Latest news with #AdrianWojnarowski
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Players Health, the Woj-Touted Insurance Firm, Feels Growing Pains
Players Health, the sports-focused insurance broker and software-as-a-service company, added another plume to its cap last week, announcing that Adrian Wojnarowski—the former ESPN NBA insider turned St. Bonaventure basketball GM—had joined as a brand ambassador. According to reports, the Woj tie-in is part of a broader insurance partnership between Players Health and the Bonnies program. The move comes just four months after the company closed a $60 million funding round, which brought its total investment into the nine figures. More from Deion's Alamo Bowl Insurance Boast Undercut by the Numbers NCAA Chief's UnitedHealth Board Seat Spotlights Insurance Career Philadelphia Eagles Come Up Short in COVID Insurance Case In December, founder and CEO Tyrre Burks told Sportico the company had sold $80 million in premiums across 15,000 policies in 2024 alone, covering more than 5 million athletes. A former college football player at Winona State in Minnesota, Burks has framed Players Health's growth as a personal mission to 'create the safest and most accessible environments for athletes to play the sports they love'—the company's official tagline. Since launching in 2015, Players Health has built its foundation in the amateur sports market, securing partnerships with US Youth Soccer, USA Cheer and USA Boxing. In March 2024, Players Health announced a $28 million funding round led by Mastry Ventures—co-founded by former NBA star Andre Iguodala—and global specialty insurer SiriusPoint. Around the same time, the company commenced an aggressive play for the college sports insurance market, introducing a novel contract protection product for NIL collectives while also trying to get into the critical injury coverage niche. As Sportico previously reported, this space has long been defined by volatility and controversy, with a boom-and-bust cycle in loss-of-value coverage and a trail of legal battles over disputed policies. Entering the scene, Players Health has asserted itself as a trustworthy alternative in a market plagued by broken promises and unmet expectations. 'What sets Players Health apart is that they are an insurance technology company built by athletes, for athletes,' said a company spokesperson. Even before enlisting Wojnarowski, Burks had garnered glowing media recognition. In 2022, the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal named him one of the Twin Cities' 'Most Admired CEOs,' and Silver Waves Media included him among the '70 Most Impactful People in the NIL Space.' Despite these accolades, Players Health advance has come with some yellow flags: A review of public records by Sportico finds that, since 2021, Burks or Players Health has faced at least nine regulatory actions by state insurance commissioners in seven different states, primarily stemming from untimely filings and disclosure failures. These include: March 2021: Penalized by the Kentucky Department of Insurance for failing to file surplus lines taxes on time. July 2021: Entered a consent agreement with the Kansas Insurance Commissioner after repeatedly missing deadlines to file an excess lines report and remit taxes. Burks agreed to pay a $100 fine. November 2021: Issued a consent order by the Washington State Tax Commissioner for failing to disclose prior regulatory actions taken in other states. March 2022: Paid a penalty in Louisiana for failing to disclose out-of-state regulatory actions. March 2022: Had a license application denied in Kansas due to incomplete disclosure of required information. October 2022: Signed an agreed entry with the Indiana Department of Insurance and paid a $1,500 fine for failing to disclose administrative actions. November 2022: Fined $500 by the Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance for nondisclosure of previous administrative actions. April 2024: Fined $2,500 by the New York State Department of Financial Services after admitting to nondisclosure of multiple prior regulatory actions. July 2024: Ordered to pay a $2,000 fine by Wisconsin for failing to provide timely notice of administrative actions. Through a spokesperson, Players Health attributed the aforementioned to 'procedural oversights that were promptly identified and corrected.' 'Since then, Players Health has implemented improved compliance protocols and engaged third-party licensing experts to ensure adherence with all state-level requirements going forward,' the spokesperson added. 'We remain fully cooperative with all regulatory bodies, and all licenses are in good standing.' Players Health operates as both an insurance broker and a managing general agent—an independent entity that contracts with insurers to solicit, negotiate and execute insurance contracts on their behalf. Burks founded the company in 2015 after a series of career-ending injuries cut short his brief pro career in the Canadian Football League. Initially, he raised $1.31 million in financing through convertible notes, drawing investments primarily from VC firms and individuals in his hometown of Chicago. In March 2018, the company launched an equity crowdfunding campaign seeking up to $106,699—funds it said were needed to cover two months of operating expenses while working to close a Series A round. 'Youth sports organizations are experiencing a significant increase in the liability for the failure to properly manage injuries, and protect athletes from staff misconduct and abuse,' the company said in in its offering statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 'Players Health solves the problem for sports organizations and insurers.' Operating under the legal name Ao1 Solutions Inc., Players Health described its model as offering a free risk management SaaS platform to youth sports organizations, then using the data it collects to underwrite insurance and develop competitively priced products. In addition to founder Burks, the company's early leadership team featured a mix of professionals with athletic backgrounds. Chris Pesigan, a CPA and former rugby player at Notre Dame, served as COO. Kari Moxness, a former University of Arizona volleyball player, led client education and performance. Dylan Wong, who played soccer at Macalester College, directed customer acquisition. Rounding out the team was general counsel Otis Grigsby, a former NFL player who played college football at the University of Kentucky. The company's initial crowdfunding campaign closed in February 2019 without reaching its goal. However, by July of that year, it secured $2 million in fresh capital under a newly restructured parent entity, Ao1 Holdings Inc. With fresh capital in place, the company began adding to its leadership team—a process that brought two key hires as well as legal complications. In March 2021, Players Health appointed Jayson DeMarco as head of underwriting. He had previously been director of sports and wellness at NSM Insurance Group, which later sued both DeMarco and Players Health, alleging violations of confidentiality and non-solicitation clauses from his prior role. DeMarco and the company denied any wrongdoing, and the dispute was settled in late 2023 under undisclosed terms. DeMarco now serves as the company's vice president of underwriting. Citing company policy, a Players Health spokesperson declined to comment on the litigation or its resolution. Soon after DeMarco's hiring, the company named Naveen Anand as group president of insurance. Anand had recently stepped down as CEO of Hallmark Financial Services amid a class action securities fraud lawsuit filed by investors following financial troubles that led to Hallmark's eventual delisting from Nasdaq. That lawsuit was ultimately dismissed. Anand left Players Health by mid-2023 to become president of Cirrata Group, the insurance division of Ambac Financial Group, but maintained his Players Health board of directors seat until this year. A Players Health spokesperson credited Anand for 'informing the company's growth strategy during an important period of scale.' Anand's role was not backfilled, the spokesperson added, 'as the company's structure and leadership model evolved.' Best of MLB Franchise Valuations Ranking List: From Yankees to Marlins MLS Franchise Valuations Ranking List: From LAFC to CF Montréal Tennis Prize Money Tracker: Which Player Has Earned the Most in 2025?
Washington Post
09-04-2025
- Sport
- Washington Post
The latest innovation for Woj as St. Bonaventure GM: Insurance
SAN ANTONIO — Six months into his new life, Adrian Wojnarowski plugged in his phone and set it face down on the floor of a hotel conference room. It would stay that way for more than 30 minutes, buzzing alone, untouched. Back in the fall, Wojnarowski — widely and colloquially known as Woj — traded an attachment to his phone as a preeminent NBA news-breaker for an even deeper attachment to his alma mater, St. Bonaventure University in western New York, where he became the general manager of the men's basketball team. He was at the Final Four this past week to help the program in ways normal and not. Sure, he mingled with coaches, spoke at a conference, talked hoops over dinner. But he also took dozens of photos with fans, signed memorabilia for future auctions and squeezed in a mini press tour. Little is normal about what St. Bonaventure is trying to do with its mid-major resources. And little is normal about having a GM with 6.4 million followers on X who became famous for his reporting with ESPN. 'I'm trying to get high-major players for mid-major money,' Wojnarowski said in an interview Saturday, his first season finished, his first transfer portal cycle almost wrapped, too. The Bonnies went 22-12, including 9-9 in the Atlantic 10 (good for seventh out of 15 teams). But in the past month, two desired big men — Frank Mitchell and Joe Grahovac — committed to the program, something that might have seemed impossible before Wojnarowski arrived. Mitchell, who has signed with the Bonnies, played at Canisius and Minnesota. Grahovac, a 6-foot-10 redhead from Fullerton College, a junior college in California, is expected to sign next week. To close the gap between what St. Bonaventure and what most other programs can offer in name, image and likeness (NIL) money, Wojnarowski has been creative. In the fall, at least one rep from every NBA team will attend a practice on campus, his way of tapping connections to promote the players to pro evaluators. Beyond that, he gives a hard sell for longtime coach Mark Schmidt, who he said is at a Hall of Fame level. St. Bonaventure also is using insurance policies. Yes, insurance policies. Division I sports are amid a period of rapid, uncertain change. That Wojnarowski is the Bonnies' GM is one example. Another is that he used insurance policies to build next year's roster. All of it is done through a company called Players Health. The insurance works in two ways: First, the Bonnies will have critical injury insurance for their entire payroll in 2025-26. And second, depending on the player and contract, the team has insurance policies on performance incentives, allowing the Bonnies to offer more money than they actually have to spend. This is all new for college hoops. In Wojnarowski's first year, St. Bonaventure, like all programs, relied solely on donors and other third-party deals to pay its players. Soon, though, pending a major legal settlement, schools could be permitted to pay athletes directly for the first time. But whatever the situation is moving forward, Wojnarowski believes insurance is an edge for his mid-major team. With the critical injury insurance, the Bonnies can sign players to contracts that aren't fully guaranteed to be paid by the school. If a player is injured and misses a certain amount of time, a bulk of his agreed-upon salary would be paid out by the insurance policy, meaning the Bonnies would save some cash for a future roster. With the insurance on performance incentives, think of this way: If Wojnarowski is going for a player and another school is offering $10,000 more — $10,000 the Bonnies don't have — he can offer $10,000 in insured performance incentives to make up the difference. Maybe the premium, paid to Players Health, is $1,000. But if the player is first-team all-A-10, he could make that $10,000 in incentives, all paid out by the insurance policy. The school would have bet the $1,000 premium to land him. The insurer would have bet, too, seeing as it would have collected the $1,000 premium if the player didn't reach the incentive. Everyone is hedging and calculating what's worth it. Wojnarowski believes that, more than anything, the incentives helped close the deal on players who want to find a reason to pick St. Bonaventure. As for what the incentives are for, he said it ranges from individual accolades (all-defense teams, newcomer of the year, etc.) to team success (a certain number of wins, making the NCAA tournament, etc.). The Bonnies are not doing stat-based incentives, wanting to avoid a player pushing himself through injury or going outside the system for numbers. Plus, he doesn't think that would be within the rules. Overall, he said, these insured incentives have been a major factor in recruiting and retaining players in this cycle. 'The third one that I'm fascinated by, and I don't have the money yet to invest in it, is [transfer] portal insurance,' Wojnarowski said, 'where you would pay a premium, probably a higher premium … [to] protect yourself against the player leaving in the portal, to be able to get back that player's money.' Now for a critical wrinkle: As of this week, Wojnarowski is a brand ambassador for Players Health and a member of its NIL advisory board. That means he'll promote the company and its college sports services. In turn, there are significant benefits for the Bonnies, including that Players Health will cover all of the critical injury insurance policies for next year's roster and payroll. And whenever he brings a new program to the company, Players Health will pay a referral fee to St. Bonaventure's NIL collective, the booster group that has funded any salaries to this point. This is the Woj Effect at work. Before the season, Schmidt, the Bonnies' coach, said that in the 24 hours after Wojnarowski announced his career change, the program got the most exposure it will in the next 50 years. To raise NIL money, the Bonnies recently auctioned off some of his old work phones. (The one he used in March 2020 to report that the NBA had suspended play early in the coronavirus pandemic sold for $3,250.) His partnership with Players Health is in that vein, though it could double as a competitive advantage. And the partnership also explains why he's being so open about a new team-building strategy. 'Even though I'm sharing it with people in our own league, that creates a stream of revenue,' Wojnarowski said. 'I'm willing to live with that because I need that revenue in a really difficult climate for us. So I'm trying to be as creative as I can be with a lot of these marketing deals. 'I made a decision when I came back that I'm going to try to parlay my whatever it is to fund our team,' he continued. 'This is another way for me to do it.' Whatever it is is what the rest of us would just call fame.
New York Times
25-02-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Once the Center of the N.B.A. News Universe, These Phones Can Now Be Yours
Sports journalists can collect a lot of detritus: old ID cards, press credentials to get into big games, phones that stop working or become obsolete. Most of it winds up in the trash, unvalued and worthless. Unless it belongs to Adrian Wojnarowski. Wojnarowski, the basketball news-breaker who recently retired from ESPN, is auctioning his castoff items to benefit the men's basketball program at St. Bonaventure University, where he now works as the team's general manager. Want the credential that got Woj, as he has long been known, into the 2023 N.B.A. draft? As of Thursday morning, the bidding was at $900. His ID badge for ESPN? That's at $2,000 (and no, you can't use it to actually get into the network's headquarters). But the likely stars of the auction are the smartphones that buzzed in Wojnarowski's pockets at all hours with texts and calls from N.B.A. owners, agents, coaches or others offering coveted scoops. The iPhone that was used to break the news of the huge Paul George trade in 2019 is at $1,500, while a different phone that he used to report the 2023 N.B.A. draft lottery is at $900. Dinner with Wojnarowski and a video call from him are also available. Bidding closes next Tuesday. Wojnarowski did not immediately respond to a request for comment through the university. Wojnarowski transcended the relative anonymity of most sports scribblers by virtue of his hustle and connections often landing him N.B.A. stories before anyone else. When he reported big, unexpected news, it was known as a 'Woj Bomb.' He also made aggressive use of social media, communicating his scoops quickly, briefly and directly rather than through the traditional process of writing a full-length article for publication. That made his name much more recognizable to the average fan than most other sportswriters from outlets like The Associated Press, Bleacher Report or, well, The New York Times. His style of reporting influenced many others in the field, and other sports news outlets sought to find and develop scoop-breakers of their own. His final Woj Bomb was the surprise announcement that he was stepping down from ESPN to become general manager of the men's basketball team at the relatively unheralded program at St. Bonaventure, his alma mater in southwestern New York. Wojnarowski was paid $7.3 million a year by ESPN; reports said that he was making 1 percent of that at St. Bonaventure. Fund-raising for college teams has become even more important since 2021, when the N.C.A.A. eased its strict amateurism rules. Athletes can now make money through the use of their name, image and likeness in advertisements, video games or other promotions. As a relatively small school in the N.C.A.A.'s top division, St. Bonaventure lost several key players to larger schools in the aftermath of that rule change as they sought greater potential to make money. As general manager, Wojnarowski's job includes coordinating name, image and likeness payments, and also finding ways to increase the available funds and thereby attract even better players. By auctioning some of the contents of Woj's desk, a small school like St. Bonaventure may have found a way to try to compete.
Yahoo
24-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Wojnarowski auctions iPhones used for 'Woj bombs' to raise NIL money at St. Bonaventure
OLEAN, N.Y. (AP) — Adrian Wojnarowski is cleaning out his office of cell phones and press passes, and even offering dinner dates in a bid to raise name, image and likeness funds for the St. Bonaventure men's basketball program. The former ESPN NBA reporter, best known for his breaking news 'Woj bombs,' went to social media on Monday to announce an online auction to support his role as general manager of the Atlantic 10 team. Among the items up for bid are Wojnarowski's ESPN ID badge, various press passes as well as several iPhones he used to break news, including the one announcing his departure from ESPN for St. Bonaventure in September. Most items have minimum bids ranging from $90 — Wojnarowski's 2023 NBA all-star game credential — to $525, the phone he used to announce the NBA suspending play because of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Also up for bid are an unlimited number of video chats and dinners with Wojnarowski. Upon joining his alma mater, the 55-year-old Wojnarowski is overseeing a wide range of responsibilities while working alongside coach Mark Schmidt and his staff. His duties include focusing on NIL opportunities, transfer portal management, recruiting and alumni player relationships. ___ Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here. AP college basketball: and The Associated Press
USA Today
24-02-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Adrian Wojnarowski is selling his old news-breaking iPhone (and here's what you might get out of it)
Adrian Wojnarowski used to be one of the premier newsbreakers in all of sports. He broke some of the biggest news in NBA history. Even when he retired, he was still at the top of his game. MORE ON RETIREMENT: Woj revealed that a scary cancer diagnosis was a huge reason why he retired Now, he's out here selling all of his old gear for cash. Wojnarowski posted a link on Twitter where fans can bid on the phones he used to break the news, his old NBA Draft credentials and more. Want the phone Woj used to break news about the NBA's COVID break? That's $525. How about the phone that he used to break news that Paul George and Kawhi Leonard were going to the Clippers? The highest bid is currently $350. Or maybe you're interested in the press credential for the 2023 NBA Draft. If you can beat $200, it might be yours. Personally, I'm not the type of guy who would want to own stuff like this. But, hey! If you are? This is your chance. I just hope Woj properly cleared these phones before he ships them off to strangers!
