The Sandman Story

Sandman Sports didn’t begin with a business plan, a group of investors or even an idea for a company.

It began in a University of Washington dorm room in the mid-1990s.

That’s where Bill “The Sandman” Sanders started running brackets, Survivor games and other sports pools for friends and family. Everything was manual, the stakes were small and the idea was simple: give people another reason to compete, talk trash and stay invested in the sports they already loved.

People had fun. They told their friends. Their friends told their friends.

And Sandman Nation started to grow.

Within a few years, hundreds of people were playing. Over time, hundreds became thousands, with players joining through friends, coworkers, family members and seemingly endless degrees of separation.

In 2006, one of those players was Eric Bierman, who heard about Sandman’s contests through a friend of a friend of a friend and decided to give them a try.

He was hooked.

By 2014, several thousand people were connected to Sandman Nation, and running everything had become a significant undertaking. Bill needed help managing the increasingly complicated operations behind the contests, and Eric raised his hand.

For the next decade, the two helped run and grow Sandman Nation together.

From Sandman Nation to Sandman Sports

Eventually, Bill and Eric started asking a bigger question:

What if we could take everything people loved about Sandman Nation and build something much bigger around it?

They had spent years participating in and running fantasy contests themselves, and they knew what they liked. They also knew what frustrated them about many of the existing options: limited variety, little innovation, clunky experiences, poor customer service and rules or features that didn’t always seem designed with the actual player or commissioner in mind.

They believed there had to be a better way to play.

So Bill and Eric teamed up with Craig Phalen, one of Bill’s longtime friends from Seattle and an experienced technology leader, and the three set out to build it.

Sandman Sports took what had grown organically for nearly three decades and turned it into a full sports entertainment platform: more game formats, more customization, public and private contests, predictive analytics and new ways for sports fans to compete.

But one thing hasn’t changed.

The goal is still to give people another reason to care about the next game, the next week and the entire season. “Play the Long Game” has been part of the Sandman philosophy from the beginning, and it will remain at the heart of what we do as we continue to grow.

More Than a Game

For all the contests played and winners crowned over the years, some of the moments that mattered most had nothing to do with who finished first.

Sandman Nation became a genuine community.

Over the decades, the group unfortunately lost several longtime players, some under tragic circumstances. When members of the Sandman community and their families needed help, other players stepped up, at times raising significant amounts of money for the families affected.

And then there were moments none of us will ever forget.

One longtime player, while battling cancer and enduring round after round of chemotherapy, told us something that has stayed with us ever since: “Sandman saved my life.”

He wasn’t talking about winning a contest. He was talking about having something to look forward to. Something to think about. Friends to compete against. A community to be part of during an incredibly difficult period of his life.

That’s when you realize this can be about more than picks, standings or prize money.

Sports bring people together. Competition keeps us connected. And sometimes having something to look forward to each week matters more than anyone realizes.

That’s the spirit Sandman Sports was built from, and it’s something we never want to lose as we grow.

Meet the Founders

Bill “The Sandman” Sanders (Right)

Co-Founder | COO

At just five years old, Bill famously told his parents while driving past Husky Stadium that he was going to attend the University of Washington. That childhood declaration turned into a lifelong passion for the Huskies and all things Seattle sports. Outside of his wife and three kids, sports have always been at the center of his world.

Whether playing, coaching, competing, or cheering from the stands, Bill has always loved the way sports bring people together. The competition, camaraderie, and shared experiences have helped shape some of his closest friendships and favorite memories.

Sandman Sports is the culmination of that lifelong passion. Built around the belief that sports and entertainment create meaningful connections, Sandman Sports is the realization of a dream years in the making. For Bill, it’s more than a business venture. It’s an opportunity to bring friends, families, and fans together through the excitement and community that only sports can provide.

Craig Phalen (Left)

Co-Founder | CTO

Craig has never pretended to be the guy who watches every game, that’s Bill and Eric’s department. He’s always been more of a play the sport than watch the sport type, spending years on soccer fields as both a player and a coach. If there’s competition involved, he’s in. If there’s a three-hour broadcast, he might wander off halfway through.

His IT career turned him into the unofficial “Sandman Help Desk,” quietly fixing things, keeping systems alive, and preventing Bill and Eric from pushing the wrong buttons. He’s not a big bettor, but he loves the data behind it, the patterns, the probabilities, the logic.

Eric Bierman (Center)

Co-Founder | CEO

Eric is the unfortunate soul who was born and raised a Michigan fan, will bleed maize and blue forever, and somehow ended up living in Ohio. He attended Miami University in Oxford and never left the Cincinnati area, where he lives with his wife and has three children. As he likes to say, “I love the state of Ohio. I just hate Ohio State.”

A lifelong sports fanatic, Eric is also a diehard Bengals and Reds fan, and his family makes an annual pilgrimage to a Michigan away game with the goal of experiencing a new college football stadium each year.

When he’s not watching sports, talking sports or building Sandman Sports, Eric loves traveling and has visited 49 of the 50 states. Rhode Island, your time is coming.