Its the true American dream. Playing professional sports for the hometown team. Whether its hitting the walk off homerun in the bottom of the ninth with two outs or running it into the endzone in the expiring seconds of the Super Bowl. America loves its sports, but unfortunately most of us aren’t 6’8″, can throw a baseball a hundred miles an hour or can catch a football while falling out of bounds. Fantasy sports lets us get a taste of sports that goes beyond the game. Fantasy sports lets the sports hungry american populous get their much desired taste of professional sports, all while sitting on your couch at home or getting through a boring work day.
The statistics studying, game watching, and scouting that many sports fans have been doing for years, is being translated into the fantasy world of fantasy competitive sports. There are fantasy sports for essentially any sports imaginable from the exceedingly popular football (over 90% of all fantasy sports players play on one of the many fantasy football leagues) or basketball, to fantasy NASCAR or golf. Fantasy sports has skyrocketed into an essential American pastime over the past few years and the popularity of daily fantasy sports leagues such as DraftKings and FanDuel is no small part of its exponentially growing popularity. These leagues have grown by a compound annual rate of 55% and have produced almost a billion dollars industry in only a few years Football, being the most popular sport in America, has an unprecedented 51 million players with an enormous increase of over 25% from 2011. Fantasy sports let you manage your favorite teams and players and strategize against your opponents to get the best total points from the selected players.
“I usually only play march madness and fantasy football out of all the fantasy sports. I really like competing with my friends in fantasy sports because it gets pretty competitive. I usually play in a league for money just for march madness, not for fantasy football though,” said senior Matt Turner, a fantasy football player.
Fantasy sports have drastically impacted the way people watch sports in America. No longer is it a entertainment activity, but a strategical study of players “potential” and randomly acronymed statistics such as WAR, QBR, and WHIP, all to get a slight upper hand in the fantasy sports world. Where friends used to get together to relax and watch a football game, they now jot down notes and consult “fantasy football experts” online to get the edge for their league or team.
Entire sections of sports networks such as ESPN and CBS Sports dedicated to fantasy sports; 24 hour marathons of fantasy football projections and stat updates; rolling fantasy player updates during the games.The game, quite literally, has changed.
Adler Shannon // Sports Editor
