The Business Of Fantasy Sports: The Origin Of How It All Started
Origin Stories
There are moments in time that define the origin of things. The origin story of the Marvel Universe starts with Jon Favreau directing a perfect superhero movie in 2008, Ironman. After that, we get funny, powerful, and, well, plentiful. Based on what is in the pipeline now through 2027, there will be more than 40 Marvel movies.
Everyone has an origin story, if you will. Last week, I briefly described how I got into fantasy sports and some laws that are important in defining a fantasy sports contest.
My origin story is a little deeper than that.
Baseball Is In My Blood
My mother was so devoted to the Dodgers that her nickname at Rye High School was “Brooklyn.” In the late 1940s, she listened to Red Barber's radio broadcasts and scored the games. She loved baseball.
My mother’s divorce from my father was awful. She struggled mightily as a single mother. She tried to raise five kids. My two oldest siblings were eight and ten years older than me. By the time I turned seven, they were into booze, drugs, and sex. Candidly, it was left to my 10-year-old sister to play mother to 7-year-old me.
I had few rules and a lot of alone time. Fortunately, I found baseball. There was a game every night. I had no bedtime. We had a playroom with no furniture except an old RCA TV console. I set up paper plates as the bases and acted out every great moment from 1972-1975. I remember 50 years ago today, April 8, 1974, like it was yesterday. Hank Aaron was my hero. The bravest man in America at that time. I recall running the paper plate bases over and over when Al Downing served up number 715 to the Home Run King.
About five years ago, my mom became too sick to care for herself. We moved her to a nursing home. She passed away on my birthday last summer. While clearing out her house, my sister found some press clippings that allowed me to understand why I love baseball so much.
My grandmother’s maiden name is Van Cott. Below is a picture of the Van Cotts playing in one of the early games in Connecticut in 1869, watched by their father, Judge William Van Cott, the first President of the National Association of Base Ball Players.
Baseball Is In My Mom's Blood – & Mine!
How Did Fantasy Sports Start?
Any history of fantasy sports in America goes back to one man, Bill “Wink” Winkenbach. Wink was an Oakland area businessman and minority investor in the Raiders. He created games for golf, baseball, and, most famously, football. One of the best histories of fantasy football was written by Bob Harris and Hall of Famer Emil Kadlec back in 2003. It tells the story of Wink.
In 1955, Wink is said to have created a simple fantasy golf game based on tournament finish. By 1959, he had created a simple statistics-based fantasy baseball league. You selected pitchers and position players and then got points for statistics. It was branded with one of Wink’s businesses, The Superior Tile—Summer Invitational Home Run Tourney or S.T. SIHRT.
Madden holding the GOPPPL trophy. Madden was head coach of the Raiders starting in 1969.
For fantasy football, his invention is well chronicled. ESPN did a great piece twelve years ago on the 50th anniversary of the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League (GOPPPL). The first draft had 16 teams and was held in August of 1963 in Oakland, CA. The first commercial leagues were said to be run from bars in Oakland starting in 1969. Pioneer Peter Schoenke and I had the honor of going into the Fantasy Sports Hall of Fame with Wink in 2011. His award was accepted posthumously by his grandson. Wink was SIMPLY the man when it comes to fantasy sports!
So, if you believe that the S.T. SIHRT was the first fantasy baseball league, I guess Wikipedia is wrong. It says that a Boston College Law Professor, William Gamson, created the first fantasy baseball league in Boston circa 1960. He brought the idea to the University of Michigan, his alma mater, where he played it with colleagues and students, including Daniel Okrent. Hal Richman was also rumored to have taken Gamson’s Baseball Seminar before creating Strat-o-Matic. Gamson was influential in baseball simulation gaming as Strat-o-Matic was among the most popular pastimes for young baseball fans in the 1970s.
Most people know the story of Daniel Okrent creating the rules for a baseball game which was called Rotisserie Baseball because he proposed the game to friends while dining at La Rotisserie Francaise on 52nd Street in Manhattan. This is the most important moment in fantasy sports. I argue that more important than the invention itself, it is the popularization. Okrent’s league mate Glen Waggoneer published the official rules of Rotisserie Baseball in 1984, and it became a best-seller after being reviewed by Okrent in the New York Times. This created leagues all over America and created the commercial industry.
By 1989, when my journey begins, approximately 1 million fans were already playing the hobby with 70% playing Rotisserie Baseball. Fantasy commissioners are writing their own programs to run reports of the team statistics and standings. Computer programs are on the shelves at local stores like Cal Ripken Baseball, Terry Bradshaw Football, and Mike Richter Hockey to help the commissioner of your league manage all the statistics and deliver real-time standings.
Companies like STATS Inc. & SportsTicker emerged to create the files needed to process things. From 1937, the Elias Sports Bureau controlled the distribution of statistics for all the professional sports leagues. Now, competition emerged. Online services like PRODIGY, AOL, Compuserve, and local Bulletin Board Services (BBS) helped distribute the software and the statistics files to run leagues. Growth continued in the early 90s, and then in early 1995, the Internet exploded, leading us to where we are today. Once the games went digital, innovation happened incredibly fast, and the industry needed to navigate a number of issues.
Fantasy Sports Players Association (Now FSGA)
In July 1997, Fantasy Insights, Jim Lenz, and a technology-wiz named James Serra (below) held a conference at the Tropicana in Las Vegas where the idea for an association for fantasy companies was first contemplated. In February 1998, at USA Today’s Expert League LABR draft in Tampa, the group that met the previous summer began putting the framework on an association. They would help each other by sharing problems and coming up with solutions. Plus, legislation was proposed that would treat fantasy like gambling, and these companies’ livelihoods would be threatened.
At the next year’s event in 1999, the Fantasy Sports Players Association had their first meeting: Krause Publications (Greg Ambrosius - below), CBS SportsLine (yours truly), The Sporting News (Christina Schellhardt), STATS (Steve Byrd), CDM Fantasy Sports (Charlie Wiegert), Prime Sports Network (Brad Mumm), Ultimate Fantasy Sports (John Zaleski), EA Sports (Scott Higgins), Fantasy Insights (James Serra), USA Fantasy (Carl Foster) and not sure, but I think USA Today and Fox Sports were both represented. In 2002, it would be renamed the Fantasy Sports Trade Association on the request from the NFLPA and Greg Ambrosius and I would begin leading the organization through some crazy times.
This industry had turmoil, strife, confusion, misinformation, politics, and a lack of education. Every industry has these things, really.
We had to tackle a number of problems:
- In 2000, a patent owner threatened to shut down games and commissioner products.
- In 2002, the NFLPA wanted fewer licensees at higher fees, like the trading card industry, so they stopped licensing all the small companies and tried to stop them from operating.
- In 2005, MLBAM with MLBPA attempted to take ownership of fantasy sports by saying that the players owned their stats and fantasy sports companies couldn’t use them.
- In 2006, we had to align with the NFLPA and NFL to create an appropriate carve out to UIGEA so that fantasy sports would not be taken away from fans.
In each one of these cases, the FSGA fought on behalf of fantasy sports and won. We will dive into all of those in future pieces, but there is one court case that is not about fantasy sports, sports betting, or sweepstakes that is important to fantasy sports.
NBA vs. Motorola
In 1996, very few people had cell phones. Many had Motorola pagers for work or to keep track of news, weather, and sports. The pagers that were just for sports were called SportsTrax.
They became increasingly popular with sports fans, especially bettors and fantasy players. The scores and stats were distributed for many events, including during NBA games through STATS Inc. (the acronym stands for Sports Team Analysis & Tracking Systems). Other sites and services had scores and stats, but they used the “official” feed from the leagues. The NBA believed the scores and stats were part of the broadcast, which the NBA copyrighted.
They sought a permanent injunction, which a lower court granted. In January 1997, Motorola & STATS appealed and won. The broadcasts are protected under copyright law, but STATS & Motorola reproduced only facts and not the expressions or descriptions of the games.
This was a critical moment for fantasy sports as the live scoring delivered on many commissioner services, including Commissioner.com on CBS Sports, would not have been allowed.
Can you imagine fantasy sports without live scoring? Neither can I.
History Teaches Us That These Fights Are Worth It.
Rick Wolf is a pioneer in the fantasy sports industry. Wolf is a founding board member of the Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association. Wolf is also the Founder & President of Full Moon Sports who since 2001 has been providing solutions for sports media companies. Through Full Moon he has consulted for CBS Sports, Rotoworld, NBC Sports and Fantasy Alarm. Full Moon is currently working with companies in the sports space including PrizePicks who is one of the leaders in skill based sports games.