“Hmm, now I need to pick up a pitcher. Who’s still out there? Roy Halladay or Tim Lincecum? Halladay has a 2.22 ERA, whereas Lincecum has a 2.35 ERA. On the other hand, Lincecum has a higher winning percentage and sixteen more strikeouts than Halladay. Who to choose? Ten seconds left to decide. Nine, eight, seven…” These are the thoughts going through Aaron’s mind as he sits in front of his computer contemplating which of the two players is better to draft for his fantasy baseball team. If you have ever fanaticized about what it would be like to manage your own team of professional players and compete with your peers, fantasy sports is the hobby for you. Fantasy sports is a social epidemic that has been on the rise for many years and will continue to inflate for a long period of time.
According to encyclopedian.com, a fantasy sport “is a game where fantasy owners build a team that competes against other fantasy owners based on the statistics generated by individual players or teams of a professional sport” (Truesdale). There is also the ability to trade, cut, and sign players, just like a real sports team owner. Some players who are very knowledgeable of the sport play for money, whereas some players like me play for fun on websites that host the game for free. Being part of the fantasy sports league motivated me to closely follow and watch how my drafted players perform. My knowledge of sports now is far greater than when I didn’t participate in fantasy sports. Watching sports news channels and discussing the latest updates with my brothers helped me to be able to manage my fantasy team well. During my free time, I would search for latest gossip on sports on a website called RealGM.com. It told me all the players who were performing well and those who were not. This exciting experience would not have happened if it weren’t for a man named Daniel Okrent and his friends. It all began in 1980 when Daniel Okrent, a sportswriter, invented the first fantasy league. The idea of game came to mind while he was dining with a few friends at La Rotisserie Francaise restaurant in Manhattan, New York, and thus it came to be called “rotisserie baseball.” Okrent and his friends performed the first fantasy draft and kept track of baseball players' statistics by hand, pulling statistics out of The Sporting News magazine. In a 2003 interview with Jim Weber, the sports editor of the Michigan Daily newspaper, Okrent commented on the development of the game, “It took a lot, but we must have enjoyed it or we wouldn’t have done it” (Drexler). The first league only used players from baseball's National League, but as the popularity of the hobby increased, the entirety of baseball and other sports is included today.
Fantasy sports have long evolved since its earlier days. According to Greg Ambrosius, president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA),"It used to be thought of as (something for) just geeks and hard core fans. But this isn't a small closet hobby anymore. This son of bitch is a big, big industry, and it's all due to the Internet."
It wasn’t until a few decades later, the stats-based fantasy sports industry subsequently evolved into a booming, multi-billion dollar business. A study by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association estimates that between 15 and 18 million Americans play fantasy sports with a growth of about seven to ten percent each year, which is a huge increase from a sportswriter and his group of friends in a Manhattan restaurant (Truesdale).
Malcolm Gladwell, the author of The Tipping Point, believes that when a social trend or fad is developing or “tipping,” it has to have some underlying causes within the trend to cause this to occur. Rotisserie baseball was not very well-known to the public until the mid-1990’s, when leagues began to branch out into football, basketball, and other sports. Gladwell believes that each social epidemic works the same way. They must have people driven by their efforts who play a critical role in the growth of a particular social epidemic. He identifies them as connectors, mavens, and salesmen.
Connectors know a lot of people. In fantasy sports, there are many connectors. For example, the creator of the hobby, Daniel Okrent, is a connector. Since he was a member of the media, he had discussed this fascinating idea with his friends who were also writers and publishers. Word of the league spread quickly like wildfire. One of the original owners, also a columnist in the 1980s for Sports Illustrated, states, "The Rotisserie League is silly, and we know that. We also know that it has caused great changes in the lives of each and every one of us, mostly for the better. We play for money, of course, but we also play for friendship, competition, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” (History of Fantasy). Not only was the hobby a competition but also a way to reconnect with new and old friends. Participants are also connectors. They create their own private leagues and tell their friends about their experience with the fantasy leagues and ask them to join. The participants play a huge role in the drastic growth.
The second group of people Gladwell points out in The Tipping Point is the mavens. A maven is one who “accumulates knowledge” or specializes in the field related to the trend. Fantasy sports have multiple mavens. Once again Okrent and his friends who were first to participate are mavens for this industry. They are the ones with the most knowledge of the how the game works. Fantasy sports isn't always about having the best players of a respective sport on your team. It's about having the players with the best statistics. There are certain players who are great, but they just aren't able to accumulate the stats due to the team they are on. For example in the NFL, a player like Andre Johnson of the Houston Texans could arguably be the best player at his position but he would not be the top wide receiver taken in a fantasy draft because he doesn't have high caliber quarterback to deliver him the ball. There are also situations where a player would benefit and have a boost in stats while playing for poor team. A prime example would be the San Francisco Giants' very own Pablo Sandoval. He's not a top tier player but because he plays for the offensively challenged Giants, the spotlight on him is bigger. The media and fans rave about how good Sandoval is when in fact he is just an above average player. Today, there are many people who are mavens of fantasy sports. Some are paid analysts and do hours of research on professional athletes, and then there are the dedicated fans. The mavens are the ones who finish at the top of their league when the sports season comes to an end.
The final group Gladwell identifies is salesmen. A salesman is a persuader, in other words a charismatic person with powerful negotiation skills. In this case, ESPN is a salesperson for fantasy sports. The many commercials and online advertisements attract some sports fans to try it out. Some of the players themselves do self-promotions to “sell” themselves by somehow getting their name across the media’s attention. Player could trash talk to one another and cause media drama. A perfect example is the celebrity feud between Indiana Pacers’ Reggie Miller and movie director, Spike Lee. Being a Knicks fan, Spike Lee and the basketball star are each other’s biggest rivals. When Miller buried the Knicks in the fourth quarter of a playoff game, he turned and pointed at Lee gave him a choke sign. This gesture made it on the front page of the New York newspapers and caught many sports fans’ attention.
The media plays an important role as a salesperson to its viewers as they knock certain players while they praise others convincing 'average' sports fans to share the same perspective. If a player gets injured, the news of the replacement will immediately go out to the public through sports news channels, such as ESPN. The fantasy team manager with the injured player could list him or her as “disabled” and pick up the substitute. Similarly, if the sports analyst praises particular who has progressively, players will be picked up or trades will be proposed between teams. The media is a key factor in keeping fantasy sports players involved with their team like a real sports team general manager would.
The Stickiness Factor, according to Gladwell, says that “there are specific ways of making contagious message memorable…” (25). People continue to play fantasy sports because it gives people the opportunity and a reason to follow the entire league and not just cheer for their favorite team. Truesdale writes in his article “The Growth of Fantasy Sports: Why this Online Game is now one of the Most Popular on the Internet,” “many fans of the popular Internet phenomenon agree with Neiss’ statement of fantasy sports adding another aspect to watching the game” (Truesdale). Participating in fantasy sports gives him or her them a reason to stay updated with the latest news on each player religiously. Another key factor is the appeal of the fantasy leagues, such as the amount of detailed statistics provided. Yahoo! fantasy sports has detailed statistics of each player and allows the manager to compare statistics in the present and past months. ESPN introduced a game where users predict winners of games and the top performers in an effort to be first to build a 25 pick winning streak for four consecutive months with a $1 million prize. Both of these games are free of charge to anyone desiring to play, which is how sports fans are lured to give the leagues a try.
The Power of Human Context is the effect of how strong environmental influence has on human behavior. Gladwell believes that a social epidemic is sensitive to the time and place in which the trend tips. Fantasy sports’ popularity began to grow in the mid 1990’s, which was around the same time as the Internet boom. The Internet boom of the lat 1990's is a remote cause which created a revolution for the game. The new technology of the Internet lowered the entry barrier to the hobby as stats could quickly be compiled online and news and information became readily available. The Internet boost also helped sites like Yahoo Inc. begin hosting their own free fantasy sports league. Other websites that offer fantasy sports for free include big media companies like CBS, Walt Disney's, ESPN and News Corp.'s Fox, which runs its fantasy site in conjunction with Microsoft's MSN. Since fantasy sports are an Internet based commodity, “it goes hand-in-hand with the growth of online advertising, which sheds light on why fantasy sports is now a $4 billion industry” (Truesdale). Advertisements and commercials play a fairly important role in increasing the number of players.
Additionally, improvement in technology spurs the growth of fantasy sports. “Fantasy sports…are exploding onto new platforms like smart phones and social networking sites, grabbing the attention of advertisers, wireless carriers and software companies” (Klayman). Social networking websites, such as Facebook, are beginning to host fantasy football games with 350,000 users. Facebook, like fantasy sports, is a social epidemic that has reached the tipping point. It has one of the largest fantasy football games on the Internet along with Yahoo! and ESPN. Fantasy sports has grown so much that it has even expanded to social networking websites. Jeff Ma, the co-founder of Citizen Sports Network, says, “Fantasy sports at its core is a set of microcommunities of your good friends that you want to stay in touch with and ‘talk smack’ to,…” (Klayman). Not only is this fad a great way to reconnect with old buddies but also a way to be aware of the latest updates on each sport.
Another benefit of the advancement of technology for fantasy sports is the constant use of smartphones. Smartphone owners could simply just take out their smartphone whenever and wherever they want and check their players. Klayman writes of an example in his article, Technology Spurs Growth of Fantasy Sports, “Troetel…checks on his players at least two or three times a week, using his handheld device to go to the relevant websites” (Klayman). Having this easy access of being “one touch” away from viewing game results, latest sporting news, or fantasy sport team, is very convenient for those who desperately need to check on how all his or her players are performing. 4Info is a company who is benefiting from the growth of fantasy sports. Fifteen percent of half a billion text messages come from sports fans who are seeking sports results to feed into their fantasy sports teams (Klayman).
Major television networks, such as ESPN, have hour-long shows preceding major sports seasons. In late March 2007, when the baseball season was right around the corner, ESPN aired shows specifically dedicated to fantasy sports participants. The sports analysts give a breakdown of who would be a great pick for each position. Updates of certain players are often shown after the final scores at the bottom of the screen. In addition to television networks, sports magazines devote issues to fantasy sports. As the beginning of a particular sports’ season draws near, sports magazines will devote large portions of the issue to fantasy sports. For instance, on the cover of ESPN The Magazine's March 12th issue is boldly states that it contains ‘"35 Pages You Can't Live Without," and the issue contains player projections’ for 258 major leaguers (Drexler). This title is obviously directed to the fantasy sports players. This will be a handy guide for them to use when he or she does not know who to pick up, drop, or trade away.
Furthermore, not only the number of participants in fantasy sport leagues is overwhelming but also the number of fantasy websites. The growth of the hobby is also benefiting the real sport leagues because the fantasy sport fans are more engaged in watching “their players’” performance on the gridiron, court, diamond, etc. According to Bob Bowman, chief executive of Major League Baseball's advanced media unit, “Nearly 60 percent of revenue comes from fans attending games, so to the extent I can get a casual fan to go to one game that means a lot. If I can repeat that 10 million times, that’s real money” (Klayman). The expansion of fantasy sports has made it to overseas markets. The growing economies of the Far East with Internet access want to be engaged in following their sports leagues just as much as Americans do. Fantasy sports will continue to be a social trend as long as the intensity of the competition either increases or stays the same.