Fantasy Sports History: A Brief Look into a Billion Dollar Industry

A look at fantasy sports history and the creating of this billion-dollar empire.

Fantasy sports have become a USD multi-billion industry. According to mobile casinos in US, Every day in stories can be read of people who quit their comfortable, secure day jobs and dedicate their lives full-time to fantasy sports. There is a reason for such behavior. A study by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA) showed that 41 million people over the age of 11 played fantasy sports in the U.S and Canada last year.

• Forty-one million people played fantasy sports in North America in 2014
• Danied Okrent invented “Rotisserie League Baseball” in 1980
• USA Today was influential in fantasy sports popularity before the internet

Many fantasy sports participants are not only from North America. Football and cricket fantasy leagues are growing massively in Europe. The revenue created by companies like DraftKings and FanDuel is so large, that officials in Las Vegas are scouring to find methods of slowing down the industry through legislation. Considering all of this attention, a fantasy sports history is obviously warranted.

Fantasy sports history precursors

In the 1950s, Wilfred Winkenbach conceived a system of fantasy golf in which players would select a team of professional golfers and the person with the lowest combined total of strokes at the tournaments conclusion wins. This early system was easy to regulate because every player only needed to concentrate on the scores of their own team. Although the system was enjoyed, it never translated in a popular hobby or business. But Winkenbach went on to finance the Oakland Raiders in the AFL, and became the father of what we consider now modern fantasy sports. His GOPPPL(Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League) can be considered the first fantasy sports league.

In 1960 William Gamson, a sociologist at Harvard University, started the “baseball seminar.” With the participation of Gamson’s colleagues, they would form rosters of baseball players. Based on the performance of the players’ batting average, RBI, ERA and wins, they would earn points. Gamson later went to University of Michigan taking “baseball seminar” with him. The game proved popular with professors at Michigan as well. Glassboro State College had a fantasy baseball league at the same time.

Among the professors at the University of Michigan was Bob Skiar, who participated in “seminar baseball.” Skiar taught an American Studies course and among his students was Daniel Okrent, the future founder of “Rotisserie baseball.” Okrent showed interest in learning the game. Although the most attention in this hobby was towards baseball, the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League focused on American Football and might be the most similar to modern fantasy sports.

Daniel Okrent, who later authored several books and worked as public editor for the New York Times, invented “Rotisserie League Baseball” in 1980. Sealing his place in U.S. gambling news, Okrent named this hobby after the “La Rotisserie Francaise” restaurant where he and his friends played it in New York City. This was a key development in fantasy sports history because players would be owners who drafted teams using current Major League Baseball players and would follow their stats during the season.

Fantasy sports history influence through Rotisserie and the internet

Okrent’s Rotisserie method would turn this hobby into a practice that depended more on actual performance rather than simple chance. This is the leading argument in pro-fantasy legislation. In addition, sports team managers had to perform a similar practice every year when trying to predict player performances in order to make the most appropriate draft choices and personnel decisions.

Okrent’s association with the press gave him close access to the media. This proved most advantageous to fantasy sports history during the Major League Baseball strike of 1981. At the time many writers and sports journalists were introduced to Rotisserie due to a lack of options. During the rest of the 1980s, several advancements came to “fantasy sports” including rules and guide books. Another league called the Managerial Baseball League emerged that had a format more closely paralleled major league baseball. By 1988, USA Today stated 500,000 people were active in fantasy sports.

USA Today and their offshoot publication “Baseball Weekly” helped popularize fantasy baseball because they offered more detailed statistics than other sports publications. Before the advent of the internet, the hobby of fantasy sports grew to about 3 million participants. A foundation to modern the internet gave everyone easier access to fantasy sports. Molson Breweries established a fantasy hockey site that would increase the hobby’s popularity in Canada.

In 1997, “Commissioner” and “RotoNews” were two sites that helped turn the hobby into an industry. Commissioner offered a “commissioner service” for a USD 300. Two years later the site was bought by Sportsline for USD 31 million cash. By 2003 the company generated USD 11 million. RotoNews, offering continued updates on player details, became one of the top ten most trafficked sports sites on the internet.

Nowadays fantasy sports history changes constantly especially since fantasy sports were able to bypass the “Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006” as per US gambling laws. Surveys have shown that fantasy sports participants fuel television ratings for sports events more than “non-participants.” American television broadcaster NBC Sports is planning a partnership with Rotogrinders, a daily fantasy sports website. Fantasy sports now include other related topics like politics, celebrity gossip, movies and reality TV.