Fantasy Football

Over the last decade fantasy football has become a growing source of entertainment. Fantasy football allows users to become general managers of their own team. Each owner is able to manage and coach games based around NFL players. Fantasy football started in 1962 and since then has grown to 32 million people in the United States and Canada. Fantasy football has evolved to become one of the most well known fantasy sports over the last decade. In this post I will discuss when and how fantasy football started, current fantasy football information and why this is important.

Bill Winkenbach started a fantasy golf league in the 1950s. Golf was the first sport to have a fantasy league. Owners in this league would draft a team of professional golfers. At the end of the week the owner with the lowest score would win. This was before computers so all fantasy owners would sit down with paper and a pen and keep track of the league. You may be asking what does this have to do with football well it was the golf fantasy league that led Bill Winkenbach, Scott Stirling and Bill Tunnell to create the first fantasy football league in 1962. Bill Winkenbach was the part owner of the Oakland Raiders. He saw the potential for a league that involved football. He teamed up with Scott Stirling the Oakland Tribune columnist and Bill Tunnell public relations for the Oakland Raiders. The first fantasy team they created was called the GOPPL. This was an acronym for the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognostics League. They were able to get others involved. Drafts were held throughout the Oakland area as people continued to keep track of leagues independently.

            Once the software was developed and the Internet was available fantasy football become an instant hit. Fantasy football owners were able to have teams and do little work in comparison to before. They no longer had to track their scores since the computer would automatically do the work for them. Today fantasy football owners spend about 50 minutes each week setting up their teams. They make sure that they have studied the opponent and have a good chance of winning with the players they have on their team. Fantasy Football is bigger than ever before. The current number of users in the United States and Canada has reached 32 million. The average user is male and between the age of 18 and 49. Women’s interest has grown to 31 percent. The average owner makes between 60 and 100 thousand. This is important because advertisers see the potential to make money based on these demographics. Some of the more popular sponsors include Coors Light, Ford and Best Buy. They know exactly how to make money off this growing source of entertainment.

Fantasy football is a free source of entertainment for NFL fans. Some leagues do offer cash prizes and require a fee to create a team. The most popular is the free leagues that offer public and private managed teams. Public leagues allow owners to compete with people from around the world. Private leagues allow users to play against friends. In private leagues you can customize the rules, the roster size and the scoring system. In the private league there is also the selection of a commissioner. The commissioner is in charge of overseeing all the leagues rules, scoring and trades. Fantasy League draft requires the owners to be up to date with individual player statistics. Owners are able to trade at any point and they can also pick up free agents. ESPN and NFL are just two of the many that offer weekly reports for fantasy owners. They let you know who will have a good performance and who may not perform as well. They also keep fantasy owners up to date with injuries.            

People play fantasy football across the globe. Fantasy football is important because it attracts more people to the sport. Fans are able to be part of the game. Fantasy football owners don’t like just one team anymore. They may have a favorite team, but on the side they are cheering for players on other teams. Since fans now have to watch multiple games television broadcasts are reaching a larger audience. DIRECTV offers the red zone channel and they offer NFL Sunday ticket. Both of these options cost extra, but they become necessary when trying to manage a fantasy football team. I have my own fantasy football team that I work on day in and day out. I am consistently reading trying to stay up to date on players and schedules. I am more involved in the sport of football than ever before. I am able to see what it’s like to manage a team. I like that fantasy football owners are involved and make football more attractive than it already is.

The future of fantasy football and the NFL will grow based on the interest from fans. Fantasy football creator Bill Winkenbach probably never imagined how big his fantasy sports idea would get. He was able to see what no one else saw. He knew that fans wanted to be more than fans. The fans wanted to be involved in the game that they were passionate about. Fantasy sports make this possible for fans. You can be a manager, commissioner, and a coach. The best part is people take an interest in individual players. Players are drafted to preform and to become a leader in the fantasy league. With more people taking an interest in fantasy football the future seems bright.