Los Angeles, CA (PressExposure) August 20, 2010 -- The American male's obsession with sports activities is nothing new, but try this on for measurement: Greater than half of fantasy sports activities fanatics spend over an hour a day simply fascinated with their teams.
So how much cash is spent on Fantasy Sports? That discovering, along with the fact that one in 4 fantasy players spends more than $500 a 12 months on the video games, comes from the primary-ever sociological analysis of online fantasy sports activities members, carried out by Don Levy, an assistant sociology professor at West Virginia Wesleyan College. These games, burgeoning in reputation and run by Web pages like ESPN.com and CBS SportsLine, enable regular Joes to create and run groups of actual skilled athletes in sports like baseball and football. The groups square off against one another in leagues formed by friends or workmates, with groups earning factors primarily based on the on-discipline performance of, say, Derek Jeter or Peyton Manning.
With upwards of 15 million players within the U.S., fantasy sports are a billion-greenback market. CBS SportsLine, for instance, generated $15 million in gross sales from 1.3 million fantasy soccer clients final year. Since fantasy players are likely to linger on sites -- studying player profiles, pondering their starting lineups, and sending messages to others within the league -- they entice blue-chip. Responding to fantasy players' insatiable need for content material, CBS and ESPN are also doing more to incorporate fantasy storylines and themes in their TV coverage of sporting events.
Who's the fantasy sports fanatic?
While fantasy's viability as a business is now unquestioned, little has been heretofore known about the individuals who play fantasy sports. For starters, the one-year study, made unique to FORTUNE Journal, found that they are largely male, white, married, well-educated (over two-thirds of Levy's pattern had a college diploma or higher) and earn a good living. Of the almost 1,200 folks queried, three out of 4 earn no less than $50,000 a year, effectively above the nationwide average. "These will not be social misfits residing in their mother and father' basement," stated Levy. Not surprisingly, the majority rated their sports activities "fanship" very excessive, with fanship being defined as active consumption of sport.
Most fascinating, though, was Levy's discovering that 60 p.c of fantasy gamers spend over an hour a day simply interested by their fantasy group, and 85 percent spent over 30 minutes. Granted, Levy's pattern was skewed in the direction of rabid fantasy gamers like Larry Dobrow, 35, a Manhattan-based freelance author who thinks the one-hour-a-day figure could also be understated. "Through the days main as much as a baseball or soccer draft, [fantasy] is just about your primary concern -- together with work, relationships, and generally hygiene," he said.
Employer beware
Workplace consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimates that fantasy football alone will price employers $196.1 million in misplaced productivity during the present NFL season. That figure might prove to be conservative, because it was based on fantasy gamers taking only 10 minutes out of their work day to manage their teams. "Productivity goes down the drain," said CEO John Challenger. "It is like a virus." Regardless of the impact on productivity, Challenger says companies should not quash fantasy participation throughout work hours, as the consequences of a ban could possibly be far worse than the damage attributable to enjoying fantasy games.
Levy's examine quantifies that harm: Two-thirds of his pattern spend at the least five hours every week managing their fantasy groups, and more than an third are busy with fantasy sports for greater than 10 hours a week. These hours can come at any time. During his eight-day Mediterranean honeymoon cruise, Mark Del Franco, 36, recalled logging onto the ship's Web connection to make every day lineup changes. "At that point, my spouse was asking herself if she made a mistake," he said. The injury extends to fantasy gamers' wallets as well. Since most players pony up dollars not just for league entry charges but additionally subscribe to fantasy information and evaluation sites, the money spent by fantasy gamers annually can really add up. The common quantity spent was $360, Levy discovered, however 24 % spend more than $500 a year on their various teams.