Immaculate Grid, the online sports trivia game owned by Mount Airy-based Sports Reference, is being transformed into a TV game show by the media company owned by retired NFL stars Tom Brady and Michael Strahan.
The daily game, played by nearly a million people each week, tests sports fans' esoteric knowledge of players and their statistical feats. Each game features a three-by-three grid with unique categories on each axis, inviting players to rack the brains to identify athletes who meet the criteria for all nine boxes. There are versions available for various sports.
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With only nine guesses, the goal is to fill in the grids with the names of players who satisfy the rules for the day — for example, any Phillies player who ever caught a game, or a player who played for the Eagles and the Chicago Bears. The game assigns a "rarity score" for correct guesses based on the percentage of other people who picked the same player for each box, encouraging uncommon answers as a badge of pride.
"We believe the game can also become a terrific show, a future favorite for sports fans of every stripe," said Victor Buhler, senior vice president of development and production at Religion of Sports, the company Brady and Strahan co-founded with producer Gotham Chopra in 2017.
The game show is still in the early stages of development and an outlet for the project has not been determined. Sports Reference will have input on the show's format, but the company will defer to Religion of Sports to adapt the game for TV audiences.
"We've done a little bit of work on what it might look like and how it would play off what we do online versus what the needs of a broadcast show would be," Sports Reference founder Sean Forman said Friday. "I think we're probably leaning toward more of a recurring, daily game show format."
'I don't think I'll do anything smarter'
Immaculate Grid is the creation of Atlanta-based software developer Brian Minter, who debuted the game in early 2023 and named it after baseball's rare "immaculate inning" — when a pitcher strikes out the first three batters of an inning with three pitches each. At the outset, the game featured baseball grids only.
Forman, whose online stats business started 25 years ago with the launch of Baseball-Reference.com, noticed an unusual spike in traffic on his MLB site as Immaculate Grid gained traction. Droves of people were using Forman's site as a research tool to improve their scores.
"It became obvious that the game was having a significant impact," Forman said. "We were getting 20% or 30% more traffic on Baseball Reference. I'm like, 'Why is this happening?' We pieced it together and we were able to move very quickly (to acquire Immaculate Grid)."
Forman holds a Ph.D. in applied mathematics. He taught at St. Joseph's University for six years before quitting academia to focus full-time on Sports Reference, whose ad-supported business model could be readily scaled by forging partnerships with similar online databases. Forman rented office space from Mount Airy's century-old Summit Presbyterian Church, where he's a member of the congregation, and gradually filled it with a library of books containing historical sports statistics.
Sean Former, the founder and president of Sports Reference, bought Immaculate Grid for an undisclosed sum in July 2023. The sports trivia game has been a revenue driver for the company, allowing Forman to expand the online stats business he started as a hobby in 2000.
Sports Reference's sites now attract more than 1 million daily users, and Forman raised a banner at the church in 2018 to celebrate the milestone of hitting 1 billion total page views.
But the company's most transformational moment may be the addition of Immaculate Grid.
Sports Reference quickly integrated the game across its stats databases and expanded the concept to include basketball, football, hockey and soccer grids. The acquisition led to a surge in revenue that enabled Sports Reference to expand from a team of 11 people to more than 40 today.
"I don't think I'll do anything smarter than buying that game two years ago," Forman said.
A 'happy accident' fuels growth at Sports Reference
The upcoming TV show for Immaculate Grid will be new territory for Religion of Sports, which primarily produces documentaries. The company's past projects include Netflix's "Simone Biles Rising" and "Aaron Rogers: Enigma," ESPN's "In the Arena" series and Prime Video's "Built in Birmingham: Brady & the Blues."
Forman believes the TV show will elevate a game that already has proven to bit a hit across generations of sports fans. He said it has been gratifying to see the way Immaculate Grid connects people.
"The game has been popular and meaningful in ways that I didn't expect," Forman said. "We've gotten emails from dozens of people saying, 'I play with my dad every day, and he lists guys from the 1970s and I'm listing guys from the 2000s.' We've even had people say, 'I don't talk to my brother much because of politics, but we can share this every day.'"
The baseball version of the game is by far the most popular, accounting for about half the traffic Immaculate Grid generates, but Sports Reference has broadened the game's appeal by including versions for both men's and women's sports.
The company employs three "grid editors" who focus on developing Immaculate Grid games across different sports each day. To simplify the process, the company developed tools that track how frequently categories are used and how many correct answers there are for each square in a grid.
"It's not 100% automated, but rather than spending hours every day, it's now down to minutes to create a grid that's playable and fun and meets all of our criteria," Forman said.
The deal with Religion of Sports came together after executives from the company reached out with interest and told Forman they are active players of Immaculate Grid. Forman said he's not sure whether Brady and Strahan play the game.
With a bigger team, Forman said Sports Reference is focused on expanding its subscription-based add-on services and developing other projects to grow the company's offerings. The company's staff is now fully remote with about six employees still based in Philly, but Forman said he still goes to the church most days for work.
"Basically, I walk into the church and sit there by myself all day," he said. "It's me and our 3,000 books. I have a very palatial office at this point."
Immaculate Grid continues humming along as a powerhouse that helps fuel the company's evolution.
"The game was just so well crafted for what it does," Forman said. "It's one of those happy accidents that fell together and fit with what we do."