Winners or losers: participants in fantasy games redefine leisure sports

Parks & Recreation, Feb, 2004 by Joseph P. Flood

After football, the second major fantasy game played by millions of sport enthusiasts worldwide is fantasy baseball. Everyday more and more sports fans are becoming familiar with the rules and regulations of fantasy baseball and getting booked. Starting a baseball league is very similar to the process involved in fantasy football. Fans can even turn to their local newspapers for tips on organization, player selections and current statistics.

As recently as 10 years ago, fantasy sports was the addiction of a few thousand American men and a mere handful of women. In its early days, players gathered at each other's homes at the start of their favorite season to draft teams of real-life players, spending hours studying the statistics and box scores of the players they drafted.

While fantasy sports have been around since 1962, all explosion occurred in the mid-to-late 1990s with the creation of Internet sites (Fantasy Sports Trade Association [FSTA], 2003). While media companies are pouring in money, big-league baseball, basketball, football and hockey are paying close attention. Meanwhile, users of leagues are aggressively seeking meetings with professional leagues and media companies to discuss deals and trades, all with hopes of major financial pay-offs (Fatsis, 1995). Due to the popularity of fantasy sports, every major online sports site, including Disney's www.ESPN.com, and CBS's www. SportsLine.com, offers fantasy games for nearly every imaginable sport. Carl Foster, president and chief executive officer of the Fantasy Sports Players Association states, "The Internet has brought fantasy sports out of the closet and brought a lot of major companies like Disney into the industry." (Berentson, 2000)

Redefining Leisure

Are participants in fantasy sports, stretching the boundaries of what leisure means today? Or, are they just pushing the personal perceptions and comfort zones of what park and recreation professionals have determined recreation to be because of its rapid evolution? Recreation and leisure professionals must determine whether or not it is necessary for the profession to broaden the traditional definition of recreation and leisure.

As professionals, most agree that leisure is both a combination of an individual's state of mind, and all activity engaged in without any sense of obligation. Kelly & Freysinger (2000), further propose that recreation, like leisure, involves both an individual's state of mind and an activity. Moreover, "recreation" is an organized activity with the purpose of restoring the mind, body, and spirit. Does participation in fantasy sports achieve this? It may depend on a number of factors--age and gender; the sport involved, and geographic location. One thing is for certain--the trend doesn't seem to be slowing anytime soon.

Future Possibilities are Endless

Beginning simply with friends gathering at houses and restaurants, fantasy sports have grown to be one of the largest Internet interaction sites in the world. Fast-forwarding to today, people interact with each other via the Internet by the millions, and over the next decade Internet site owners expect significant growth. FSTA commissioned a demographic survey through the University of Mississippi in 2003 to help businesses identify' the expectations of current players. More than 600 fantasy sports players responded to the survey, with the results showing clear trends. Fantasy football still holds the most popular status with 93 percent of respondents saying they prefer playing football to other sports. Sixty-three percent play fantasy baseball, 38 percent play fantasy basketball, 31 percent play fantasy hockey, 28 percent play fantasy golf; and 20 percent play fantasy NASCAR. The average fantasy participant has been playing football and baseball for more than six years and manages 2.4 teams per sport. More than 40 percent of the respondents use a draft method only for fantasy baseball, while more than half of the respondents compete in fantasy baseball leagues that draft and/or use an auction.