Just about every day this month, there is likely to be a fantasy football draft taking place. It could be online or in-person on someone’s back porch. It might even be taking place at a local bar.
Wherever it happens, all these drafts demonstrate how popular fantasy football remains. Another somewhat related activity, legalized sports betting, is also gaining popularity now in over 30 jurisdictions.
That means fantasy football, which once was the most accessible way for people to showcase their knowledge with the hopes of turning it into some level of financial reward, is entering a new stage.
Platforms like PrizePicks Fantasy are embracing this new stage, offering exciting tools and features that enhance the fantasy football experience for modern players.
With a vast menu of legal sports wagers just a swipe away, traditional fantasy football is part of a crowded marketplace that now features player props, DFS, and guillotine leagues. So, to understand the current state of fantasy football in the legalized sports era, I interviewed a number of people associated with the game.
Here is what they had to say.
The Beginning 6n624t
Fantasy sports gained traction in the late 1980s, so there is a population of diehards who have played the games for years.
Paul Charchian, a Fantasy Sports Hall of Famer and the founder of GuillotineLeagues.com, started playing in 1987 and launched his first company, Fanball, in 1993.
Mark Kriegel, an attorney based in Central New Jersey, has been a fantasy football devotee since “back in college when a copy of USA Today was needed to calculate the scores,” he said.
The fantasy career of Dave Richard began in the 1990s when it was considered, in his words, “dorks playing something like Dungeons & Dragons but with the NFL.” Richard is now a senior fantasy writer for CBSSports.com.
Then there are Sam Ha and Pete Tronosky from suburban Philadelphia, who have squared off in the same league since Jim Harbaugh, now the Chargers’ head coach, was the Bears’ quarterback.
“In the offseason, I spend about an hour per week thinking about it,” said Ha. “Then more than three hours per week once training camp starts and the few weeks leading up to the draft. It only goes up from there once the season actually starts.”
Tronosky, a pharmaceutical professional jokingly takes on the alter ego of “The 5” (the number of league titles he has won) when discussing fantasy football.
“It’s about two hours per week looking at free-agent acquisitions and setting up lineups,” said Tronosky. “I it when my team isn’t winning the hours may double or triple.”
The ROI these players are looking for with all this time is more than just dollars. For Kriegel, the connections he makes with others is the most valuable commodity. That doesn’t happen when he makes legal sports bets on individual games.
“I enjoy the camaraderie of a league where a bunch of people draft teams and then keep in touch throughout the season with trade offers and trash talk,” Kriegel said.
According to Charchian, that’s exactly why people play fantasy football.
“I always played for bragging rights,” said Charchian. “Everyone re their championships. Nobody re what they spent their winnings on. At its core, fantasy football is really fun. People love the camaraderie with friends. They love the competition. FSGA (Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association) surveys have shown that the prospect of winning money typically ranks fifth or sixth among motivations to play.”
That makes Tronosky’s rationale for continuing to play fantasy football, even though his northeast locale places him in the epicenter of legalized sports betting, a common one. He is looking to be recognized as the smartest one in the room.
“I’m a five-time champ. Winning is the only thing that matters,” Tronosky explained. “Fantasy also brings us together and gives us something to talk about, make fun of each other about for an extended period.”
While his career started a decade later than these players, Julian Edlow, now a content creator for DraftKings, was drawn to fantasy football for the competition that could pay off in a number of ways.
“I’ve been playing fantasy football since 2002. At the time, what really drew me to it was there were so few ways to take your knowledge or ion for sports and use it to compete like a league allows,” said the New England-based Edlow. “I was 15 years old at the time, so we’re talking like $20 buy-in, but the idea of taking a couple hundred bucks off your friends at the end of the year and having bragging rights were both also bonuses. But the week-to-week grind was always fun to me. Just having a reason to pay extra close attention and put the most into your lineup.”
Boomers 294y13
From Richard’s perspective of working in the media, the internet in the early 2000s is what started the fantasy football boom.
“Around that time, people began using websites like CBS Sports to track their league scoring, and it really blossomed around 2005,” Richard said. “Since then, I’ve seen the content we provide explode from written columns to podcasts to live broadcasts on TV and via digital sites like YouTube and CBSSportsHQ.com. But it’s been the development of the fantasy football game that’s kept the boom going. People can leagues for one season or for a lifetime, leagues where you’re the boss every week, or draft and then check the results at the end of the year.
“The variants keep people in love with Fantasy Football.”
Edlow points out that this time period was also when Nevada had a stranglehold on legal sports betting.
“The fantasy football boom had something to do with it being accepted as a form of wagering, but I see it as more of an alternative to sports betting,” he said. “Now, as we see given the current landscape, sports fans prefer DFS and being able to bet on games. But when those things essentially didn’t exist across the country, season-long fantasy football seemed to be the next best thing.”
For Charchian, fantasy and sports betting are apples and oranges that rarely mix together.
“FSGA surveys have shown that sports betting has not cannibalized fantasy football,” said Charchian. “In my opinion, it’s because the two are very different.”
Kriegel shares a similar mindset. He reiterates the factor of camaraderie being the reason he keeps coming back and spending so much time tinkering with his rosters. Handicapping sports bets is done separately.
Ha also hasn’t seen a change in fantasy football since his state (Pennsylvania) adopted legalized sports betting in late 2018. That might be because Ha is more focused on what happens midweek than on gameday.
“There is nothing better than the banter that goes on during the season, and even after the season mocking your fellow competitors, which you can’t do with any of the sportsbooks,” he said. (, this is someone in a league that features a player who identifies himself with a number based on his previous league titles.)
DFS vs. Traditional Fantasy 226q4c
Edlow, being younger than most of those interviewed, had a different viewpoint. In his estimation, the current landscape of new technology and legalized sports betting has altered the popularity of fantasy football.
“The interest in season-long fantasy football has absolutely taken a huge hit over the last five or six years, at least from where I stand,” he said. “Even going back 10 years ago when I was still just a customer at DraftKings, my friends and I that were all in the same league together for years started caring more about our DFS lineups that day than how we were doing against each other in our league.”
According to Edlow, his interest gravitating away from traditional fantasy to DFS stems from the ability to make more money in those leagues and the common problem of injuries and losses leading to players’ waning interest in their lineups.
One aspect keeping season-long leagues relevant is the punishment levied against the person who finishes in the basement of standings. Edlow is one of those. He is prepping for his Laverne & Shirley punishment this summer of working the assembly line at a local brewery.
Richard is less concerned about legal sports betting impacting traditional fantasy football and more with the spontaneity that DFS provides.
“I’ll it, I was nervous that fantasy leagues would die out when DFS became mainstream,” Richard said. “But I think DFS cannibalized itself in that there were ways to leverage lineups that all but eliminated the average fan from winning large sums of money. And that experience made me realize that fantasy football would still thrive even though many states allow sports betting.”
When he isn’t working as a landscape architect in Sioux Falls, Brady Aldrich is focused on fantasy football. The 31-year old is becoming more enamored with newer formats.
“I believe the shift from traditional fantasy football to alternative fantasy options has started emerging,” Aldrich said. “In a world where everyone is busy, the popularity of games like survivor, guillotine, and DFS have given people options on how they want to spend their NFL season.”
Guillotine leagues, where the lowest-scoring team is eliminated each week and the players on that squad then hit the open market, is an intriguing format.
“I was attracted to the guillotine format of fantasy football because I was tired of losing head-to-head games against opponents when I would be the second highest scorer of the weekend,” Aldrich added. “Guillotine formats are a great option, and I’m not sure many people are aware this game exists.”
The newfound love for guillotine leagues validates Charchian’s professional goals.
“Fortunately, people love it,” he said. “Fantasy football is a mature marketplace at this point, and a lot of people are looking for a new way to play — a way that’s familiar but offers new challenges. Guillotine is pretty special because it challenges you to play not to lose, rather than to win. And if you survive long enough, you get to build a roster of superstars.”
Playing The Field 3e6qd
No matter how much allegiance someone has to their fantasy league, the amount of wagers available to also make on the productivity of football players is enticing, especially for those who grind with statistical analysis.
DFS and player props are attractive alternatives to a season-long fantasy football league as a bettor is not tied to one team for the course of the NFL’s schedule. One week you can back Patrick Mahomes, then you can start Jared Goff at QB the next week. Player props also grade out much quicker and provide bettors with instant gratification.
Edlow says bettors now have options to capitalize on their NFL knowledge.
“You always want to play to your strengths,” he said. “If you’re someone that always finds your way to the top of the standings in fantasy leagues, then go for it. I think most people, myself included, are more drawn to betting games and player props. But again, I don’t think you simply need to replace fantasy by betting player props. Bet where you see edges, whether it’s player props, side, total, longest FG.”
Aldrich is taking this advice: “I don’t play player props simply because I don’t have time to research them.”
Meanwhile, Richard occasionally mixes in talk about player props with his fantasy-related content.
“I don’t see our primary fantasy football audience gravitating en masse toward player props,” he observed. “Naturally, some do, and others might dabble when they hear about a pick we like, but I’d say a majority of our viewers don’t mind the player prop talk, but don’t bet it themselves.”
Wagering on player props can provide a bettor instant gratification, but it can also lead to instant depression.
“I play a few player props every year,” Kriegel said. “But they can be injury dependent, and if you’re ‘wrong,’ your money is basically gone early in the season.”
Kriegel plans on making a case for Najee Harris to exceed his early season props because the Pittsburgh running back has a new offensive coordinator in Arthur Smith. Kriegel is also bullish on Justin Jefferson having a “monster season.”
What happens if he misreads these situations? Then, there is more liability than if he just stuck with his traditional fantasy leagues.
“If either gets injured or has a bad year, those prop bets vaporize quickly,” Kriegel said. “On a season-long team, I can hit the waiver wire or maybe I drafted a rookie late who breaks out and I still have a chance.”
Richard says those doing statistical research on the NFL can use the information selectively to make player prop wagers “as a complementary way to enjoy their fantasy leagues and the NFL season.”
Both Ha and Tronosky were never drawn to DFS or sports betting in the past. They prefer the financial certainty their leagues provide. Ha remarked that fantasy is like doing an NCAA Tournament bracket pool, where a small investment can possibly turn to something much larger.
That’s why traditional fantasy is alive and well, said Richard.
“The commonality between DFS and sports betting is that the large majority of fans lose money doing either one,” he added. “I think folks have rationalized that spending money on a fantasy football league with their buddies is just as much season-long entertainment as it is a chance to maybe make a few bucks. They keep playing fantasy and not ditching it because they’re more comfortable with it instead of losing more money with sports betting and DFS.”
Long-timers Ha, Tronosky and Kriegel expect to continue playing fantasy football, even if more betting options arise. Aldrich, a guillotine convert, believes this new style will take off.
“The more people know about this way of playing and how it’s a different take on the game, the more will .”
Somewhere in the upper Midwest, Charchian is smiling, while Aldrich predicts fantasy leagues — because of competition from survivor pools, DFS, and guillotine formats — will “evolve with shorter outcomes that achieve that instant gratification players are attracted to.”
Richard is less confident that guillotine leagues will be the main choice of fantasy players. Instead, he sees other modifications becoming the norm.
“The newest areas attracting fans are SuperFlex leagues, where managers start multiple quarterbacks every week; Dynasty, where managers run a team for as long as they want and keep players as long as they want; and Best Ball, where managers draft a team and then do nothing,” he said.
