Fantasy sports are virtual games which are sometimes known by the name of rotisserie or roto. Within these sports players act as the owners of the teams which they build. They compete against other such payers based on statistical information that is generated from real games that these virtual sports are inspired from. All fantasy teams have a manager who is responsible for compiling the points as per the roster which has been selected.
The Fantasy Sports Trading Association is responsible for hosting conferences of these sports and is also in charge of ensuring their continuous growth. This association includes almost 120 members which range from the newer and smaller start-ups to the more established larger media corporations. The estimated age of fantasy sports players was twelve and above and extended to 29.9 million people in the year 2007.
Fantasy sports experienced a boom in the dot-com era with a number of companies investing in this domain. But once this dot-com bubble burst, most of these companies went bankrupt. Some of the more established and long standing companies did find a way to survive these turbulent times and remerged, some with new names like RotoWire.com and a few with new marketing strategies and business models such as Yahoo. Over time, in spite of the unstable economy, it was noted that the average American fantasy players spent almost 8.4 hours of surveying the NFL each week as against watching the NFL on television. NFL was able to recognize an opportunity that lay in fantasy sports and began to run ads for fantasy football featuring existing players. They were probably the first to identify that it was fantasy play that drives T.V. viewing.
Some of the most popular fantasy sport are fantasy baseball, fantasy basketball and fantasy football. The other games that have gained prominence with time are fantasy golf, fantasy cricket, fantasy auto racing, fantasy hockey and wrestling.
Fantasy baseball is considered as one of the oldest fantasy sports and is one of the hardest and time-consuming sports. It follows the Major League Baseball season of 162 games. Fantasy basketball is said to generally be inspired from fantasy baseball. Ever since the 1990s fantasy basketball has been increasing in its popularity especially with online exposure that it seems to have. NBA has gotten advantage of its immense popularity by launching a global competition known as the Premier Fantasy Championships. This competition is regarded as being one of the largest and most exclusive fantasy sports competitions. NBA has additionally launched a program called Fantasy Hoops that gives fantasy sports players all of the information and news that they need from the happenings on the world of fantasy basketball.
Fantasy football on the other hand has become increasingly popular and has taken over the mantle of popularity from fantasy baseball. This is mostly associated with the complexities involved in fantasy baseball in terms of the players involvement for the length of time as well as the many number of matches that are played. Fantasy football, however, gives its players and managers a lot more flexibility especially in time since the games take place just once every week as compared to daily in fantasy baseball.
Some of the most popular fantasy sports players and games news providers are Yahoo.com and ESPN Fantasy Sports. They gather all the news, reviews, statistics and players performance and bring it on the table for fantasy sports enthusiasts..