Fantasy sports are virtual games that are sometimes 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 which is generated from real games these particular virtual sports are inspired from. All fantasy teams have got a manager who is in charge of compiling the points in accordance with the roster which has been selected.
The Fantasy Sports Trading Association is responsible for hosting conferences for these sports as well as being in charge of ensuring their continuous growth. This association has got almost 120 members which range 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 variety of companies committing to this domain. However when this dot-com bubble burst, most 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 like Yahoo. Over time, in spite of the unstable economy, it was noted that the average American fantasy players spent almost 8.4 hours of surveying the NFL per week compared to watching the NFL on television. NFL was able to recognize an opportunity that lay in fantasy sports and started to run ads for fantasy football featuring existing players. They were possibly 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 that 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 one of 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. Ever since the 1990s fantasy basketball continues to be increasing in its popularity especially with online exposure which it seems to have. NBA has gotten benefit of its immense popularity by launching a worldwide competition called the Premier Fantasy Championships. This competition is regarded as being one of the largest and most exclusive fantasy sports competitions. NBA has also launched a program called Fantasy Hoops that offers fantasy sports players all the information and news that they need on the happenings within 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 associated with the complexities associated with fantasy baseball in terms of the players involvement for the number of days and the many number of matches that are played. Fantasy football, however, gives its players and managers considerably more flexibility particularly in time as the games take place only once a 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 bring it on the table for fantasy sports enthusiasts..