Fred Harteis News Articles - Fantasy football...real money

Fred Harteis News Articles - Are you ready for some fantasy football?

With the start of the NFL season just around the corner, many of us are getting ready to cheer on their local football teams. But a growing number of pigskin junkies are also planning to root heavily for individual players...even if they play for their favorite team's most hated rival.

Fantasy football, a "sport" that lets people draft teams of players and compete against other teams based on their players' real gridiron statistics, has become an increasingly popular pastime.

According to figures from the Fantasy Sports Trade Association - yes, this is big enough of a market to warrant a real trade group - there are currently between 15 million and 18 million fantasy sports players. The number of players has grown 7 percent to 10 percent a year for the past three years.

About 85 percent of all fantasy sports participants play fantasy football, mainly online. And big consumer-oriented companies have taken notice.

"Advertisers are really keeping an astute eye on fantasy football. It's a very loyal market," said Scott Linzer, director of media with iCrossing, a digital marketing agency. "Several of our large clients are doing direct advertising for the fantasy football market."

Linzer said that marketing research has shown the average fantasy football player to be predominantly male, married, in a high income bracket and more likely to do research or make purchases online.

Most fantasy addicts have leagues set up on Web sites run by big media companies like Yahoo!, CBS, Walt Disney's ESPN and News Corp.'s Fox, which runs its fantasy site in conjunction with Microsoft's MSN.

So the increased popularity of fantasy sports could be a financial boon for these firms. There is real money to be made from people pretending to be NFL general managers and coaches.

In most cases, people can set up a league and play for free. Some sites offer premium fantasy packages for a fee that offer more services such as news, draft strategies (Should you take Larry Johnson, Shaun Alexander or LaDainian Tomlinson with the first pick? What a dilemma!) and scouting reports about individual players as well as real-time stat updates.

But several media companies are recognizing that it is more lucrative to not charge fantasy players since free games draw more traffic...and hence, more advertising revenue.

The biggest beneficiary by far should be Yahoo. Jeff Thomas, founder and CEO of fantasy sports site SportsBuff.com and president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, said Yahoo has become the fantasy football leader because it kept promoting a basic, free service even when competitors were charging fees to set up leagues.

"The industry has gone back and forth between charging fees and being free. Yahoo was the one who primarily stayed free and that helped them gain a lot of market share," he said.

According to research from comScore Media Metrix, traffic at Yahoo's fantasy football site was more than twice that of ESPN's during last year's football season. Yahoo would not disclose how many registered fantasy football players it has. Yahoo also stands to gain more users through a marketing deal with the web site of Sports Illustrated. SI.com no longer hosts leagues on its site and instead sends people to Yahoo.

ESPN is looking to close the gap though. On their respective fantasy football pages, Yahoo held just a slim lead over ESPN last month, with 1.33 million unique visitors in July compared to 1.24 million for ESPN.

John Kosner, senior vice president and general manager for new media for ESPN, said ESPN's decision last year to introduce a free fantasy football service led to a five-fold increase in its members in 2005 and that numbers were way up this year. He would not disclose how many total registered players it had though.

The increase in players has also led to dramatic growth in advertising revenue. Kosner said that GMC, Samsung and DirecTV are sponsors for ESPN's fantasy football game this year while Coca-Cola's Coke Zero is the sponsor for fantasy football news and columns.

"Fantasy football is being wildly embraced by our advertisers," Kosner said.

And this year, ESPN is stepping up its efforts to increase its fantasy presence. It is launching a fantasy football TV show later this month that will air on ESPN2. ESPN also offers fantasy advice through its magazine, radio shows and podcasts. Kosner thinks that the breadth of ESPN's fantasy coverage gives it a leg up on Yahoo and other competitors.

Source: Cnn.com

About Fred Harteis: Fred Harteis leads Harteis International. Fred Harteis has a background in agriculture and has created many successful business ventures.