Fantasy Sports
Fantasy sports is a recreational activity where participants create teams made up of real-life athletes, competing based on the players' performances in actual games. Participants take on the role of "managers," choosing players and joining leagues, often facilitated through online platforms. The concept dates back several decades, with roots tracing back to fantasy baseball developed in the 1980s. Initially, managing these teams was quite labor-intensive, requiring manual tracking of player statistics through newspapers. However, the rise of the Internet in the 1990s revolutionized the experience, enabling larger, geographically diverse leagues and simplifying the management process via automated statistics and updates.
Fantasy sports have spurred a significant industry, generating billions of dollars annually, with various league structures such as point scoring and head-to-head matchups. While many leagues operate for free, some charge for premium services, and legal debates around fantasy sports, particularly regarding gambling laws, have emerged in recent years. As the popularity of fantasy sports continues to grow, trends like high-stakes leagues and auction-style drafts have further enriched the experience for participants, blending elements of competition and strategy with the chance for profit.
Fantasy Sports
The term "fantasy sports" refers to a pastime in which people select real-life players to form "teams," join a "league," and become "managers." The teams then rise or fall in ranking within the league based on the performance of their players in real-life games. Typically, fantasy sports leagues operate virtually, over the Internet. Their popularity over the years has increased along with the rise of other web-based social activities.
The idea behind fantasy sports, however, is several decades old. According to some reports, fans have been organizing fantasy-like baseball leagues since the 1920s and 1930s. Most observers of the phenomenon agree, however, that the real roots of contemporary fantasy sports can be traced to a 1980 meeting between several New York–based sports journalists, led by writer Dan Okrent, at which the structure of fantasy baseball was created. Okrent dubbed the game "Rotisserie Baseball," after a favorite restaurant. In 1984, inspired by media commentary on fantasy baseball, Minnesotan football fans Tom Kane Jr. and Cliff Charpentier published a book detailing a similar system for fantasy football.
Initially, fans who were interested in playing fantasy sports had to read through newspapers to extract statistics for the players on their teams, carefully assign points to teams based on those statistics, and keep all their draft lists and point records on paper. The process was laborious, and could take hours. In addition, fans who wanted to join the same league had to be located close to each other so they could confer and compare scores. With the rise of the Internet in the 1990s, however, fantasy sports enjoyed a significant surge in popularity. Not only did computers make it easier to find and record statistics and quickly update team rankings, but the Internet made it possible for leagues to become much larger and geographically diffuse.
Over the years, a hugely successful industry has arisen around fantasy sports. Many online leagues are free to join, although some offer paid services, such as frequent news updates and assistance with drafting a team of players, which many fans are eager to buy. In addition, the betting that takes place within fantasy sports leagues is considered a legal form of online gambling. There is also a significant amount of advertising revenue associated with fantasy sports sites for the companies that run them. The American fantasy sports industry generates billions of dollars a year.
At the same time, when a scandal broke out involving two major online fantasy sports websites in 2015, debate was sparked over the questionable legality of their operations. That year, it was reported that an employee for the popular site DraftKings had leaked company data and gone on to win thousands of dollars by placing bets on another fantasy sports site, FanDuel. Although DraftKings and FanDuel soon announced that they were permanently banning employees from playing daily fantasy sports on any site, the New York attorney general almost immediately launched an inquiry into the sites' operations. In addition, the Federal Bureau of Investigation began its own investigation into the sites and individual states started to review and even change their laws regarding the legality of fantasy sports. By January 2016, Nevada, New York, Illinois, and Texas had determined that daily fantasy sports constituted illegal gambling and had ordered FanDuel and DraftKings to cease accepting bets from citizens of their states; for these states, the games involved too much chance in addition to skill.
Tips & Techniques
There are several different scoring methods in fantasy sports. These include point scoring, rotisserie scoring, and head-to-head scoring.
In fantasy point scoring, a fixed point score is assigned to specific game actions. For example, in fantasy football, a player's touchdown might be worth a certain number of points and a fumble might result in the subtraction of a certain number of points for that player. At the end of the season, the team whose players have accumulated the highest overall point score wins.
Rotisserie scoring assigns rankings for different categories of statistics. For example, a team could rank first in home runs and third in stolen bases (team rankings can change over the course of a season). The higher a team's rank, the more points it receives in that particular category. At the end of the season, the team with the most points wins.
Leagues that use head-to-head scoring may use either fantasy point scoring or rotisserie scoring, but instead of waiting until the end of the season to compare scores, teams are matched against each other every week based on a playoff system. At the end of the season, the team that has made its way through the final elimination bracket with no losses wins.
When drafting a lineup of players for a fantasy sports team, the most important thing to remember is that the success of a manager depends on the ability to accurately predict players' future performance. The most serious fantasy sports players create or adapt projections for each player they are considering drafting; these are estimates of how well the player will perform based on a host of different factors such as their age, experience, current health, ability to work with teammates, and, of course, previous performance statistics.
Trends
One trend in fantasy sports has involved what are known as "high stakes games," in which the entry fees for league participants are set at $1,000 or more, and the grand prizes offered at the end of a season may be as much as $100,000. Another popular trend is the "auction style" of drafting players, in which each manager is given a certain set amount of "money" at the beginning of the season with which to bid on players they wish to have on their teams.
Fantasy Sports for Fun vs. Profit
It is possible to turn a love of fantasy sports into a source of profit, but since the success of a team is dependent on so many real-life factors, there is naturally a large element of risk involved and the returns will not be regular. In addition, becoming financially invested in fantasy sports is very different from being a hobby participant, in that personal likes and dislikes of individual players should never play a part in the selection of a team, even though they may represent a large part of why a sports fan is attracted to fantasy sports in the first place. There is, however, a market for fantasy sports writers—bloggers and journalists who keep fans updated on real-life player performances as they relate to fantasy play and provide advice on drafting teams. An experienced, successful fantasy manager with good writing and research skills may be able to carve out a small side-business in this area.
Learning More
Organizations
Fantasy Sports and Gaming Association <https://thefsga.org/>
Fantasy Sports Writers Association <http://www.fswa.org/>
FantasySports.net <https://www.fantasysports.net/>
Bibliography
Alba, Davey. "DraftKings and FanDuel Scandal Is a Cautionary Startup Tale." Wired. Condé Nast, 9 Oct. 2015. Web. 4 Feb. 2016.
Barbarisi, Daniel. Dueling with Kings: High Stakes, Killer Sharks, and the Get-Rich Promise of Daily Fantasy Sports. New York: Touchstone, 2017.
Duara, Nigel. "States Crack Down on Fantasy Sports, Calling Them Games of Chance, Not Skill." Los Angeles Times. Tribune, 2 Jan. 2016. Web. 4 Feb. 2016.
Harmon, Michael. The Savvy Guide to Fantasy Sports. Indianapolis: Sam's Technical, 2005. Print.
Lee, Henry. Fantasy Baseball Strategy: Advanced Methods for Winning Your League. Mountain View: Squeaky, 2004. Print.
St. Amant, Mark. Committed: Confessions of a Fantasy Football Junkie. New York: Scribner, 2004. Print.