Information AboutFantasy Sports |
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SIZE OF HOBBY It's estimated by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association that 16 million U.S. adults (18+) played fantasy sports in 2006 and 22 percent of U.S. adult males 18 to 49 years old, with Internet access, play fantasy sports. Fantasy Sports is estimated to have a $3-$4 Billion annual economic impact across the sports industry.1 Fantasy sports is also popular throughout the world with leagues for soccer (known as football outside of the United States), cricket and other non-U.S. based sports. EARLY HISTORY - PRE-"ROTISSERIE" The concept of picking players and running a contest based on their year-to-date stats has been around since shortly after World War II, but was never organized into a widespread hobby or formal business. In 1960, Harvard University sociologist p. 175, ISBN 0312322224 At around the same time a league from Glassboro State College also formed a similar baseball league and had its first draft in 1976.2 While those two leagues focused on baseball, it may be football that produced the first version of the hobby. The Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League — began in the early '60s with eight teams and included a cadre of Raiders followers from the media and ticket office — including future league executives Scotty Stirling and Ron Wolf.3 George Blanda was the first player taken in the first draft in 1963. 1963 draft results MODERN FOUNDING - "LA ROTISSERIE" The landmark development in fantasy sports came with the development of Rotisserie League Baseball in 1980 . Magazine writer/editor Daniel Okrent is credited with inventing it, the name coming from the New York City restaurant La Rotisserie Francaise where he and some friends used to meet and play. The game's innovation was that "owners" in a Rotisserie league would draft teams from the list of active Major League Baseball players and would follow their statistics ''during the ongoing season'' to compile their scores. In other words, rather than using statistics for seasons whose outcomes were already known, the owners would have to make similar predictions about players' playing time, health, and expected performance that real baseball managers must make. Because Okrent was a member of the media, other journalists, especially sports journalists, were introduced to the game. Many early players were introduced to the game by these sports journalists, especially during the 1981 Major League Baseball Strike ; with little else to write about, many baseball writers wrote columns about Rotisserie league. A July 8, 1980 New York Times Article titled "What George Steinbrenner is to the American League, Lee Eisenberg is to the Rotisseries League" set off a media storm that led to stories about the league on CBS TV and other publications.4 In March 1981, Dan Okrent wrote an essay about the Rotisserie League for Inside Sports called "The Year George Foster Wasn't Worth $36." 5 The article included the rules of the game. Founders of the original Rotisserie league published a guide book starting in 1984. In 1982, Ballantine published the first widely-available Bill James Abstract, which helped fuel fantasy baseball interest. Fantasy fans often used James' statistical tools and analysis as way to improve their teams. , New York c2003., ISBN 0-393-05765-8 James was not a fantasy player and barely aknowledged fantasy baseball in his annual Abstract, but fantasy baseball interest is credited with his strong sales. Soon the hobby spread to other sports as well and by 1988, USA Today estimated that five hundred thousand people were playing.6 EARLY ANALYSTS/BUSINESSES In the few years after Okrent helped popularize fantasy baseball, a host of experts and business emerged to service the growing hobby. Okrent, based on discussions with colleagues at USA Today, credits Rotisserie league baseball with much of USA Today's early success, since the paper provided much more detailed box scores than most competitors and eventually even created a special paper, '' Baseball Weekly '', that almost exclusively contained statistics and box scores. Among the first high-profile experts were John Benson, Alex Patton and Ron Shandler. Benson became perhaps the most famous name in the business in the late 1980s, publishing his first book in 1989 and developing one of the first draft-software simulation programs7. He had a 900 number at $2.50 per minute (He charged $150 per hour in the mid 2000s). 8 Patton published his first book ('Patton's 1989 Fantasy Baseball League Price Guide ") in 1989 and his dollar values were included in USA Today Baseball Weekly's fantasy annual throughout the 1990s. Ron Shandler published his "Baseball SuperSTATS" book in November 1986. At first the book wasn't meant for fantasy baseball fans, but rather as a book of Sabrmetric analysis. But it wasn't just baseball that saw new businesses and growth. Fantasy Football Index became the first annual fantasy football guide in 1987. Fantasy Sports Magazine debuted in 1989 as the first regular publication covering more than one fantasy sport. A large number of companies emerged to calculate the stats for fantasy leagues and primarily send results via fax. The hobby continued to grow with 1 million to 3 million playing from 1991 to 1994 11. INTERNET BOOM But the seminal moment for the growth of fantasy sports was the rise of the Internet in the mid-1990s. The new technology lowered the barrier to entry to the hobby as stats could quickly be compiled online and news and information became readily available. While several fantasy businesses had migrated to the internet in the mid-1990s, the watershed era for online fantasy sports was in 1997 when two web sites made their debut that forever changed the fantasy sports industry: Commissioner.com and RotoNews.com. Commissioner.com launched in Jan. 1, 1997 and first offered a fantasy baseball commissioner service that changed the nature of fantasy sports with real-time stats, league message boards, daily updated box scores and other features -- all for $300 per league. Commissioner.com was sold to Sportsline late in 1998 for $31 million in cash and stock in a watershed moment for the fantasy industry.12 The sale proved fantasy sports had grown from a mere hobby to big business. By 2003, Commissioner.com helped Sportsline generate $11 million from fantasy revenue.13 RotoNews.com also launched in January of 1997 and published its first player note on Feb. 16 1997. RotoNews revolutionzed how fantasy sports information was presented on the web with the innovation of the "player note" which were snippets of information every time a player got hurt, traded, benched or had a news event that impacted his fantasy value - all search-able in a real-time database. 14 Most sites today follow how RotoNews had a "news" and "analysis" element to each player update. Within two years RotoNews had become one of the top ten most trafficked sports sites on the web, according to Media Metrix, ranking higher than such sites as NBA.com. The first survey of the fantasy sports market in the U.S. in 1999 showed 29.6 million people age 18 and older played fantasy games. However, that figure was reduced in later years when it was determined the survey also included people who play NCAA bracket pools, which are not exactly fantasy sports (where you pick individual players).15 POPULAR SPORTS
ASSOCIATIONS The Fantasy Sports Trade Association was formed in 1999 to represent the growing industry. The Fantasy Sports Writers Association was formed in 2004 to represent the growing numbers of journalists covering fantasy sports exclusively. CRITICISM Some sports writers criticize fantasy sports, especially those involving team sports, of focusing too much on statistics. A player on a real team might be a team player and help his/her team win championships, but in fantasy sports that team play may not matter as much as having good individual statistics. There was a bill presented before Congress in 1999 that would have prevented public fantasy sports businesses, the contention being that fantasy sports is in fact a form of Sports Gambling . That bill failed, and eventually a 'carve-out' was created for the fantasy sports business. In 2006, the United States congress passed the "Security Port Act", which prohibits credit card transactions and other electronic transfers to online gambling operators; the bill includes an exemption for fantasy sports. Players who enjoy competing in fantasy sports leagues often do very well with sports related Prediction Games by using their team statistical knowledge to predict the outcome of a sporting event. REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS |
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