Fantasy sports are virtual games which are also known by the name of rotisserie or roto. In these sports players act as the owners of the teams which 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 that is in charge of compiling the points as per the roster which has been selected.
The Fantasy Sports Trading Association is responsible for hosting conferences of these sports as well as being 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 2007.
Fantasy sports experienced a boom during 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. A few 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. Through the years, notwithstanding the unstable economy, it had been noted that the average American fantasy players spent almost 8.4 hours of surveying the NFL each week compared to 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 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 one of the oldest fantasy sports and is also 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. Since the 1990s fantasy basketball has been increasing in its popularity especially with the internet exposure that it seems to have. NBA has gotten benefit of its immense popularity by launching a global competition called the Premier Fantasy Championships. This competition is regarded as being among 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 grown to be increasingly popular and has taken over the mantle of popularity from fantasy baseball. This is mostly attributed to the complexities associated with fantasy baseball with regards to the players involvement for the length of time as well as 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 only 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 of the news, reviews, statistics and players performance and provide it on the table for fantasy sports enthusiasts..