Sherman Cavallaro's blog : When Fantasy Sports Got Real
So there I was, back in '79, just chillin' on this flight from Hartford to Austin, right? And this dude, Daniel Okrent, he's also on board, brainstorming away. Suddenly, boom! The guy gets this wild idea about fantasy baseball—no joke, like an actual auction for players' stats; none of that computer or sabermetrics jazz. Pure old-school, newspaper box scores and all. Okrent, the guy cracks me up, he says it's 'cause he sucked at sports. Dreamin' of playing third base was a no-go for him, too far-fetched.
Anyway, once we touch down in Austin, Okrent spills his guts about this idea at a BBQ hangout with some Texas Monthly peeps. They weren't biting, though. Time rolls on, and he pitches it again, but this time in Manhattan over some fancy French lunch visit the following web page. That's when the spark catches fire. No ""Brisket League Baseball"" for us—nah, we end up with ""Rotisserie,"" named after some now-gone restaurant, La Rotisserie Française.
Man, those early days of Rotisserie League Baseball were something else. We're talkin' a $250 buy-in back in 1980, with the winner taking home a fat chunk of the pot. Okrent was kinda paranoid about becoming persona non grata as gamblers in the baseball world. The dude was writing a book—""Nine Innings""—needed that clubhouse access real bad. To play it safe, they stuck to National League players, keeping out the Brewers and Orioles. “Smart move,” some American League bigwig told Okrent. They were all about keeping gambling at arm's length cnn.
And get this—Okrent was a Tigers fan from the get-go, A.L. through and through. So, he's juggling this weird mix of feelings, tryna not betray his team but also runnin' his own squad, the Okrent Fenokees. Sports fandom's supposed to be simple, right? Good thing he could split watching his Tigers from managing his fantasy team.
The other founders of this Rotisserie thing, they were all well-connected folks—authors, editors, scholars. Word got out fast, and soon enough, baseball's higher-ups were dealing with these Rotisserie copycats blowing up their phone lines, fishing for player updates. They weren't lookin' to gamble; they were just disciples of Okrent, hungry for any edge in their fantasy leagues.
Fast forward to the end of the '90s, and the internet's changed the game. Fantasy baseball's gone big, spread to football even, and now there's this legit trade group, the Fantasy Sports Trade Association. They go ahead and throw Okrent and his buddy Glen Waggoner into their Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame. ""You couldn't pay me to go,"" Okrent says about the ceremony in Orlando. By then, he's feeling all sorts of ways about this billion-dollar monster he helped birth, banking only peanuts compared to what it's become.
He even put his Fenokees on ice for a bit, just worn out from the fantasy world. According to Okrent, the first couple of years are all fun and games, diving deep into baseball like when you were a kiddo. But give it some time, and the real deal starts to fade away; it's all about the numbers. Some of the original gang don't even give a hoot about baseball anymore. Okrent's like, ""Inventing fantasy sports? Feels like I'm Oppenheimer with his atomic bomb bbc."" Not exactly a proud papa moment, huh?
A short while back, I dropped by the F.S.T.A.'s winter meet-up in Vegas. The vibe? They're on top of the world, like they hold the future of sports in their spreadsheet-lovin' hands. The fantasy folks, once seen as the underdogs, now they're riding high with forty million players in North America, including a cool eight million women. But the real kicker is seeing the pros—teams and leagues—finally cozied up to fantasy sports. It used to be this leech on the side of real sports, now it's golden. Hardcore fans might clock six hours a week on games; fantasy nuts are clocking triple that.
Then there's Jeremy Munter, or Muntradamus, this 27-year-old Vegas transplant living in his own fantasy sports bubble. He's not just playing; he's looking to rule it all. Daily fantasy's his game—fast-paced, big tournaments, and you can win or lose in a single night. The guy's throwing together hundreds of teams, betting small but playing the long game. No spreadsheets for the first fifty teams; he's got this sixth sense for a good deal on players.
Munter's daily grind? Six hours of live sports, from the early East Coast games till the last West Coast showdown, parked at the Westgate sports book. Then, it's gym time to shake off the stress, followed by a night fueled by caffeine and energy drinks, crunching numbers for the next day's matches. Dude wakes up at noon, dives into Rotoworld.com, and dishes out fantasy advice to his forty thousand Twitter followers for a hefty weekly fee.
The daily-fantasy world's got its own lingo—sharks, whales, fish—you get the drift. Muntradamus? He's a shark, feeding whale clients his wisdom and preying on the little guys. We first met at this FanDuel bash, the top dog in daily fantasy. The joint was packed with fantasy celebs, like math wizards Drew Dinkmeyer and Al Zeidenfeld. Meanwhile, FanDuel's boss, Nigel Eccles, was there too, talking big about changing how America watches sports.
Eccles hails from a dairy farm in County Tyrone, a bona fide numbers guy with a past at McKinsey. He's all about pumping up the less-exciting games with fantasy action. He and Okrent actually agree: the real games are losing their luster, and fantasy's this massive sideshow now taking the spotlight.
Believe it or not, daily fantasy could've been a no-show if it weren't for this weird alliance between the NFL and the Christian right, both looking to shut down offshore betting online. They got the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act passed in 2006, and while it took a sledgehammer to online poker, it gave fantasy sports a free pass—pure luck for the fantasy industry. Now poker pros are even jumping ship, looking to hit it big in fantasy land.
Today, you've got a whole crew of daily-fantasy outfits like Sports Illustrated and USA Today getting into the game. But the big fish? FanDuel and DraftKings, battling it out, neither turning a profit but both blowing up in valuation. FanDuel, born out of a news-prediction site, had the savvy to make a move when they spotted the buzz around sports news.
And there's more. Fantasy sports are going worldwide, folks. Take this tall guy, Daniel Feldman, for example. Used to kick it with Russian oligarchs, even coached Soviet baseball. Now he's handing me promos for Mondogoal, his new fantasy soccer gig. ""It's a landgrab,"" he says, and he's not wrong.
Just when I thought soccer wouldn't work for fantasy—low-scoring and all that—Feldman hits me with, ""We got stats for everything."" They're even partnering with Barcelona, and hey, let's face it, that's a massive fan base. Mondogoal's playing the long game, betting on a culture that's ripe for a new wagering twist.
Who would've guessed, right? The fantasy sports world's come a long way from Okrent's simple dream on that flight. Now it's this industry juggernaut, reshaping not just how we play cbc, but how we watch every game. For real, it's got me wondering, what's the next curveball in store for sports fans?