Current Recession Can't Overcome American Male's Fantasy

It’s 11:30 PM on a bitter, bleak Sunday night in January and the drama is still building by the second. The women of Wisteria Lane have already finished spilling their gossip and cheating on their significant others with the gardener. The soldiers in The Unit have already heroically risked their lives all over the globe in heart-stopping action scenes.

Almost everyone in the house has long been asleep, but the TV is still on. Sweat is beading down your forehead and your heart is pounding in your ears. Every second that passes brings you one step closer to a big paycheck and personal bragging rights for a year.

Millions of people are sitting on the edge of their couches watching Sunday Night Football on ESPN, rooting not for their local football teams but the players on their own personal fantasy teams.

Every play has an effect on their team. Each amazing touchdown pass. Every costly fumble or interception. Every yard gained on any particular play affects the result of your weekly match-up.

It’s estimated that anywhere between 18 and 27 million Americans play fantasy sports online in the United States. Fantasy sports are games where owners chose a team of players through a draft and then compete against other owners based on statistics produced by these players.

For example, a typical fantasy football league would consist of 10-12 friends having a live draft, usually online on websites such as Yahoo! and ESPN, where they draft their own teams based on the 1,700 or so players in the Nation Football League.

Every week, their team goes up against another team in their league. Statistics such as catches, yards, and touchdowns earn the owners a certain number of points. These points are then added up and the owner with the highest score by the end of the weekend wins.

In the wake of the turmoil of the collapse of bank mortgages and the stock market, wealthy businessmen on Wall Street are still running a secretive and exclusive fantasy football league where the prize money adds up to $1,000,000. There are 10 teams and each team pays a $100,000 entry fee in order to play.

However, all is not what it seems. The rich are not trying to get richer in this league. Instead, they play for charity and the first, second, and third place finishers get to decide which charities they donate their winnings to.

Even though our nation is facing a financial crisis the likes of which many living citizens have never experienced, the fantasy sports industry continues to explode. It is estimated that industry is worth somewhere around $1 billion, with some estimates, particularly a website run by the University of Pennsylvania, being as high as $4 billion.

According to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, the sector is growing by 7-10 percent each year. The typical player is a white male, ages 18-49, with above-average levels of income and education.

Michael Davitt, a former UCC student, plays “for the chance to get bragging rights with my friends. It’s something fun to do and pass the time when you are bored.” He goes on to say, “It’s a way to have fun and win money without it seeming like you are actually gambling. It is a way for friends to bond and have a good time with small amounts of money involved.”

Joe Kleiber, a current Seton Hall student and contributor to BleacherReport.com, an online website dedicated to fantasy sports, started playing fantasy sports when he was 12. “I think it has grown on people and they figure if they're fans of the sport, why not get rewarded for their knowledge? It's really fun and always requires a lot of strategy so you have to be a big fan of the sport to get involved.”

Besides the amount of money spent on fees to play these fantasy games, the real reason fantasy sports has become a billion dollar business over the last decade is the amount of money made from advertising.

According to the Fantasy Sports Association, a group which includes huge corporation like ESPN, CBS Sports, and AOL, the average fantasy player is a big online buyer of travel, sporting goods, and automobiles. They go on to say that about 74 percent of fantasy players are beer drinkers.

Other companies who have recently begun advertising with fantasy sports are YouTube, Electronic Arts, Gillette, and Coke. YouTube even launched their own fantasy football channel in July of 2008.

According to Christopher Russo, who has held executive positions at NBC, New Line Cinema, and the NFL, fantasy sports combine games, sports, and community, which are three of the most powerful drivers on the internet. Fantasy players aren’t casual users of the Internet because they spend five to six hours a week updating their rosters and surfing the web for information to help them get ahead in their league.

This intrigues advertisers because they know the same demographic of people will always be on fantasy sports websites updating their teams and tracking their players’ statistics, as well as the fact that they will keep coming back on a consistent basis for these same reasons.

As you can see, fantasy gaming is just barely reaching its potential. It continues to grow steadily on a yearly basis with total disregard of our current economic problems. Both Michael and Joe both plan on playing more fantasy sports this next season regardless of our economy. To them, and 27 million other Americans, playing fantasy sports is a rush that is worth the expense.