Given the number of people who play, there’s a good chance that you have a fantasy football team. For those who don’t play, fantasy football is huge. Really huge. And its influence is spreading into other sports. There is real money being spent on fantasy sports and there are real opportunities for savvy entrepreneurs to tap into this massive (and growing) phenomenon.
For those sitting on the bench, as it were, in a fantasy sport, you manage a virtual team of real athletes: drafting players, deciding who plays, trading. Real-world plays translate into points (there are a lot variations as to how points are earned). Your team is part of a league (typically with friends) that is managed by a commissioner.
Like any good fantasy football player, you should know your stats. According to Paul Charchian, the president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, 27.7 million Americans (plus 2 million Canadians) 12 years and older play some kind of fantasy sport. These players typically spend nine hours per week with their fantasy team, and people spend $800 million a year on fantasy sports (and that doesn’t even take into consideration the amount of money people are wagering).
Fantasy team management used to be done with pen and paper, but like many things it’s evolved with the times to take advantage of the web. “Fantasy Football evolved from a guy with a calculator and a big notebook to automated systems online,” said Laura Goldberg, general manager of NFL online.
While she wouldn’t give specific numbers, Goldberg said that “millions” of people are playing a combination of free and paid versions of fantasy football on NFL.com. This vague stat was the same one given to us by both ESPN and CBSSports.com. People overwhelmingly choose the free version that is available (naturally), but NFL.com says that 10-15 percent of its players pay $180 per league a season to play the more full-featured version of fantasy football. The NFL isn’t the only one charging; CBSSports.com offers its Football Commissioner product for $180 per league per season, and ESPN’s paid version charges $29.95 per team you play. (Neither CBS nor ESPN would say how many people are paying to play).
Dang, Kevin, you are hardcore (and one of the 27.7 million reasons I wrote this article).
Aside from watching three NFL games every Sunday to see how my players are doing, I have two computers and my iPhone going as well. The computers are for viewing live updates and the iPhone’s push notifications tell me when one of my players scored. Sadly, it doesn’t do that often enough, but that’s not Apple’s fault since they didn’t draft the team.
It’s become a totally immersive experience each week.
I suggest Kevin that you never start playing fantasy baseball. That kind of player-tracking on a 162 game season would have potential negative impacts on work productivity.
@Jason,
Maybe there’s a market for an add-on screen for your TV. Hang it off to the side so none of the action is interrupted. Maybe the new Apple Tablet will have a TV clip function.
It’s interesting to see how this has become a significant business, but having played some fantasy baseball before it went digital in a significant way, I’m not surprised how well fantasy sports is doing online. The reasons are myriad:
-large and enthusiastic audiences
-stat-heads are generally professionals and have good discretionary income
-but, also, numbers crunched for you! (we sports fans are also lazy
Nice piece Chris!
I’m addicted to FF, I keep up to date on my iPhone by either watching the games on Sling or at least keeping up to date with scores via Yahoo’s Fantasy Football app. Everyone that I’ve introduced to FF has felt that its really changed their perspective on following the sport
A particular passion of mine. Interesting you should mention DirecTV’s widget as I have sampled it. The main issue is my laptop is faster and shows me my scoreboard. That said I don’t want to look at it. What would be useful is if when DTV showed an update they showed me my game scoreboard and allowed interactivity. That is what I want! Oh by the way don’t get in the way of the live game action either. Perhaps an opportunity to develop an ESPN type fantasy ticker that you mount to the bottom of your TV…