The Fight For Fantasy Football

By Mike Beacom, AlterNet. Posted December 23, 2005.

It's often said that there are two certainties in life: death and taxes. But us cynics know that there is at least another -- where public interest and large profit margins exist, so soon will corporate America, and with it greed and corruption.

And so goes the story of fantasy football, a hobby of sorts for football enthusiasts. The name is somewhat unfitting; if you've never played fantasy football, you might think it's a role-playing game or a board game with dice and a slick-coated cardboard surface. It is neither, but rather the closest thing most fans have to running a real, live football franchise. The setup is simple: organize a group of your closest friends, pick a day when everyone can be present, and take turns selecting real football players. Then, when those players take the field on Sunday, you get points for how well (or poorly) the players on your team perform.

I can say with a straight face that for most of its existence, the emphasis has been placed on good-natured fun -- bragging rights, if you will. Although most fantasy leagues have a pot for the winner (usually $100 give or take a few bucks), that's rarely the motivation for people to play or why they are competitive (and in many cases, fanatical) about the hobby.

But the NFL, through its players association, has turned fantasy football into a pay-for-play hobby. Yep, the same folks who a year ago inked a six-year, $8 billion dollar deal for future television rights and who raise considerable revenue through apparel and sponsorship agreements, have their sites set on tapping into fantasy geekdom, too. Fantasy football is putting up a fight … well, as good of a fight as a geek can raise against the schoolyard bully, anyhow.

From the locker rooms to the board rooms

The game's origins actually stem from the Oakland Raiders organization in the early 1960s. The minority owners of the team -- most of whom made their money in the tile business -- began a league (fantasy baseball came a few years before). I once asked Ron Wolf about it. Wolf, who constructed the Super Bowl champion Packers of 1996, was a scout in the Raiders organization for many years, and was often asked to critique players for a few of his bosses who invented the hobby. He said it was a big deal then, but it was nothing he imagined would blossom into the multi-million dollar industry that is played by more than 20 million Americans today. And today is when greed rears its ugly head.

A dozen years or so ago, fantasy football hit a boom. There was enough interest from advertisers that magazines such as Fantasy Index, Fantasy Football Pro Forecast and Fantasy Sports could hit the shelves every July and August (this summer there were more than two dozen fantasy football magazines on the market). The computer whizzes at Daedalus developed sophisticated software that enabled fantasy enthusiasts to host leagues online. It was the Golden Age of fantasy sports.

Around the same time, the National Football League was also growing. It expanded from 28 to 30 teams (it now boasts two more) and business was as good as ever. But fantasy football? The league refused to acknowledge its existence, and didn't for a good number of years afterwards.

The fantasy boom continued, and soon entrepreneurs were making large sums of money offering services online -- services like in-depth player analysis and league manager systems -- to participants in contests worth loads of money to the winner. The throwback fantasy player, used to keeping track of scores on legal pads, may have protested, but this type of growth was healthy. It was, after all, the little guy who was taking those risks to start companies and in turn making the profit. And the little guy in most cases was a fantasy geek to begin with, so all of that growth stayed inside of fantasy football's little circle. It's comparable to the times before Wal-Mart, Staples and TGI Fridays, when businesses were small and local and modest, yet still somehow successful.

Then DirecTV came into the picture. The satellite television company struck a deal with the NFL to sell a seasonal package that included every game that was not a prime time event. Who would buy such a package? For years, the vast majority of football watchers only paid attention to one team -- their own, the one that existed within a few hundred miles of their home, and the one that was readily available through basic cable. But somehow DirecTV sold a ton of these NFL packages to people all over the United States (enough so to give the NFL $3.5 billion to renew the deal another five years).

And why? Because fantasy players in Wisconsin wanted to watch San Francisco quarterback Steve Young play. Because a fantasy player in Dallas wanted to keep tabs on Washington running back Stephen Davis. And thus fantasy football revolutionized the sport of football -- Philadelphia Eagle fans now cheered for the Cardinals, and Falcons, and Seahawks. There were no boundaries, no limitations, and the viewing market grew exponentially overnight, or so it seemed.

Mike Beacom is a full-time freelance journalist who specializes in mainstream pro and college football. He also earns a portion of his income from penning fantasy football articles, and he serves as chairman to the Fantasy Sports Writers Association, a not-for-profit group which recognizes excellence in fantasy sports journalism. Beacom has no financial stake in league management software, contests, or anything else under review by the NFLPA.

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