NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY The Reality of Fantasy Sports: Transforming Fan Culture in the Digital Age A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Field of Media, Technology and Society By Ben Shields EVANSTON, ILLINOIS June 2008 2 © Copyright by Ben Shields 2008 All Rights Reserved 3 ABSTRACT The Reality of Fantasy Sports: Transforming Fan Culture in the Digital Age Ben Shields This dissertation analyzes the transformation of fantasy sports from a deviant, outside- the-mainstream fan culture to a billion-dollar industry that comprises almost 20 million North American participants. Fantasy sports are games in which participants adopt the simultaneous roles of owner, general manager, and coach of their own teams of real athletes and compete in leagues against other fantasy teams with the individual statistical performance of athletes determining the outcome of the match and league standings over a season. Through an analysis of how fantasy sports institutions are co-opting an existing fan culture, the dissertation seeks to contribute to an emerging body of scholarship on the communication dynamic between fans and media institutions in the digital age. In order to understand this cultural shift within the context of fantasy sports, it focuses on three research questions: What is the history of fantasy sports? Why do fantasy sports stimulate avid and engaged fan behaviors? How do fantasy sports institutions communicate with fantasy sports fan cultures? The methodology employed in this study combines both an ethnographic approach and textual analysis. Personal interviews were conducted with fifteen decision makers from fantasy sports companies such as SportsBuff, Rotowire, Fantasy Auctioneer, Mock Draft Central, Grogan’s Fantasy Football, CBS Sportsline, and ESPN. In addition, textual analysis of the 4 communication strategies of fantasy sports institutions as well as an examination of fantasy sports fan behaviors are used to explicate and clarify the fantasy sports phenomenon. The fantasy sports industry has co-opted fantasy fan culture not only with considerable success but also with important implications for communication research. This dissertation illustrates the processes by which fantasy sports institutions have analyzed their audience and strategically facilitated fantasy fan culture for commercial gain. While institutions have had difficulty in the past managing the mass market commercialization and monetization of grassroots cultural products, the mainstreaming of fantasy sports has resulted in growth across most industry platforms. As a consequence, it serves as a case study for the ways that persuasion functions in today’s communication marketplace where the audience has become a critical player in both the production and consumption of media. 5 Acknowledgments First, thank you to my committee: Irving Rein, who served as director, James Webster, and James Schwoch. I am very appreciative of your support, guidance, and insights throughout the dissertation process. Professor Rein, I am especially grateful to you for not only your thoughtful criticism and advice on this project but also the countless hours you spent mentoring me throughout my time at Northwestern. Second, thank you to the people who participated in this study. The project would have been difficult to complete without the help and time of Kevin Gralen, George del Prado, Alec Peters, Ted Kasten, Jeff Coruccini, Jason Pliml, Dan Grogan, Peter Schoenke, John Georgopoulos, Jeff Thomas, Danielle Maclean, Matthew Berry, Nate Ravitz, Matt Walker, John Diver, and Rafael Poplock. Third, thank you to my friends with whom I play fantasy sports every year. You are responsible, in part, for stimulating my thinking about fantasy sports as a powerful communication phenomenon. Finally, thank you to my mother, Ginny, my father, Ben, and my sister, Heather. Your unconditional love and support kept me going in the rough spots and made the good times even better. 6 Contents One The Transformation of Fan Culture 8 What are Fantasy Sports? 11 Literature Review 15 Research Questions and Methodology 29 The Current State of Fantasy Sports 32 Popular Culture Trends 38 Sports Industry Trends 47 Dissertation Overview 54 Two The History of Fantasy Sports 57 The Formation of Fantasy Sports 59 The Invention of Fantasy Sports 77 The Popularization of Fantasy Sports 86 Conclusion 100 Three The Fantasy Sports Fan 101 Who is the Fantasy Fan? 103 The Fantasy Concept 109 The Communication Experience 124 Conclusion 144 Four The Fantasy Sports Industry 146 Fantasy Products and Services 148 The Problem of Engaging Fantasy Fan Culture 150 7 Case Studies of Fantasy Sports Communication 153 ESPN 175 Facilitating Fan Culture 189 Conclusion 194 Five Fantasy in the Future 196 Implications for Communication Research 197 Limitations and Future Research 204 Future Issues in the Fantasy Sports Industry 210 Conclusion 219 Notes 221 8 Chapter One The Transformation of Fan Culture ESPN, the self-proclaimed “Worldwide Leader in Sports,” has built a global media empire over the last quarter century that gives credibility to its ambitious slogan. The company has branded ten television networks, numerous syndicated radio stations, a multimedia website, a magazine, a broadband television channel, mobile phone content, restaurants, a book publishing arm, videogames, a travel agency, Monday Night Football, movie productions, and seemingly every other distribution channel available in today’s digital age. As the ultimate gatekeeper in American sports, ESPN’s multiplatform approach has withstood pressure from its competitors and in many ways serves as the media industry’s gold standard for convergence. Despite its global dominance, by 2006 ESPN was lagging in one critical, rapidly emerging area. The company found itself losing a large and influential fan market to media companies other than theirs, and in the process, it was missing a huge opportunity to capitalize on what was becoming a booming industry. For a company that has historically anticipated and responded to major shifts in the marketplace before anyone else, this was unheard of. The missing piece in ESPN’s communication arsenal was fantasy sports, the sports statistics game that was increasingly becoming a major popular culture entertainment. At the time, although ESPN had made some preliminary efforts to include fantasy in its operations,1 Yahoo dominated market share and other major companies such as CBS Sportsline and Fox Sports as well as a host of smaller businesses had built formidable businesses.2 As a result, these organizations reaped huge rewards from highly engaged fantasy sports fans, while ESPN was 9 only in the early stages of exploring how fantasy sports should be better implemented and promoted as part of their brand. ESPN ultimately reinvigorated its fantasy sports operations for the launch of the 2007 Major League Baseball season. From hiring a star-powered team of fantasy experts, to redesigning the website, to giving fans free access to all its fantasy platforms, the company transformed its fantasy sports business model and began synergizing fantasy across all its media platforms. This was a dramatic shift in strategy that not only marked a new era for ESPN but also further signaled that fantasy sports—the game and the industry—had arrived at the mainstream. Fantasy sports are now a major sports institution and a popular culture phenomenon. Today, it is estimated that at least 19.4 million people in America and Canada play the game, of which 2 million are teenagers, 3 comprising what has evolved into at least a $1.5 billion industry. 4 Often described as a “marketers dream,” 5 fantasy fans are primarily white, upper-middle class, married males with college educations and professional occupations, spending almost $500 a year playing the game and at least three hours per week managing their teams. 6 With their avid behaviors and fierce loyalty, fantasy fans are arguably the most uniquely engaged consumers in all of entertainment. The exponential growth and cultural impact of fantasy sports is a long way from the game’s origins in the pencils, papers, and calculators of small local sports fan communities. Fantasy sports began as an intense hobby played by men who seemingly sought camaraderie, a more interactive relationship with professional teams and athletes, and a new way to gamble on sports. The first fantasy football league (the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin 10 Prognosticators League) and baseball league (Rotisserie Baseball) began in 1963 and 1980, respectively, 7 and while they generated substantial interest among the participants, only modest growth occurred. It wasn’t until the late 1990s, when personal computers and the Internet were being more widely adopted, that the game began to transform from an amateur gambling hobby into a powerful sector of the sports and entertainment industries. Like most mediated communication technologies, the innovation of a small group became over time something that spread across a mass public. In the process, the dynamic between the media industry and fantasy fans changed significantly. For much of the game’s history, fantasy fan culture existed outside the mainstream; the game was played away from the view of the rest of society in basements, backrooms, and bars. Fantasy fans were stereotyped as a group of computer geeks, nerds, and stat hounds who participated in a make-believe sports game and were so