APBA was so low-profile that Bordegon found that many industry folk thought he was resurrecting a defunct game. Game situation boards were large and cumbersome, design was nonexistent, and marketing outreach for the mail-order business consisted of classified ads in baseball magazines. It used complex formulas on player cards and game situation boards to replicate a season's stats with 92 percent accuracy.īut even as APBA expanded to football, basketball and hockey and passed through several owners, it remained strictly small-time. Bordegon said the expansion is funded by venture capitalists.ĪPBA was created in 1951 by a man named Dick Seitz, who based it on a simpler game he had played as a teen (in a league his friends called the American Professional Baseball Association, hence the acronym).

APBA is targeting 125,000 'lapsed' players and their children, as well as a new generation of youngsters. Bordegon believes his changes - new variations on the game, a redesign, retail distribution and an ad campaign - will generate $25 million in revenue by 2002. Last March, Bordegon, considered a savvy marketer as president of Fleer/Skybox International, was hired by APBA, which is owned by AbleSoft Inc., a company that publishes and develops computer programs for education, sports and entertainment.

'The property really hadn't been leveraged.'

'For 50 years, APBA had never done anything with packaging or marketing,' said Bordegon. APBA? What's APBA - a roll-the-dice board game celebrating its 50th anniversary - doing in this world of ever-evolving video games? Trying to shake its niche image.īill Bordegon, new president of APBA, is investing millions of dollars to transform the company into a player in the mainstream marketplace.

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