design: Hiya Patel
graphic: Molly Sullivan
permission to print: Justin Blevins
Fantasy football has been growing rapidly the last couple of years. From 2018 to 2022, Fantasy football has grown an immense 45 percent.
“The fantasy sports market is valued at $21.39 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $ 44. 07 billion,” according to reportlinker.com.
Technology and sports betting is the perfect evolving mix to grow a market like fantasy sports. If I were to do a survey for students around the school, I guarantee at least 80 percent of boys would say they have at least one fantasy football team.
Sports betting only has the potential to go up, and people can’t say that about a lot of things in the world.
Senior ESPN NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski said, “You’re going to see more instances of fans being even more vitriolic toward players in this league, and it’s an issue they’re going have to deal with, but it comes with the influx of gambling money that everyone is going to profit off of, both players and the league. But it’s going to impact the relationship between fans and players in real time”.
This displays the development of gambling to the sports world. At the beginning of sports, fans were screaming rooting for their team to win. Now fans are screaming for a player to score the first basket so they can win their money.
It seems crazy, but in a world where money is the most important, people caring more about their parlays than caring if their favorite team wins isn’t all that crazy.
It really has gotten to the point where NBA league executives have come out to say in the future it’s going to be an ongoing issue. There aren’t many things in the world thriving like the sports betting industry and in particular fantasy football at the forefront.
With more apps than ever such as DraftKings, Fanduel, and many more to help users make money off of fantasy sports, it will be interesting to watch the development of sports gambling in the upcoming years. There truly isn’t something else in the sports industry that is flourishing like fantasy football, and it doesn’t seem like that is going to change anytime soon.
Fantasy football is, in a way, its own company with users at the helm, deciding wish players they want to invest in. The best way of doing this is daily tracking players particularly on apps like Fanduel and DraftKings. Many fans want to display their knowledge for the game, and the way they do that is through fantasy football.
With rewards of cash and bragging rights with friends, fantasy football is an amazing way to display one’s knowledge of the game and have fun doing it. Not to mention the colossal community of NFL is perfect for fantasy football to take off. NFL ratings are growing and higher than ever before and are eclipsing other sports such as basketball and soccer.
