Inside Game
Emailed on October 11th, 2019 in The Friday Forward
In Silicon Valley, Paul Martino is known as a serial entrepreneur who later founded Bullpen Capital, investing in startups like FanDuel, Ipsy, and SpotHero.
Soon, you'll know Paul Martino as the producer of "Inside Game," the movie that is really, really going to piss off Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA.
Martino's cousin, Tommy Martino, served time for his key role in the 2007 NBA game-fixing scandal and now Paul Martino is making a movie about it.
“When Tommy got out of jail he got offered a really bad life rights deal and I told him he shouldn’t sign it. But he needed money, so as a favor, I bought them,” Paul Martino told Axios. “Then it became kind of an intellectual challenge of trying to do something I’d never done before. I went on Amazon and filled my cart with three books about how to make a movie.”
The result is Inside Game, which hits over 150 theaters nationwide in November. Trailer here.
Martino was, until recently, on the board of FanDuel. The NBA also was an early investor, with the league’s general counsel serving as its original board observer.
Martino resigned from the FanDuel board once Inside Game went into production.
“I don’t think there’s a pure cause and effect between the NBA scandal and sports betting startups, but it’s in the same pond... Once [NBA Commissioner] Adam Silver came out publicly in support of legalization, you’ll remember he said they’d also want integrity fees. That was so there wouldn’t be another Tim Donaghy...” said Paul Martino.
Tim Donaghy is the disgraced referee at the center of the 2007 scandal. I expect (I'd bet?) there will be an NBA triple double-header on November 1st.