Ottoneu Fantasy Sports has acquired OnRoto.com, a deeply customizable fantasy baseball league manager, home of the AL- and NL-only Tout Wars leagues.
I’ll have some more to say on this very exciting situation soon. In the mean time, this is what Scott Wilderman just shared with his community:
We are delighted to announce that OnRoto has reached an agreement to become part of Ottoneu Fantasy Baseball and will be hosted by FanGraphs . More specifically, Niv Shah, the founder of Ottoneu (check out the write-up of Niv and Ottoneu in the Washington Post from several years ago) has purchased OnRoto and is going to be running it at FanGraphs (with as much help from us as it takes, of course). Ottoneu (which has an impeccable reputation for customer support) is a very innovative fantasy platform that has cultivated a fervent, dedicated customer base over the last 15 years. But the game style that Ottoneu supports is very specific and specialized, and is completely unlike what OnRoto does, making us ideal partners.
We’ve been looking for someone to take over OnRoto for a while, and we are certain we have found the perfect landing spot. Niv is the only person we talked with who wants to preserve all of the specialized, quirky options and formats that OnRoto supports. Plus, moving OnRoto to a large platform like FanGraphs presents an opportunity to integrate some of their extensive player evaluation content into OnRoto. It’s just a great fit.
We (Niv and OnRoto) envision the migration as a two-year process. In 2026, we plan to run the current OnRoto software at FanGraphs. Almost everything will work pretty much the same as it always has. For 2027, though, the OnRoto web interface will be given a very long overdue facelift. All the current functionality will still be available, but with a more modern presentation. In fact, updating the programming next year will allow OnRoto to more easily handle some of the more intricate special options that the current software struggles with. In other words, we should be able to say “yes” to even more customization requests than we currently do.
Some practical matters:
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We hope to finish migrating the current OnRoto site to FanGraphs servers by March 1. OnRoto will have to go down for an hour or so overnight when that then happens to port over the latest version of all the league data.
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Because of that, we’ve decided that we won’t be making the draft rooms available until March 1. Because there are no overseas games 2 weeks ahead of the actual Opening Day this year, that date should allow plenty of time for everyone to get set up and get practice drafts in.
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We are working on getting set up with a new credit card processor, and hope to be done by March 15 or so. The happy news here is that we won’t be asking for an additional fee with the new processor. The league fee will be just $99 ($149 for ad-free), no surcharge. (Note that OnRoto league fees are separate from FanGraphs Membership, and a FanGraphs Membership is not required to have OnRoto host your league.)
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Note that OnRoto has never really had a renewal/signup process – the site is available all year round, and we just assume that you are coming back, and that you’ll pay when you’re ready. That policy is still in effect, so there’s no need to worry about the payment not being available yet. Just get ready for the upcoming season as you always would
We’re extremely excited about this. Niv is committed to modernizing OnRoto while retaining (and even expanding) its functionality and capability, and at the same time enhancing the overall experience by integrating OnRoto into FanGraphs. OnRoto will be better than ever – it’s win/win/win. If anyone has questions for Niv, you can reach him at help@ottoneu.com.
Obviously, we are going to be a little busy for a while. We’ll post updates here as things progress.