Our long national nightmare has ended – the NFL has returned for 2014. For fans – all is right with the world again – and for 35 million people that means the start of something even more exciting — Fantasy Football.

Fantasy Football is perhaps the most brilliant social marketing campaign ever devised. It’s hard to believe that what is now transforming the league, and has put hundreds of millions of dollars more (every year) into the league’s pocket, was an activity they ignored, reviled, litigated, and despised, for nearly 40 years.

It’s a cautionary tale for marketers who are desperately wanting to ignite a fire and build a world around their brand. While it looks obvious now, the tale of Fantasy Football is almost too bizarre to believe, and contains valuable lessons for the would-be-cult brand makers.

Fourth and Fumble

Fantasy Football was created outside the official structure of the game itself, and that’s something those on the inside always find threatening. Originally started as a joke, Fantasy Football predates the modern NFL – with leagues having been formed years before the first Super Bowl or the utterance of the God of Football’s name – Lombardi.

Fantasy Football was resisted, marginalized, even litigated by the NFL as infringement on their franchise and intellectual property rights. The league relentlessly pursued Fantasy Football leagues and decried it as unlawful gambling, infringement of their marks, and impediment to their brand and league development. There was actually a stretch where people who played Fantasy Football wondered if the game would be allowed to exist.

Not to be outdone in stupidity, for much of the last 40 years, Congress decried Fantasy Football as illegal gambling, corrupting America’s most beloved game, and tried to ban it several times (because Congress only focuses on the really important stuff – not like war and peace, but whether or not Fantasy Football is gambling). Only recently (about five years ago), did Congress finally put down the fasces against Fantasy Football.

NFL officials would claim today that it was the fear of illegal gambling and bookmaking, combined with Congressional actions, that drove them to discredit Fantasy Football. In the end, it was marketing incompetence. Especially in the late 1990’s, the NFL should have aggressively moved to embrace Fantasy Football because of changes in technology, the internet, and communications. The NFL most plainly didn’t understand the power that Fantasy Football had, until it became bigger than the NFL itself.

You probably had no idea how big Fantasy Football really is

The most valuable team in the NFL, according to Forbes, is the Dallas Cowboys, which is valued at $3.2 billion. The NFL’s total annual revenue per year is $10 billion (making it the most profitable league in the history of everything). According to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, 32 million players spend an average of $467 on Fantasy Football which adds up to $15 billion.

Yes. You read that right – Fantasy Football is actually worth more money than real football. It’s worth 50% more than the most profitable league in the history of everything. That doesn’t even count things like the fact that Fantasy Football puts millions in to the pockets of companies like Xfinity, Dish Networks, and others, not even connected with the NFL.

When the money is that big – even a blind squirrel that’s been litigating against them for 40 years finds a nut. So in 2010 – the NFL finally embraced Fantasy Football. By 2012, the NFL even had a Fantasy Draft that was more widely watched than the actual draft. In short, the NFL has finally figured out that Fantasy Football drives revenue into the NFL – it’s the ultimate content marketing strategy, and the NFL didn’t need to pay a dime for it. They had been creating the content all along, what they needed was a way to monetize it. Even that had been shown for them – by companies like Fleaflicker, Yahoo, CBS, ESPN, and Fox.

How Fantasy Football is changing the NFL

Ultimately why the NFL decided to join the party of Fantasy Football isn’t hard to discern. By 2010, it was clear that ESPN was making headway providing information and a portal for Fantasy Football players to use. Networks like CBS and Fox, as well as online groups like Yahoo Sports, had also multi-million player followings. Since it was the NFL that controlled the release of this information, it borders on the tautological how the NFL avoided making its own Fantasy Football portal for so long. When they did – it was heavily adopted, and it’s changing the game as a result.

When the NFL launched its own Fantasy Football game in 2010 — one that was almost immediately superior any of the sites that were out there, the sites many fantasy players had used for years — it was official. You suddenly didn’t see any retired athlete analysts making fun of Fantasy Football on the air anymore. The NFL entered the market, and started destroying the competition.

While others had created this world to inhabit – ultimately the world was owned by the NFL. The inhabitants of that world were very eager to get their information and approval directly from the source – the NFL. In exchange for approval and love from the game they had supported for 40 years, they were prepared to give the NFL billions of dollars in more revenue. Moreover, the NFL finally relinquished some control over the game itself – in large part driven by the social interaction of Fantasy Football. The consequence is it’s changing the game in observable key ways.

Fantasy Football makes you watch the whole league – not your team

When I was hired at Booz Allen Hamilton, as a rite of passage, every new consultant hears what is probably the sexiest and the silliest story in the firm’s history – how we changed football forever with the recommendation of creating Monday Night Football.

As the myth is told inside Booz, the NFL wanted a solution to get more people to watch the NFL, make more television dollars with the networks, and get more exposure to the league overall. Booz’s solution – make one game a week a nationally televised game with no interruptions or competition from other games possibly being played in other markets or at the same time. The result – Monday Night Football, a practice that continues to this day, as well as having later expanded (as a result of the success of the Vikings when the Dome collapsed) Thursday Night Football.

When the NFL embraced Fantasy Football – they got basically Monday Night Football on steroids. Now everyone was watching the entire league, as well as the players.

I’m reminded of an exchange that Peyton Manning relayed once between himself and a fan:

Fan: “Hey, great game last week.”

Manning: “Yeah, but we lost.”

Fan: “But you threw five touchdowns, and that’s all I need from you.”

Game outcomes matter less so much as how certain players perform in the league overall. So as a result, Fantasy Football players in Detroit and Washington, D.C., might actually enjoy watching football – even though they know their teams are most likely washed up before game one is ever even played (as someone who lived in Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., trust me – it’s utterly painful that feeling of dread before the first snap ever occurs). Yes teams matter, everyone still talks about teams, but players matter much more now than they ever did before the NFL embraced Fantasy Football.

Fantasy Football has increased league attendance and participation

In studies done by research groups about the effect of Fantasy Football on both attendance and television viewership, they’ve found that Fantasy Football increased attendance at games across the league, as well as having increased the size of the television audience. Larger TV audiences mean more revenue for the networks carrying games. More revenue for the network means they’ll bid more for the rights to broadcast – which puts more money in the NFL’s pocket. A lot more.

Fantasy Football is even changing the game itself and how the NFL markets the league

Let’s review a couple of ways the NFL has changed their offerings and the game itself, in response to Fantasy Football:

NFL red zone. All scoring plays and key moments in football games. Basically this entire network is crack for the Fantasy Football addicts.

NFL Fantasy LIVE – this should be obvious.

How the games are aired and reported have change dramatically as a result of Fantasy Football.

The NFL Commissioner even participates in the NFL Fantasy Draft – an event that is watched by more people than the actual NFL draft (because it’s all about me – the fan. Most fans obviously could care less if some multi-billionaire offers a job to some college kid – which ultimately is what the draft is about.)

The NFL is installing WiFi in stadiums. Now imagine that! There was a time when it was illegal to have a PHONE in an NFL stadium for fear of bookmaking. Now in the age of constant global information – anyone getting the drop ahead of a replay is zero. Hence, digital support for football right at the stadium even.

NFL Mobile app is one of the highest rated and used apps in both Apple and Android stores – created entirely to fuel the addiction of Fantasy Football addicts to get stats and information directly from the NFL instead of places like Yahoo Sports, ESPN, or one of the networks (CBS, FOX, NBC).

Seahawk’s corner back Richard Sherman (winner of the 2013 NFL Miss Congeniality award), said this with regards to the new NFL rules regarding illegal contact: “When the Fantasy Football numbers need to be what they need to be, then the league needs to do what it needs to do to get it done. This is a money-driven league, so whatever sells the tickets is gonna sell the tickets.”

The Future – First Down or Fourth and Forever?

The frackus for 40 years over Fantasy Football seems ridiculous now that Fantasy Football has been institutionalized, mainly because the league and the networks realized, just how much money they could make off of it. It’s now put more than a billion dollars a year more into the pockets of everyone in the business, and while some of that money was made outside the existing NFL/networks structure five years ago, it’s almost all in-house now. So for at least a decade, the NFL conceivably threw away the equivalent of one year of revenues – or 10 billion dollars. That’s a pretty intense mistake if you ask me.

Obviously this is Monday morning quarterbacking, but the NFL resisted Fantasy Football really for three reasons in my view:

The NFL didn’t like the fact that someone had taken their content and created something different with it. That dislike occurs in brands big and small. The NFL resisted Fantasy Football because they didn’t like who played it – they didn’t see their customers as the guys who would drop hundreds of dollars on website subscriptions and use calculus at a level you could land a guy on the moon, instead, they saw the audience that the beer companies, the truck companies, and the advertisers had advertised to all those years. The NFL refused to admit that smart people liked football too – and quite frankly – had way more money to pay to fuel their ambitions. The NFL really lost billions of dollars because they chose to sit on their hands because of inertia. While others made millions, the NFL could have been making much more. They chose not to embrace their followers – a cardinal sin in today’s economy which the NFL has since rectified.

I hear brands complaining how they want to be Harley-Davidson – have a world of their own. Here’s a case of a brand who had a whole world of its own, with fans begging it to show it some love, and the NFL basically said “Pray for rain, because we’re not watering that plant.” It’s absolutely amazing. While the NFL has its share of boneheaded plays on the field – this one tops anything Tony Romo, Mark Sanchez, Leon Lett, Jim Marshall, or Joe Pisarcik, ever accomplished on the field.

So, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Saddle up.