Lamenting The Decline Of The Old School Fantasy Leagues

Will Leitch, Deadspin founder emeritus, wrote an interesting column for Sports On Earth today about the decline of traditional fantasy football drafts and leagues, which have been usurped, first by online leagues and now by daily fantasy outlets like Draft Kings. Leitch, who waved his grammatical hand at nostalgia over old video games (a take I completely agreed with), did the opposite here and reminisced about the good old days:

This was probably inevitable and has been further exacerbated by the rise of daily fantasy leagues, which have not only eliminated the social aspect of fantasy sports but have basically turned it into day trading. (I know people who are so into daily fantasy leagues that they’ve dropped out of leagues they’d been in with old friends for decades. “No time.”) Fantasy football is a solitary activity now, like essentially every other activity.

(A side note on coverage: It is fascinated to see how fantasy sports, once thought of as an activity for dorks and wannabes, have become “Boiler Room”-esque brofests now. Look at a TV ad for one of those daily fantasy leagues. Just thick-necked dudes punching the air and fist-pounding their bros while a woman in a bikini and a sash gives them an oversized check. It feels like a scene out of “The Wolf of Wall Street.”)

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And more to the point: It’s becoming less fun. Remember, fantasy football was meant to be a complement to the experience of watching a game itself — not just the sport, but the camaraderie, the friendship, the community aspect. There is no time for that now. There are mid-game transactions to be made! Delanie Walker’s value could shoot up in the afternoon games with that injury. Better make my move. Fantasy sports have become so all-encompassing that to really be good at them, you have to lessen your attention to the experience of watching a sporting event itself. And they have begun to disengage us from what we began liking sports for in the first place.

Sure, we probably all miss the traditional draft – with stacks of papers, already-outdated magazines, and bulky laptops – but Leitch likening modern fantasy football to work or a chore, I feel, is misguided.

Daily fantasy is excellent. Yes, we partner with Draft Kings – and if you click on this link and join our Week 1 league, I’ll get a small kickback for referring you as a new customer – but the fact of the matter is outlets like theirs make for a better experience. The worst thing about most traditional fantasy leagues is that a large chunk of owners lose interest by Week 10 because their team is out of it. Except in the most extreme leagues, there are always guys more committed than others, which means an inherently unequal playing field. But daily leagues are different. My season-long fantasy team with my dad was out of it by essentially October last year. But I was just hitting my stride with Draft Kings, where the game starts anew every week, or even every time slot (yes, you can play just the 4 p.m. games). I don’t think daily fantasy has lessened the attention we pay to actual games (phones and tablets have done that)– I think daily fantasy has increased it. Playing daily fantasy, especially for football – which, with RedZone, allows you to follow literally everything – has exponentially increased my non-Eagles football watching. It hasn’t disengaged us from what we began liking sports for in the place (regular fantasy already did that). The daily fantasy model better resembles the sort of legalized sports gambling present in Europe than it does traditional fantasy leagues (with a much more acceptable risk-reward offer). It gives instant meaning to otherwise throwaway games that you’d never have an interest in. And though it might be a solo activity, you still have the option of playing in custom leagues or events with the same people in your season-long league. It’s simply a natural evolution: hand-charted fantasy, online-based leagues and drafts, and now daily and weekly games. The only reason “daily” wasn’t a thing 10 years ago is because the logistics of managing events with such frequency were too great. Now you can sign up for a league in three clicks from your phone. It’s a different world, but not a worse one.

Anyway, I swear this isn’t a sponsored post… but sign up for our Week 1 event anyway. The first two leagues filled and we’re onto the third one. It’s $5 to enter and there are $250 in prizes. Anyone who beats me – handle bdncb1 – gets a free t-shirt in the way of a $25 promo code to the store, courtesy of Draft Kings.