Latest news with #Spikes
USA Today
08-07-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Montgomery assigns former Vols' baseball signee to High-A ahead of playing at Knoxville
The Smokies will open a six-game home series versus Montgomery on Tuesday at Covenant Health Park in Knoxville, Tennessee. First pitch for Tuesday's series opener between Knoxville and the Biscuits is slated for 7 p.m. EDT. Former Tennessee baseball signee Ryan Spikes is not on Montgomery's roster for the series. The Rays assigned him to Bowling Green, a High-A affiliate for Tampa Bay. Spikes started the 2025 minor league season on April 6 with Bowling Green. He played three games with Triple-A Durham from April 24-26. Tampa Bay assigned Spikes to Bowling Green on April 29, and then Montgomery on May 13. He was again designated to Bowling Green for 11 games on June 17. The second baseman returned to Montgomery for three games from July 2-3 before being assigned to Bowling Green on July 5. Spikes was part of the Vols' 2021 baseball signing class, along with Brady House, Chase Burns, Christian Moore, Drew Beam, Blake Burke and Kavares Tears. He committed to Tennessee from Parkview High School in Lilburn, Georgia and was the Vols' third-highest prospect in 2021, according to Perfect Game. Spikes was selected by Tampa Bay in the third round of the 2021 MLB draft (No. 100 overall). More: Brady House records first MLB hit with Nationals Follow Vols Wire on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter).
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
MoviePass, Led And Co-Founded By Stacy Spikes, Lands $100M Investment To Launch Hollywood's First Daily Fantasy Entertainment Platform
New funding has been raised to help movie fans benefit from the entertainment industry. On May 1, 2025, tech platform MoviePass — with the help of its partner, the C3 Foundation — announced the launch of Mogul, a 'daily fantasy entertainment platform' for Hollywood, according to a press release. The platform, which is the first of its kind, allows fans to participate in fantasy-style tournaments, head-to-head matchups, and solo challenges where they can apply their insights to predict audience attendance, critic scores, award winners, and more. 'You basically create your own studio by picking real movies, real actors, real directors and the way those projects behave in the real world, and your ability to pick and predict what might happen, impacts your scoring,' explained Stacy Spikes, co-founder and CEO of MoviePass, via an exclusive from Variety. Furthermore, fans can receive incentives such as blockchain-based digital rewards, including new avatar images and artwork, Inc. reports. In the future, Mogul intends to allow fans to earn cash. The app is projected to have 200,000 active users on the platform by the end of May 2025 and already has a waitlist of 400,000, Variety shared. 'We're letting people enter in waves in order to not completely overwhelm the system,' Spikes explained to the outlet. Looking ahead, the goal is revamp MoviePass to improve 'platform features, including data-driven competitions, digital collectibles, rewards-based gameplay and community-led challenges,' said Spikes, per Variety. This will be made possible through a $100 million capital investment from Global Emerging Markets. 'We've always been a company built from a fan perspective,' Spikes also said to the outlet. 'We're not a studio, we're not a theater, but we want to really find a new way of creating engagement around going to the movies. We don't want people to just sit at home. This allows film fans to show the same competitive spirit that sports teams inspire.' The post MoviePass, Led And Co-Founded By Stacy Spikes, Lands $100M Investment To Launch Hollywood's First Daily Fantasy Entertainment Platform appeared first on post MoviePass, Led And Co-Founded By Stacy Spikes, Lands $100M Investment To Launch Hollywood's First Daily Fantasy Entertainment Platform appeared first on AfroTech.
Business Insider
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Insider
The CEO of MoviePass wants its new fantasy game to do for Hollywood what FanDuel has for sports
MoviePass cofounder and CEO Stacy Spikes wants to do for Hollywood what fantasy games and betting have for sports. "Sports has really learned how to create engagement," Spikes told Business Insider. "I think we can learn something from them for the movie industry." The movie ticket subscription company is launching this week the beta version of a fantasy box office game called Mogul. In this game, moviegoers can try to predict how upcoming films will perform in theaters. Like in fantasy sports, players can build leagues — or, in Mogul's case, movie studios — with teams that include actors, directors, and movies. Players are given a budget in digital coins to build a studio and score points based on the film's box office performance. Spikes hopes the free-to-play game will drive audience engagement with daily and weekly tournaments, by setting a roster and playing out seasonally, or through head-to-head matchups with other users. If the game becomes popular, MoviePass may try to expand with gaming elements that mirror sweepstakes or other markets where players can make real money, Spikes said. He pointed to services like FanDuel and DraftKings as potential models. But, for now, he likened Mogul to "Monopoly for the entertainment industry." MoviePass wanted the game to be a 'sizable leap forward' in tech Spikes said the idea for Mogul came out of MoviePass' Friday staff calls, when employees talk about what they think the top five films will be at the box office each weekend. He pointed to recent breakout films like " Minecraft" that crushed box office projections and caught some in Hollywood off guard. MoviePass saw an opportunity to box office predictions into a game to make the app "stickier for customers" and engage them more with social features. "We were always talking about what we thought the weekend gross would be, and it was just part of our culture," Spikes said. "That was the genesis, or the beginning of us moving into this direction." Players on Mogul have studios, which operate similar to how leagues do for fantasy sports. Users can select the movies, actors, and directors they want on their team by paying for them with in-game currency called Mogul Coin. Each player gets 1 million Mogul Coins to start. Points are then awarded based on the net the movie makes at the box office. So, if the film "Wicked" makes double its production budget at the box office, the value of the film, its director, and actors like Cynthia Erivo would double in Mogul, Spike said as an example. An actor or director's value might increase even more if they win an Oscar. The game is built on Sui blockchain technology, which Spikes said gives MoviePass options for rewarding players or expanding the platform. "That's unique in that if you do reward people, whether you want to do digital collectibles or other things, building it on blockchain makes it easier to do that," he said. Like MoviePass did when it launched movie ticket subscriptions, Spikes wanted to do something that was a "sizable leap forward" with technology. "I don't think you could have built this game very well 10 years ago," Spikes said. "It wouldn't have worked if you didn't have all of these other technologies that you can use now." Mogul has a waitlist of over 400,000 people Over 400,000 people signed up for the waitlist to play Mogul, Spikes said. The company isn't planning to monetize it through ads or in-app purchases at the moment. It's mainly looking to get users to play the game and give feedback on its mechanics. You don't have to be a MoviePass subscriber to play, but the company is thinking about ways to reward players who are subscribers or go see movies in theaters with bonuses. That's one of the points of the game, after all. "The more you engage in that way, the more likely it is, you're actually going to go to the theater," Spikes said.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Remember MoviePass? It's still around—and going all in on crypto
MoviePass was once a cinephile's dream. Throughout the 2010s, the company allowed users to pay a monthly fee to watch a movie a day in theaters. In 2018, it cost $9.95 for a subscription. That's less than what some theaters charged for one film screening, let alone 30, and the company went under one year later. Now, MoviePass is back, and it's touting a crypto-powered rebrand. On Thursday, the firm unveiled 'Mogul,' which lets users fill out rosters and predict what movies are poised to win big at the box office and what actors will pull in the most awards. The product, which is available to U.S. players, uses an in-game currency and is built on the Sui blockchain. MoviePass CEO Stacy Spikes stressed to Fortune that the in-game currency is just like 'Monopoly money' and that they haven't decided on whether 'it becomes real' yet. The only information the platform puts on the blockchain is game-related data, like a player's performance, he added. The CEO had thought about fashioning Mogul like a crypto-powered prediction market, or a locale where bettors can gamble money on who they think will win an election and other real-world events. However, he and his team eventually decided against it, he said. 'When [you] talk to laypeople and you say 'crypto,' it means you're doing a memecoin, you're doing something that Trump is doing, you're doing a Dogecoin… That is not what this is,' he said, in reference to Mogul. When he spoke with Fortune on Tuesday, Spikes was attending a crypto conference in Dubai, where he visited an expansive movie theater in a mammoth mall. He chose to watch the Ben Affleck blockbuster The Accountant 2. 'Every time I put boots on the ground in a city,' he said, 'I go to the movies.' More than a decade ago, Spikes raised $1 million to launch MoviePass, which initially charged users around $30 a month. In 2017, Helios and Matheson, a publicly traded data analytics company, acquired a majority stake in the startup and led the $9.95-per-month promotion push that eventually sank the company. Spikes was soon pushed out from the board and 'informed he was no longer needed,' according to Time. Less than two years later, MoviePass went out of business and its publicly traded parent company declared bankruptcy. In 2022, Spikes bought the company back for $140,000. 'I knew I could build something again,' he said shortly after the relaunch. (In January, one of Helios and Matheson's executives pleaded guilty to securities fraud.) As he's worked on MoviePass 2.0 over the past three years, Spikes looked for new funding and found willing investors—in crypto. Animoca Brands, a longtime crypto powerhouse with a focus on NFTs, led a $5 million seed round in MoviePass in 2023, and Mysten Labs, the main company behind the Sui blockchain, led a $15 million round shortly afterwards. Both raises were for equity and token warrants, or promises of a yet-to-be-released cryptocurrency, Spikes said. 'There's two kinds of businesses that are gaining traction right now,' he told Fortune. 'Either you're an AI play, or you're a blockchain or crypto play.' Spikes decided on blockchain. He owns an expensive anime-inspired NFT, holds Bitcoin and Ethereum, and has traveled to Hong Kong, Singapore, and Denver to attend crypto conferences. 'I think that blockchain and virtual reality are going to be an amazing force together,' he proclaimed. MoviePass's blockchain play, though, is just one part of its business. Subscribers can still pay for a monthly pass, but it's not a steal at $9.95 a month for a movie a day. Instead, a 'premium' pass costs $40 for up to five movies a month. That may mean less customers, but at least, Spikes said, MoviePass is now profitable. This story was originally featured on Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Yahoo
Oakland teen, 17, reported missing
(KRON) — A teenage boy has been reported missing by the Oakland Police Department. Jayce Spikes, 17, was last seen on Monday, March 31 around 4 p.m. on the 3000 block of E 18th Street in Oakland, the department announced on social media. Spikes is described as a Black male who stands 5-foot-11 and weighs 190 pounds. According to OPD, he has brown hair and brown eyes. He was last seen wearing a black polo shirt, black hoodie and dark blue jeans. Magnitude-3.0 earthquake reported in East Bay Anyone with information is asked to contact OPD's Missing Persons Unit at 510-238-3641. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
