Fantasy sports are virtual games which are sometimes known by the name of rotisserie or roto. In these sports players act as the owners of the teams that they build. They compete against other such payers on the basis of statistical information which is generated from real games that these virtual sports are inspired from. All fantasy teams have a manager who is in charge of compiling the points in accordance with the roster that has been selected.
The Fantasy Sports Trading Association is in charge of hosting conferences for these sports and is also responsible for ensuring their continuous growth. This association has got almost 120 members ranging 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 committing to 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 manage 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, notwithstanding the unstable economy, it was noted that the average American fantasy players spent almost 8.4 hours of surveying the NFL per week as against watching the NFL on TV. 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 possibly the first to recognize that it was fantasy play that drives T.V. viewing.
Probably the most popular fantasy sport are fantasy baseball, fantasy basketball and fantasy football. The other games which 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 among the hardest and time consuming sports. It follows the Major League Baseball season of 162 games. Fantasy basketball has been said to generally be inspired from fantasy baseball. Ever since the 1990s fantasy basketball continues to be increasing in its popularity particularly with the internet exposure that it has got. NBA has taken advantage of its immense popularity by launching a global competition called the Premier Fantasy Championships. This competition is considered to be among the largest and most exclusive fantasy sports competitions. NBA has also launched a program called Fantasy Hoops that offers fantasy sports players all of the news and information that they need on the happenings within the world of fantasy basketball.
Fantasy football on the other hand has grown to be more popular then ever and has now taken over the mantle of popularity from fantasy baseball. This is mostly associated with the complexities involved in fantasy baseball with regards to the players involvement for the number of days and the far too many number of matches which are played. Fantasy football, however, gives its players and managers considerably more flexibility especially in time since the games take place just once a week when compared with 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 of the news, reviews, statistics and players performance and bring it on the table for fantasy sports enthusiasts..