View—Of a Group” (Marx 86)

» :3? .3 ‘2‘???" i am. z... 3.. zfiyvfim hymmmm. hi3. 2? h... 4 n5 : $3 .9 .. \ kflmh. d hJS .13... 1. 3.41.1” a 2.. .3243 5...; 2.2.3.. ». it an“: no". :0!y .I. .5112: II 5 ‘a .. S:1.,;f..d¢ [rumwmrxz This is to certify that the thesis entitled FANTASY SPORTS COMMUNITIES ON THE INTERNET: THE EVOLUTION OF FANDOM IN AMERICAN SPORTS CULTURE presented by Jesse James Draper State has been accepted towards fulfillment University LIBRARY of the requirements for the Michigan MA. degree in American Studies ‘Mlflé fl mw/z/ filajor Professor’s Signature Mega; 2&5? Date MSU is an affinnative-action, equal-opportunity employer up."I-o-o-I-O-I-I-u-c-u-—-.—o—o--C—o-.--.-.--O-o—l-I-I‘.-'qI...---0-.-0-0-0-I-.-.—--o--u-—I-U-I--—-—-—¢—.-—--'-o-I-I- PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record. TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due. MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested. DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE MAY 1 4 Hill 0523 14 6/07 p:/CIRC/DateDue indd-p.1 FANTASY SPORTS COMMUNITIES ON THE INTERNET: THE EVOLUTION OF FANDOM 1N AMERICAN SPORTS CULTURE By Jesse James Draper A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTERS OF ARTS American Studies 2008 ABSTRACT FANTASY SPORTS COMMUNITIES ON THE INTERNET: THE EVOLUTION OF FANDOM IN AMERICAN SPORTS CULTURE By Jesse James Draper The aim of this study is to identify and utilize relevant cultural theory as it relates to fantasy sports as a cultural phenomenon. Fantasy sports are a logical evolution of sports fandom within the context of specialization, quantification, the Internet, and the growing desire for participatory entertainment. By juxtaposing classical and contemporary theory, we can begin to understand the growth of fantasy sports as they are tied to the structural reification of the hegemonic capitalist ideology by communal social activities that simultaneously, counter that ideological domination. The sanctioned meanings of baseball statistics have historically been inculcated by Major League Baseball through strategic commercial alliances. With the publication of the Bill James 197 7 Baseball Abstract, the meanings of those statistics were openly challenged for the first time, starting what would become along, hard struggle for linguistic and symbolic capital taking place in multiple “authoritative” annuals, in the broadcast booth, in the print media, and finally culminating within the fantasy baseball community on the internet. I close the study by situating fantasy sports within popular American culture. The fantasy sports experience is an evolution of fandom in the age of free agency and the Internet. American culture is committed to profiting off of the desires of the consumer, and the consumer clearly desires a stronger and more personal connection to sports. The full impact of fantasy sports on American culture has yet to be realized. II! 9” ...... ..................................................................................... SHDNHHHCIEH FIVHHNHD ZII ................................................................................... (IE-LL13 SMOM OII ......................................................................................... SELLIS 83M SlHOdS ASVlNVd Z) XIGNEIcIcIV 801 ...... """"""""""""" TIVEIHSVH EIIHEISSILOH GHVCINVLS 80:1 SHELLSOH GNV SH'IIIH Ell-LL 8 XIGNEIchV .... o .o. .. .. o .. .... LOI . .........u...uu 33038 X08 HadVdSMHN 11VHHSV8 anova1 uorvw V XICINEIchV 06 ....... ------------------------ HVlSHEIdflS 3m :IO 30v EIHJ. CINV saiouais ‘amassuio‘d ilIdOHd CINV £1.lech NOISII'IDNOO 99 ....... ------------------------------ 11vaasva NI 'IVlIdVD oilsmoNn 210:1 snuva Ell-LI. 3SNOIS DNI'IVEILS E HELLJVHZ) 617 ...... ----------------------------- NOIlISNVHL NI SEIIlINnWWOC) smoas ASVlNVd 0m SHEEN/WIN NI HEIMOd Z HEIchVHC) I72 ' ' ' ' ' ' .LEINHEILNI HHJ. NO SlHOdS ASVINVJ :IO HlMOHD EIHJ. 80:1 NOLLVNV'IcIXEI NV HELIOS—[[808 EIHJ. :IO NOIlVHElEI'IE-[D I HEIchVHZ) I ......... ..................................................... flung SLHOdS ASVlNVfl V DNIWODHH iflDGEI'IMONH HlIM MVEIH NOIJDHCIOELLNI SLNHLNOD JO H'IflV-J. INTRODUCTION Heavy with Knowledge: Becoming a Fantasy Sports Guru Embarrassed, I later realized that what 1 do in watching football is to call the game myself like a chess neophyte following Spassky and Fischer and trying to anticipate each move. My eye tries to catch injury, fatigue. or slowness on the other side; intuitively, I am guessing which sorts of plays have not been working; I look for defensive lines of force and patterns of response; I focus my eyes abstracted/y, looking for zones not adequately defended. Impossible to do, I know, for one must be on the field to feel the tempo of will and strength, to see how the lines of instinct and tactics are flowing at a given time. to sense the any differences that open up unsuspectedpossibilities. Still, 1 match my wits with those of the quarterbacks and coaches. During the game, my wife has noted, my palms sweat; impossible to gain my attention seriously. (I playact.) After the game. I am exhausted Entertainment? It is more like an ordeal, an exercise, a struggle lived through. And not exactly vicariously. flVovak 87) In 2006, sixteen million adults in the United States, including twenty-two percent of all men with Internet access between the ages of eighteen and forty-nine, played fantasy sports.1 For the last three years that number has grown steadily at a rate of seven to ten percent annually. Each year the fantasy sports industry generates one to two billion dollars, and is further responsible for a three to four billion dollar impact across the sports industry.2 That says nothing of the additional economic impact realized in the information technology industry; including but not limited to, Internet service providers and the hardware and software companies that form the structures upon which that industry is built. These numbers are significant, and yet to date, the phenomenon has received little attention in academic circles. Studies focused exclusively on fantasy sports have primarily been limited to the discussion of legal issues regarding the rights of players as owners of their statistical performance (Bolitho; Massari; Karcher), intemet ' F STA Market Study by Ispos, August 2006. 2 F STA Consumer Behavior Study by Dr. Kim Beason, Associate Professor of Park and Recreation Management, University of Mississippi in March 2006. addiction (Ng and Wiemer-Hastings), gambling (Bernhard and Eade), and gender issues tied to the reification of male dominance in sport (Davis and Duncan). All of those issues are relevant to fantasy sports culture; however, in this research they are typically presented as one-dimensional overgeneralizations of an assumed rather than actual experience within fantasy sports communities. Moreover, such articles fail to address why the industry is growing at such a rapid rate. Online role playing games, on the other hand, have recently received much attention, particularly in popular culture studies. At the 2007 Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association Joint National conference, eight panels were exclusively devoted to Digital Games. By way of contrast, there were only three presentations on fantasy sports, placed in only tenuously related panels such as Composition and Rhetoric, Blog and Online Gaming Communities, and Realism and Fantasy in Sports. Many of the themes treated in those panels can be applied to a study of fantasy sports, such as the nature of virtual social interaction in online forums and peer- to-peer competition, as well as the simulated “fantasy” aspect of the games. In a previous paper on fantasy sports in popular culture, I referred to an article written by George Lipsitz called “Listening to Learn and Learning to Listen: Popular Culture, Cultural Theory, and American Studies” as an example of the methodology I hoped to use in my own research. Lipsitz began his article with an anecdote about the great Duke Ellington. In the story Ellington teaches young trumpet virtuoso Clark Terry to learn to listen first: to explore the spaces and silences within the music so that he could understand how to add a meaningful contribution to the music, one that blended with the voices and sounds of the other musicians around him. Lipsitz suggested that “the complicated relationship between scholarly methods and the popular cultures, political economies, and ideologies of America demand a scholarship capable of adopting Duke Ellington’s advice and learning how to do careful and comprehensive listening” (Lipsitz 311). He found that approach increasingly necessary, as “the ever-increasing reach and sc0pe of commercialized leisure has eclipsed both ‘high culture’ and ‘folk culture’ artifacts, replacing them with cultural products resistant to traditional methods of criticism” (Lipsitz 311). What Lipsitz then offers as an alternative approach to those traditional methods is an integration of contemporary European theory, which he feels bears an affinity to American popular culture. By making the effort to join the band, to slow down, sit back and listen to the voices around me, it is my hope that my experiences within fantasy sports communities in conjunction with theory drawn from the social sciences might add a meaningful contribution to the music. Fantasy sports allow fans to invest themselves in the ritual of American sport on a truly participatory level, and true understanding of fantasy sports in popular culture will come from the study of that interaction and the social

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