Fantasy sports are virtual games that are sometimes known by the name of rotisserie or roto. Within these sports players act as owners of the teams which they build. They compete against other such payers on the basis of 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 for these sports and is also in charge of ensuring their continuous growth. This association has got 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. However when this dot-com bubble burst, many 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 some with new marketing strategies and business models such as Yahoo. Through the years, 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 compared to watching the NFL on TV. NFL was able to recognize an opportunity that lay in fantasy sports and started to run ads for fantasy football featuring existing players. They were probably the first to recognize 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 over time are fantasy golf, fantasy cricket, fantasy auto racing, fantasy hockey and wrestling.
Fantasy baseball is regarded as among the oldest fantasy sports and is also one of the hardest and time consuming sports. It follows the Major League Baseball season of 162 games. Fantasy basketball has been said to be inspired from fantasy baseball. Since the 1990s fantasy basketball continues to be increasing in its popularity especially with the internet exposure that it has got. NBA has gotten advantage of its immense popularity by launching a worldwide competition called the Premier Fantasy Championships. This competition is considered to be among the largest and most exclusive fantasy sports competitions. NBA has additionally launched a program called Fantasy Hoops that offers fantasy sports players all the news and information that they need from the happenings within the world of fantasy basketball.
Fantasy football on the other hand has grown to be increasingly popular and has now taken over the mantle of popularity from fantasy baseball. This is mostly associated with the complexities associated with fantasy baseball in terms of the players involvement for the number of days and the many number of matches which are played. Fantasy football, however, gives its players and managers considerably more flexibility particularly in time as the games take place just once a week as compared to daily in fantasy baseball.
Probably the most popular fantasy sports players and games news providers are Yahoo.com and ESPN Fantasy Sports. They gather all of the news, reviews, statistics and players performance and bring it on the table for fantasy sports enthusiasts..