What Are Fantasy Sports?

In a world of modern technology, there are a lot of innovations and things that need further clarification. One of them is fantasy sports. Fantasy sports are nothing more than a type of online game in which players create a virtual team of real players of a professional sport (football, basketball, hockey, etc.) Their teams later compete and the winner is the team whose members have had the best performance in the real world during that week. If you are the old-school type, who prefers regular sports over fantasy games, you can use this online bonus for betting to test your luck in guessing the correct score of your favorite team or player. However, do not give up on fantasy sports so easily – there is a lot of excitement that fantasy games bring!

Early history of fantasy sports

The entire concept of picking out players and having a contest based on their performance has been around since after WWII. One of the first occurrences was the fantasy golf game, devised by Wilfred “Bill” Winkenbach in the late 1950s. Each participant selected a team of professional players and the person who had the lowest total of strokes would win. The first fantasy football league was formed by Winkenbach as well, in 1962. It consisted of eight teams, and George Blanda was the first player to be taken in the draft. The first fantasy baseball league was started in 1960 in Boston.

Modern appearances of fantasy sports

The innovation to the fantasy sports came with the development of Rotisserie League Baseball by Daniel Okrent in 1980. The innovation was that the managers (owners) would draft players from the Major Baseball League and would follow their progress throughout the season to compile scores. The owners would have to make predictions about players’ statistics, such as health, active minutes and other characteristics that real managers have to follow.

The era of the Internet and fantasy sports

The appearance of the Internet had a huge role in the growth and the development of fantasy sports. Statistics could be quickly monitored online and news and information were available 24/7. Since the beginning of 2012, a number of apps appeared on the Web. The number of players increased greatly with the expansion of fantasy sports to mobile devices. Millions of people now play fantasy sports and the market is growing at a rapid rate.

Daily fantasy sports

Daily fantasy games are such games that are played for a shorter period of time, for example, they last for a single week, rather than the entire season. People play daily fantasy sports as contests, they pay an entry fee and compete for a prize pool which is funded by the fees players pay.

Multi-billion dollar business

What once started as a fun game played between friends became a profitable business over the years. Today, fantasy games have a huge influence on real sports and many of the companies that are dealing with fantasy games are sponsored by multinational corporations. In the United States, fantasy sports are completely legal and are categorized as a game of skill rather than a game of chance. There is only a small number of states in the USA which does not allow fantasy games. The entire fantasy games industry has a profit of $1.5 billion yearly.