Discover the growth, advertising strategies and legal questions of fantasy football.

1. THE
CONTROVERSIAL
NATURE OF
FANTASY
FOOTBALL
THROUGH THE LENS OF MASS COMMUNICATION
BY DAVID PAULSSON

2. THREE ASPECTS OF
FANTASY FOOTBALL
• Growth
• How much has fantasy football grown over the years?
• Advertising
• How do companies advertise and how much do they
advertise?
• Business/Legal
• What are the business and legal issues with fantasy
football?

3. FIRST, WHAT IS
FANTASY FOOTBALL?
• Fantasy Football definition
• Fantasy football is a football competition with imaginary
teams which the participants own, manage, and coach and
with the games based on statistics generated by actual
players or teams of a professional sport.
• Fantasy football is played on websites
• ESPN
• Yahoo
• NFL.com

4. SEASON-LONG VS.
DAILY
• There are two major types of fantasy football
• Season-long leagues
• Draft at the beginning of the season
• You can make trades and pick up free agents
• Play against friends or strangers
• Lasts the whole season
• Daily leagues
• Start with a budget
• Each player has a different price based on their value
• There is a new “draft” every week where you can pick
different players

5. MY FANTASY FOOTBALL
EXPERIENCE
• Season-long leagues
• Three years
• ESPN
• 8 total teams
• 1 league championship
• Daily
• Played for three weeks
• DraftKings
• Won $0
• Stopped playing

6. BEGINNINGS OF
FANTASY FOOTBALL
• Fantasy football started in a hotel room in 1962
• Wilfred "Bill" Winkenbach
• First public league in 1969
• Oakland
• Andy Mousalimas
• Only for a specific few
• “All-male sports enthusiasts”

7. GROWTH STATISTICS
• As of 2013, over 35 million individuals participate in
fantasy football
• Every one in five adult males over 12 play a fantasy sport
• Estimated to have a $3.5 billion impact on the economy
• On average, players spend $110 a year on fantasy sports

8. REASONS FOR
GROWTH
• Fantasy football participation has increased with the
growth of daily fantasy sports
• DraftKings
• FanDuel
• Both valued at $1.2 billion
• Ability to make money
• Payouts ranging from $1 to millions
• Effective Advertising
• Commercials
• Web advertisements

9. FANTASY
BUSINESSES
• Growth in popularity has led to business opportunities
• Unique businesses
• Websites devoted just to fantasy
• DraftKings
• FanDuel
• Fantasy columns on ESPN, Yahoo
• Podcasts
• Books
• Gambling (which we’ll get into later)

10. GROWTH AND THE
INTERNET
• The Internet is the core reason behind the growth
• Websites devoted to fantasy
• Websites compile statistics, projections
• Keeps users from doing it themselves
• Just like everything else, makes it easy for the user
• Websites make money through web traffic
• Advertising

11. COMPETITION AND
TRADITION
• Season-long fantasy leagues
• You can have a league whose members remain intact
every year
• Families
• Co-workers
• Friends
• Church groups
• These groups foster fierce competition and tradition
• Examples
• The loser has to wear a clown costume
• Picking the order of the draft through the Kentucky Derby

12. FANTASY FOOTBALL
AT WORK
• Many employees engage in fantasy football leagues
• Out of 1500 surveyed, 16.59% participated in a fantasy
football league at work
• Fosters participation at work
• Employees participating in fantasy football leagues with
co-workers were more engaged than employees who
didn’t participate
• Higher levels of teamwork
• Felt more valued

13. ADVERTISING
• Advertising in fantasy football
• Commercials
• Online advertisements
• Partnerships with the NFL and individual teams
• Social media
• Growth of daily fantasy football has greatly increased
advertising efforts

14. DRAFTKINGS
COMMERCIAL
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwJnBV52rUE

15. FANDUEL
COMMERCIAL
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnvTXsqLxoE

16. FANTASY FOOTBALL
ON TV
• Fantasy football has drawn more viewers to NFL games
than there were before
• The number of NFL games watched per fantasy football
player has increased as well.
• Fantasy football players’ fandom towards their fantasy
teams is similar to that of their fandom for their favorite
NFL team

17. ADVERTISING THROUGH
ATHLETES AND WRITERS
• When Floyd Mayweather fought Manny Pacquiao in May,
he had a FanDuel logo on his shorts
• When American Pharaoh won the Triple Crown, he had
DraftKings gear on his back.
• Popular ESPN fantasy columnist Matthew Berry is a
spokesman for DraftKings

18. FUNDING FROM
MEDIA COMPANIES
• Media companies are investing in fantasy websites
• Fantasy sites creating revenue and growing quickly
• Competition is fierce between DraftKings and FanDuel
• DraftKings
• Signed a $250 million advertising deal with ESPN
• $300 million deal with Fox Networks Group
• FanDuel
• $275 million with Time Warner and Comcast

19. ADVERTISING
STATISTICS
• Together, DraftKings and FanDuel spent more than $27
million for about 8,000 television spots during the first
week of the 2015 NFL season.
• FanDuel says that is pays out $75 million a week and $2
billion a year
• 57 million people across the United States and Canada are
participating in fantasy sports this year

20. THE COVETED
AUDIENCE
• The typical fantasy football player
• College-educated professional
• 30s or 40s
• Average household income over $90,000
• Why are they coveted?
• Disposable income
• Of the 49% of fantasy football players who pay to play,
most spend an average of $468 a year
• Once they start playing, they can get hooked and come
back year after year

21. HOW MUCH IS TOO
MUCH?
• Consumer backlash from the torrent of fantasy football
advertising
• DraftKings and FanDuel are flooding the airwaves with
commercials
• Consumers are irritated with the amount of advertisements
• Online conversation between consumers
• During the first week of the NFL season, around 75% of
comments made about DraftKings and FanDuel
commercials were negative

22. LEGAL ISSUES
• As daily fantasy leagues have increased in popularity, the
ethics and legality of daily fantasy sports have come into
question
• The “daily” aspect is concerning
• Mimics gambling habits
• The argument for daily fantasy sports is that there is skill
involved

23. ADVERTISING
CONCERNS
• Advertising methods of DraftKings and FanDuel
questioned
• “They make it sound like it’s as simple as can be,” says
lawyer John Fernandes. “Go online, sign up, place your
bet, pick your team. Well, where’s the skill in that?”
• DraftKings and FanDuel commercials
• Some believe that because of the nature of their
advertising, they are similar to a gambling institution

24. EFFECT ON CASINOS
AND BOOKMAKERS
• With the growth of fantasy football, casinos and
bookmakers are worried that their business will be taken
over by websites similar to DraftKings and FanDuel
• As of right now, the federal government does not view
fantasy sports as gambling.
• This new booming industry, if determined to be legal, may
lead to the decline of casinos and bookmakers

25. JOHN OLIVER’S TAKE
• Comedian and TV show host John Oliver has his own take
on daily fantasy sports
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq785nJ0FXQ

26. THE UK IS AHEAD OF
THE GAME
• Blatant sports gambling is prevalent in the United
Kingdom
• A legal sports book in Wembley Stadium in Britain
• Soccer stadiums have gambling kiosks
• Thousands of sports betting shops
• How has it helped the UK government?
• 100,000 jobs created by the sports gambling industry
• In total, it generates $9.6 billion in revenue

27. NEW YORK PUTS ITS
FOOT DOWN
• The New York City attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman,
ordered DraftKings and FanDuel to stop accepting bets
from New York residents
• Determined to violate state gambling law
• More than 500,000 daily fantasy football players in New
York
• Schneiderman:
• “It is clear that DraftKings and FanDuel are the leaders of a
massive, multibillion-dollar scheme intended to evade the
law and fleece sports fans across the country. Today we
have sent a clear message: not in New York, and not on
my watch.”

28. PROFESSIONAL
SPORTS LEAGUES
• All four professional sports leagues, along with individual
professional sports teams, have a strong stance against
gambling.
• However, they continue to maintain their partnerships with
daily fantasy websites.
• Two of the most powerful NFL owners, Jerry Jones of the
Cowboys and Robert Kraft of the Patriots, own equity
stakes in DraftKings

29. THE FUTURE OF
FANTASY FOOTBALL
• Fantasy football has grown dramatically over the past
decade
• Daily fantasy has exponentially grown over the past year
• Because of legal questions, the growth in daily fantasy
may not last
• Season-long leagues will most likely continue to grow,
especially if daily fantasy is ruled to be illegal

30. THE FUTURE OF
FANTASY FOOTBALL
• Fantasy football has slowly begun to dominate social
media, advertisements, trending topics, and sports
conversations, and will continue to do so in the future
• As for me, I won’t say whether I think it’s legal or not. All I
am saying is that at the end of the day, fantasy football is
all up to chance. You can look at statistics and pore over
every article ever written about fantasy football, but you
have no control over what happens on the football field.
• Sure, it’s skill. Yeah right.