Why I Play Fantasy Football and What Yahoo Got Wrong

I remember the first time I heard the words fantasy football.

I assumed it was some bizzaro mashup of dragons and modern sports, not unlike Quidditch per se. It was 2006, I was in the sixth grade, and the spot was the eighth grade lockers before lunch. A group of five guys would be there every day using strange abbreviations and foreign lingo to analyze Ladainian Tomlinson’s trade value, and how much Tiki Barber had left in his tank. I couldn’t understand for the life of me how these doofuses could voluntarily give up valuable recess minutes to talk about imaginary sports. But just like seemingly everyone else, I caught the bug.

When August came around, I was thrilled to get my own invite to my first fantasy league, and I was completely hooked. From then on I spent many a late nights updating my lineups, conducting painstaking analysis, and perusing the waiver wire. First on my parents boxy home computer, and eventually I’d check in on one of my own. A few league members came and went, but the core of about eight of us stuck around through the summers apart, the trials of high school, and the distance of college. Flash forward to 2015 and our league is still going strong.

Over the last two years, Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) sites have been generating a great deal of buzz. I understand the hype, the market is huge, with two companies valued at over 1 billion dollars (FanDuel and DraftKings). Last week, Yahoo Sports joined the chase. As it turns out, “Daily Fantasy Sports for Cash”, DraftKings motto, resonates with many investors and players. It might surprise some corporate executives that I don’t play Fantasy Sports purely “for cash.” I know I’m not alone.

Even after years of DFS existing on the Fantasy Sports scene, 75 percent of traditional Fantasy league players do not play DFS (paywall).

For me, fantasy football added a whole new incredible dimension to the football watching experience, and opened me up to types of analysis I didn’t know existed. Without fantasy football, I might no longer be in touch with friends from middle school, summer camp, and even some extended family members. Sure, I pay entry fees, I make side challenges with friends, but those are driven by competition, not by financial gain. That competitive factor is enough to make me, like so many others watch more, read more, and pay more for subscriptions.

However, none of this would have been achieved in pools of hundreds of strangers.

There is no one to contently chuckle at creative team names, no one to post ridiculous smack talk videos, certainly no one to do a nearly nude snow angel if they lose. I don’t believe DFS will ever attract the audience that traditional fantasy sports have. My advice to the monster platforms like Yahoo and ESPN is this: don’t follow the money. Instead, do what you can to make human behavior in traditional fantasy even more smooth. Find a way to streamline Smack Talk to exist purely on your site. Maintain a high level of Fantasy content that will make hours of research possible through your platform. Find what the people love, and make it better. I don’t know if DFS is here to stay, but it’s clear that traditional fantasy has made its mark. Keep improving, and the users like me will stay for years. The money will follow.

Yours Truly,

Jonathan “Taste DwayneBowe” Friedman

Business Development Manager at SidePrize