Fantasy sports are virtual games which are also known by the name of rotisserie or roto. In these sports players act as owners of the teams that they build. They compete against other such payers based on statistical information that is generated from real games that these virtual sports are inspired from. All fantasy teams have a manager that is responsible for compiling the points as per the roster that has been selected.
The Fantasy Sports Trading Association is in charge of hosting conferences for 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 the year 2007.
Fantasy sports experienced a boom in the dot-com era with a variety of companies committing to this domain. But once 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 such as RotoWire.com and a few with new marketing strategies and business models like 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 per week as against watching the NFL on TV. NFL was able to recognize the opportunity that lay in fantasy sports and started to run ads for fantasy football featuring existing players. These people were possibly the first to identify 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 with 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 one of the hardest and time consuming sports. It follows the Major League Baseball season of 162 games. Fantasy basketball is said to generally be inspired from fantasy baseball. Since the 1990s fantasy basketball continues to be increasing in its popularity especially with online exposure that it seems to have. NBA has taken advantage of its immense popularity by launching a worldwide competition known as the Premier Fantasy Championships. This competition is considered to be 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 which they need on 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 and the far too many number of matches which are played. Fantasy football, on the other hand, gives its players and managers a lot more flexibility particularly in time as the games take place just once every 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 the news, reviews, statistics and players performance and provide it on the table for fantasy sports enthusiasts..