Unpaid Fantasy Sports Content Team

My name is Ed Williams, and I'm a member of the Board of Directors for the Fantasy Sports and Gaming Association (FSGA). I was contracted to build a fantasy sports content team and content plan for a startup site in August.

We brought in many of the most talented content creators in our industry to join the team, but on Oct. 31, the team was forced to stop production as everyone was owed a lot of money by the startup founder who miscalculated his investment partners.

For many of the content team, this was the second year in a row that, right before the holidays, companies would stop paying them as they also endured layoffs from a major media company last year. Our industry's content creators work for less than most industries because of the passion of fantasy sports fans. That does not mean that promises broken should affect their children or families around the holidays.

Unfortunately, our story is not unique to this industry or even with freelancers in general. Far too often, these hard working men and women are taken advantage of. Not only has the team gone unpaid for two months, but that's two additional months everyone could have been contributing to other outlets that would actually pay their content creators. Instead, everyone is now scrambling to find additional opportunities at the most challenging time of the year.

While we don't know what lies ahead, I would consider myself lucky to be able to work with anyone on this team again in the future.

Our fundraiser goal of $59,199 would make every member of the content team whole - nothing more. If by some miracle, the founder does end up paying us all back, all proceeds from this GoFundMe will be donated to Fantasy Cares, which works closely with Toys for Tots this time of year.