Strat-O-Matic Moving Toward New Owners--NY Times

"For 45 years, Hal Richman and his family have controlled Strat-O-Matic, which began with the baseball board game he invented as a teenager and grew into a small empire of sports board, video and Internet games. Now the Richmans are seeking an investor to buy a significant part of the company.

• “We’re solicited every year, and we’ve come close to selling the company before, but for various reasons we haven’t,” said Adam Richman, Hal’s son, who is a filmmaker. “Now we’re taking a more aggressive approach. We’re coming off strength: Our last two years were incredible, among our best two.”

Passionate Strat-O-Matic players, many of whom started playing the board game as children, still roll the 20-sided dice, check the cards of their team of players, and schedule full or partial seasons with their friends. Some wait in line outside the company’s offices in Glen Head, N.Y., each February to buy the new season’s card sets.

• The consideration of outside investors by Strat-O-Matic comes three weeks after the sale of another old-line sports company, Topps, the card and bubble gum maker, for $385.4 million to a group led by Michael D. Eisner, the former chairman of the Walt Disney Company. Topps started as a private company owned by the Shorin family, went public in the 1970s, became private again in 1983 in a leveraged buyout, and went public again in 1987."

From the article by Richard Sandomir, NY Times, 3/29/07, "Strat-O-Matic Owner is Making a Move Toward an Investor." Req. cookies.

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