Fantasy Football is thought to have begun with the GOPPPL, or the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League, in 1963. While that remains a mouthful to this day, the game it created has changed dramatically (as many things have) with the advent of the internet. Online drafting has allowed players to draft multiple teams in a short amount of time, oftentimes drafting a few teams at once. Back in 1963, drafts were done exclusively with a pen and paper, and stats were not automatically updated within seconds of a play occurring; fantasy managers had to find the box scores of every game in the newspaper and tally up their scores by hand. Nowadays, because of the size of the market fantasy sports are becoming more and more of a force in the economic and political world, even President Obama has been said to play fantasy football. So how did fantasy football become such a pop culture phenomenon?
To put it simply, fantasy football has become so popular because it is a form of gambling that requires skill rather than luck (though many losing managers would disagree). As a result people who play often and keep up with current news in the Fantasy world are perceived as having more skill and are capable of winning more money. For an economist fantasy football is still a sort of gray area, meaning while there are ways to predict market performance the market is based on humans playing a game rather than the interaction of various economic markets. As an aspiring economist and avid fantasy sports player I hope to be able to explore the means by which fantasy performance is predicted and how it can be related to real-world economic and statistical strategies.
This is a very interesting subject. All of my friends are very involved in fantasy but I am the only one that does not real partake in this, but I do know that is fun. It gives those sport experts out there to show out how much they know about the sport. Although you are only mentioning fantasy football, there are also fantasy basketball and fantasy soccer. There could be more but I am not sure what the sports are. This topic is very good and it is an excellent choice for a blog post because many people don’t understand this creation.
ReplyDeleteI truly know very little about this topic. In fact, I still don't really know what fantasy football is. Are people selecting teams in a football video game and competing against other teams in a video game and then analyzing the scores? Obviously with a $70 billion market and more than a million users, it's clearly very popular but I just don't know anything about it. Does this sort of fantasy game exist for other sports such as basketball or soccer? How much money has one person won for their predictions? I'm interested in learning more about this topic because several of my friends are into it and I simply never asked them about the process. I look forward to reading about what drives the predictions and how it can be transferred into the real-world.
ReplyDeleteLou, I was so impressed by your topic and layout that I had to show my boyfriend your blog. He's on two Fantasy leagues this season and let me tell you, it consumes our Sundays. But anyway, as for your topic I love how you tied it in with your degree. Just by reading your intro I learned so much, I never knew the history on FFB, the huge market and its worth. As for your layout its pretty sick, I love the background, pictures and color scheme. It looks like you had no trouble figuring out blogger, as for me I've been struggling but not defeated. I can't wait to keep reading your blog so I can impress my boyfriend with facts! (BTW I hope you're not a Cowboys fan but I'm assuming you are since you posted that picture of DeMarco... #HTTR) :)
ReplyDeleteI think it is very interesting that you brought up the economic factor of the Fantasy sports. I have never thought that Fantasy sports can have such a big market as a gambling business. But speaking of a skillful gambling business, I think luck still has a large factor in it consider the players can always surprise you with their performances on the field due to many unpredictable factors. Just like the horse race game, a horse can have a good record but you never know exactly what can happen, especially sometimes the performance of several horse can be similar.
ReplyDelete