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Fantasy Sports
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It’s cool;
it’s slick; it’s a guy-thing; and it’s big business to boot.
By William Poe
Let’s face it guys, we’re misunderstood. The gals have it only half
right. While it’s true that many of us like nothing better on Sundays
than to be perched in front of the TV taking in a Cardinals baseball
game, followed by PGA golf, followed by ESPN’s SportsCenter, followed
late at night by Mike Bush’s Sports Plus, we’re really not loafin’.
We’re workin’.
After all, we’ve got a team to run, trades to consider, injury reports
to review, salary cap pressures, and, the pivotal player draft is
just around the corner. Like any good owner or general manager,
we want to see our boys in action and get a feel for who’s hittin’,
who’s pitchin’, who’s hittin’ the trey, and who’s slappin’ the biscuit
in the basket. It’s the big time, baby. There’s championship pressure,
money on the table, and braggin’ rights waitin’ to be had.
It’s Fantasy Sports, men, and it’s big business. It’s plenty big
for the companies providing the leagues and the games—companies
like CDM Fantasy Sports and the Sporting News—but it can even be
big business for individual participants.
“Some people literally can make a living playing fantasy sports,”
says Brian Matthews, co-founder and chief executive of CDM Fantasy
Sports, one of the first two companies in the U.S. to go national
with fantasy sports leagues. “We’ve had people earn over $100,000
playing our games; a few up to $250,000.” (By the way, fantasy sports
is considered a game of skill, not gambling, so it’s legal everywhere.)
As we say, gals, when we’re in front of the TV watching our players
or on-line checking player stats, we’re workin’.
Well, OK, most of us will never earn a nickel with our fantasy sports
teams. In fact, the teams will probably cost us a little jack for
things like entry fees, extra player trades, access to some stat
services, and even a few long distance calls to an expert to check
on the long-term team impact of Kurt Warner’s sore thumb. But, hey,
what’s a little less shopping money for the gals in return for some
really cool fun for the guys?
It’s certainly all right with the Sporting News and CDM Fantasy
Sports, both based in St. Louis, not to mention out-of-town giants
like America On Line, Yahoo! and others. They’re all in the game
running games.
“It’s a phenomenal business,” says Jason Stone, marketing manager
for Sporting News.com, the slick on-line product of the venerable
tabloid-style Sporting News. “We’ve got millions of players
from all over the world playing our games.”
CDM Fantasy Sports calls itself “the worldwide leader in fantasy
sports” and has a business empire to prove it. CBC Distribution
and Marketing, the parent company of CDM, is considered one of the
fastest-growing high-tech companies in St. Louis and the U.S., Matthews
says. Associated companies include River City Internet Group, CDM
Properties, and CDMVentures.com, not to mention Primary Network,
an Internet service provider. Matthews also has financial stakes
in the River City Rascals minor league baseball team, the St. Louis
Steamers indoor soccer club, and the St. Louis Swarm basketball
team. It seems he really is a sports nut.
CDM Fantasy Sports operates more than 35 fantasy games in a number
of sports and gives away some $5 million annually in prizes. Some
individual games have paid out $1 million in prize money, Matthews
says.
Founded in 1991, CDM Fantasy Sports has managed games for Baseball
Weekly, the Hockey News, the Sporting News (The
sports weekly now runs its own fantasy games.), USA Today,
and is now running golf games for The Golf Channel and contests
for Speedway Gas.
To be sure, fantasy sports is now a multi-million-dollar-a-year
business, involving many millions of even occasional players and
more than 100 game operators in the U.S., Matthews says. It has
come a long way from the cottage industry days of the early 1980s
when a bunch of guys would get together and assemble a neighborhood
rotisserie league for a little amusement. Those neighborhood leagues
soon spawned game operators who conducted games through the telephone
and the mail for a pool of players who were more serious than the
neighborhood or office players, including Matthews.
Then, the Internet changed everything.
“Fantasy sports has exploded as a direct result of the Internet,”
Matthews says.
It’s easy to see why. CDM’s company’s web site, cdmsports.com, is
a virtual sports arena where players can select a sport, read the
rules, sign up for one or more of a variety of games, and manage
their teams with information on schedules, scores, standings, player
notes, scouting reports, injury reports, depth charts, feature articles,
expert advice, and much more. Fantasy sports include baseball, football,
basketball, hockey, auto racing, and golf, and participants can
choose among various types of games within each sporting category.
The Sporting News offers the same sports and, in most categories,
offers both a free game and a fee-based game. For Ultimate Fantasy
Baseball, for instance, a participant pays $17.95 to field one team
and compete for $15,000 in prizes. Basic Fantasy baseball, on the
other hand, is free, and the top prize is $500. Most players, moreover,
pay at least some money even in free games, says Stone, for extra
trades and the like.
At CDM, Matthews says the typical participant is a male in his mid-30s
who is earning $75,000 a year and is a hard-core sports fan.” Serious
players at the high end, he adds, spend $250 to $400 when playing
a game.
“It’s a virtual game played by accountants, engineers, lawyers and
other white-collar men,” Matthews says. “Lots of players are retired
and devote a lot of their leisure time to the games. We have one
guy from Oklahoma who’s been playing for 10 years and comes to St.
Louis once a year to take our entire office out to lunch.”
In most sports, players assemble a team and manage it through a
season. In a typical fantasy baseball game, for example, a participant
owns his own team, which is assembled by selecting and drafting
players, signing free agents, and making trades. Team success is
based on actual major league baseball statistics. Scoring systems
vary but usually are either rotisserie style (teams rankings determined
by statistical categories such as batting average, home runs, runs
scored, etc.) or head-to-head match ups (final rankings determined
by outcome of series of team-to-team contests). Some games are very
true-to-life, involving factors such as individual player salaries,
team salary caps, taxi squads, player drafts, trading deadlines,
waiver wires, designated hitter (DH) shifts, and more.
“You have to actively manage to win,” Matthews says.
For players, fantasy games are not about the money and prizes, say
organizers. “It’s not the money; it’s the challenge because everyone
likes to think he’s a better manager than Tony La Russa,” Matthews
observes.
Suggests Stone: “People play for the competitive spirit of the game
and to compete against buddies for bragging rights.”
One marketing drawback to fantasy sports, says Matthews, is the
long duration of most games. Although some newer games are of relatively
short duration (such as an NCAA tournament bracket challenge during
the last March Madness), most games involve relatively lengthy seasons.
“Not everyone wants to be committed over a long period of time,”
Matthews says. “The shorter the timeframe, the larger the potential
audience. The future will be in real-time games and daily games
whereby maneuvers over the course of a day determine winners and
losers. I see people being strapped down to a TV and working a laptop
computer to play a game on a Sunday afternoon. It’ll give a whole
new meaning to the phrase, ‘armchair quarterback.’”
As we said, gals, we are not couch potatoes. We’re workin’ here!
William V. Poe is principal of Poe Communications, a St. Louis
advertising and marketing communications firm. |
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