The history of fantasy sports is an interesting one and one that will include many variations depending on who you ask. If you ask a baseball fantasy sports fan you will be told a different history of fantasy sports to that of the history recounted by a football fantasy sports fan. In actual fact both the stories recounted by these two sets of sports fans respectively are true.
- Historical Development Of Gambling In Sports Gambling
- Historical Development Of Gambling In Sports Industry
- Historical Development Of Gambling In Sports Illustrated
Both sides of the story omit certain facts that don’t pertain to their given sport, which is understandable, of course. Here I will go through a chronological rundown of the history of fantasy sports including major junctions that allowed the game to grow to the heights it has reached today.
1962
This is the first signs of any sort of fantasy sports game ever. Wilfred “Bill” Winkenbach and a few others from the Oakland Raiders Organisation draw out the basic rules for what has now developed into fantasy football. This all happened in the Milford Plaza Hotel in New York City in March of 1962.
The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 Known as the Bradley Bill, it prohibits the expansion of state-sanctioned, authorized, or licensed gambling on amateur and professional sporting events in the United States (Cotten and Wolohan, 2010). The fixing of the 1919 World Series is still the most infamous sports gambling moment of all time. Eight White Sox players were paid a total of $100,000 to purposely lose the Fall Classic, so.
The history of fantasy sports is an interesting one and one that will include many variations depending on who you ask. If you ask a baseball fantasy sports fan you will be told a different history of fantasy sports to that of the history recounted by a football fantasy sports fan. Professional and collegiate sports have historically feared one practice most heavily over anything else: gambling. The threat has been that if an athlete, official or coach became ensconced in. Historically, Macau and Hong Kong (both within APAC) are two of the most prominent sports betting revenue-generating regions in the world. Economic prosperity throughout the rest of the region, however, provides disposable income for leisure activities, such as sports betting.
1963
The first ever draft for a fantasy football league was made. The league was known as the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League or the GOPPPL. Oakland Raiders quarter back and hall of famer George Blanda was the first ever fantasy football selection.
At this point in time fantasy sports now exist very loosely comparable to what we know to be fantasy sports today. Having said this though there is still a long way to go as there is still no fantasy sports for many other sports and no league is open to the public yet.
1969
One of the biggest steps forward in the world of fantasy sports is taken as the first public fantasy league is brought into existence by the original founder of the GOPPPL, Andy Mousalimas. This fantasy football league was open to the patrons of the Kings X Sports Bar in Oakland.
1980
Enter the point where most baseball fans will tell you that fantasy sports started. The Rotisserie scoring system for fantasy baseball was developed by some Journalists. The system was names after the restaurant in which the journalists would meet and where they first played the game – La Rotisserie Française. Daniel Okrent is credited with the coming up with the idea.
In the Rotisserie system the players of the game – known as owners – would pick a team from a list of all active Major League baseball players and would follow their statistics throughout a currently ongoing season and compile their teams scores based on their player’s performances. This provided a more realistic game as the players would have to make some similar decisions to that of real baseball team managers.
1981
As the Rotisserie system was devised by Journalists many sports journalists knew about the game and participated in it. This was a crucial fact in the growth of the game of fantasy sports. This is because in 1981 the Major League Baseball had a strike, which meant that now, many sports journalists had very little to write about. So what did they decide to write about? You guessed it – the game they had come to love and play amongst their journalist friends – Fantasy Baseball!
Of course, this spread the word of this new game and many baseball lovers started to play the game and compete against their friends. This was all happening despite the fact the statistics and accurate news about baseball was often hard to come by during this time. This all changes with the advent of the internet and more sophisticated computers.
1989
Now over 1 million people are playing fantasy football alone!
1990
The schedule of the National Football league is changed to include bye weeks. The strategies used for team selection in Fantasy Football is now different as players had to know take into consideration the weeks that their players would not be playing.
The 90s
The internet boom was all around and affecting nearly every industry in some way or another. Fantasy sports was no exception and the popularity of the game sky rocketed when the accessibility of information became easier with the addition of the internet.
1996
Although strictly not information about Fantasy sports the court case between the National Basketball Association and Motorola Inc. did bring about huge precedent that would forever change the world of Fantasy sports.
The case was brought about when the NBA where trying to stop Motorola sending their users pager updates of NBA scores and statistics. Motorola got all of their information without the consent of the NBA and Motorola funded it all themselves. The NBA claimed that scores and statistics of NBA games were covered by copyright.
The court ruled that because the scores and stats that Motorola was sending their users were entirely factual, they could not be covered by copyright law. Motorola won the case and was allowed to continue sending scores and updates. This meant that in later years when fantasy sports players were able to get real- time updates on games there was a precedent that suggested that the vendors of this information was not breaking any law and thus fantasy sports could continue to grow.
1999
In July of 1999 Yahoo! Inc. decide to set up a Fantasy sports system that was free to use. This was unusual as every other fantasy sports league in existence had a cost associated with playing. Even up to the present day Yahoo! Inc. still have the industry leading free Fantasy Sports game.
Historical Development Of Gambling In Sports Gambling
The FSTA was founded!
2006
Now over 12 million people are playing fantasy football.
Also in 2006 there was a huge federal legislative change that could have caused fantasy sports to become and illegal activity in the US. The bill that was passed was the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). The UIGEA is the bill that meant online gambling such as poker within the US is now illegal.
Fantasy sports had to be reviewed under this bill as it was not clear if it fell into the scope of the bill. The government made a specific exception to online Fantasy sports because they deemed that it was a game of skill and not a game of chance. This distinction and the exception added to the UIGEA federally legalized online Fantasy sports.
This was a huge victory for the world of fantasy sports as if the game had not been given an exception in the UIGEA then fantasy sports becomes illegal in the US and the growth of the game does not continue to accelerate at the rate it has been in recent years.
2009
Today's marketleader Fanduel was founded.
2011
Today's second largest Fantasy Sports Site Draftkings was founded.
2013
21 million people play fantasy sports, showing incredible growth on 6 years previous.
2014
DirecTV announce a new addition to the NFL Sunday Ticket package called “Fantasy Zone”. This addition will show how all the current live action is affecting the fantasy stats for the day. Game to game analysis and an on screen ticker offering key player updates. This is a huge addition that will boost the overall popularity and reach of the game due to it becoming more mainstream and accessible to everyone.
Over 41,5 Million US & Canadian Citizens play fantasy sports today!
So there you have it, a rundown of the history of fantasy sports. What does the future hold for fantasy sports? No one knows. But what we can expect is continuing rapid growth and expansion as more and more people discover the enjoyment, accessibility and potential rewards found by playing fantasy sports.
2015
Historical Development Of Gambling In Sports Industry
Amaya / Pokerstars acquire Victiv and rebrand it to StarsDraft.com. Yahoo starts its own Daily Fantasy Sports site for real money. StarsDraft closes in all but 4 states a few months later.
FanDuel and DraftKings are both valued of more than $1B each!
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Historical Development Of Gambling In Sports Illustrated
With the Supreme Court ending a federal ban on sports betting, the floodgates have opened for some, or all, of the 50 states to legalize wagers on athletic events. With this brave new world of gaming, we’ll see extra focus on players, officials, spreads, lines and money, all as leagues, law enforcement and sports books try to ensure that sports gambling stays incorruptible. Good luck with that: Ever since professional sports were created, players have been betting on games and gamblers have been finding ways to infiltrate the games to shift the odds in their favor. Here are 11 of the biggest scandals in sports gambling history.
1. The Black Sox (1919 World Series): “Never before in the history of America’s biggest baseball spectacle has a pennant-winning club received such a disastrous drubbing in an opening game.” So wrote The New York Times after the Chicago White Sox were defeated 9-1 in Game 1 of the 1919 World Series, unaware that said drubbing was the result of eight players who had agreed to help throw the Series for gamblers.
The degree to which each player helped has been a debate for almost a century. Joe Jackson, banned for life along with seven teammates, hit .375 with a .956 OPS over the eight games and didn’t make an error. “How do you explain that?” Kevin Costner correctly asks in Field of Dreams. (Jackson admitted taking money.) Others, like pitcher Eddie Cicotte and Chick Gandil (allegedly the on-field mastermind) took a noticeable dive.
It turns out that the Sox throwing the Series was the worst-kept secret in baseball. Even before Game 1, the baseball world was atwitter with word that the fix was in but the commissioner’s office was apparently content to look the other way. It was until a separate case one year later that the word about 1919 got out. None of the Black Sox were found guilty in court (a rumor suggests that owner Charlie Comiskey and kingpin Arnold Rothstein helped disappear some key paperwork) but were banned from baseball for life.
2. CCNY point shaving (1950): In 1951, 32 college basketball players from seven schools around the country were caught up in a mafia-run point shaving scheme that hit four New York schools and three out-of-state teams, including Kentucky. It was a major blow for college basketball, especially considering that the bulk of the accused players had been on CCNY’s 1950 team, which became the first (and only) team to ever win the NCAA and NIT tournaments. The scandal decimated the team — which rivaled the Yankees and the Dodgers for New York sports supremacy at the time — and effectively ended the school’s affiliation with big-time athletics. Despite an insistence from a holier-than-thou Adolph Rupp that his boys weren’t involved in such nefarious schemes, Kentucky was banned for a full season as well.
3. Pete Rose: The all-time hit king was banned for life in 1989 for betting on games, something he adamently denied for 15 years. He finally admitted to betting while managing the Reds, but insisted he never bet on baseball while he was a player. Never! A few years later, that was proven to be another lie — evidence showed that Rose bet about once a day in 1987, typically for around $2,000. Though he frequently bet on his Reds, Rose vows he never bet against his own team and, despite his flexibility with the truth, this claim seems legit. No evidence has ever come out to suggest otherwise and, to be honest, it doesn’t really fit with what we know about the man.
4. Paul Hornung and Alex Karras: Before Pete Rose, there was Paul Hornung and Alex Karras. The former was an NFL MVP who set a league scoring record in 1960 that stood for 46 years (and is still the second-highest total in history). The latter was a first-team All-Pro defensive lineman. Despite their success (or maybe because of it), Hornung and Karras routinely bet up to $500 on NFL games while associating with known gamblers. Both men were contrite (Rose should have taken note of that in 1989) and, in issuing his indefinite suspension, Rozelle took care to mention that neither player bet on or against their own teams. The suspension was dropped after a full season. Hornung was later elected to the Hall of Fame and Karras starred on the 1980s sitcom Webster.
5. BC Goodfellas: The most notorious real-life gangster portrayed in Goodfellas didn’t go down for the Lufthansa heist, whacking Billy Batts, robbery, murders or aiding and abetting Joe Pesci being called a clown. Jimmy Burke (played by Robert DeNiro in Martin Scorsese’s mob masterpiece) went to jail because Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) ratted, almost off-handedly, about a point shaving scandal involving the Boston College basketball team. Hill had been arrested on various drug counts and, in his interviews, casually mentioned the BC story. Once it became clear that the Feds were interested in this to help bring down members of the Lucchese family (remember, Al Capone went down for tax evasion), Hill asked for immunity and ratted on his friends. It had been a successful partnership, for a little. After a rocky start, the syndicate began winning money on Boston College, by betting the Eagles to win games but lose against the spread or fail to cover a big spread in a game they wouldn’t have won anyway.
6. John “Hot Rod” Williams: Before he became a beloved NBA veteran, John “Hot Rod” Williams faced jail time over a 1985 point shaving scandal at Tulane that ended up shuttering the basketball program for four seasons. With a healthy mix of money, cocaine and 1980s-era bravado, five players were accused of shaving points in two games, all for a shared pot of $17,000. Williams twice went to trial – the first was declared a mistrial and the second ended with his acquittal on five counts. He went on to play 13 years in the NBA.
7. Rick Tocchet: The story of Tocchet, an NHL All-Star and Stanley Cup champion, was sordid enough. He pled guilty to involvement with a $2 million gambling ring that took bets from the rich and famous. But Tocchet’s tale took an unexpected turn when the name of Janet Gretzky, wife of the Great One, appeared in the books.
8. Art Schlichter:The fourth pick of the 1982 draft accrued nearly $1 million in gambling debts by the end of his first year in the NFL, by betting various sports including, allegedly, 10 NFL games. (Like Hornung and Karras, Schlichter was never accused of betting on his own team or using his position to influence his wagers.) Schlichter was reinstated in 1984, was out of the league by 1985, never won an NFL game and has spent the last 30 years in and out of jail. His latest offense — a scan selling phony tickets to sporting events — sent him to prison for a decade.
9. Joe Namath: After Super Bowl III, Namath, a playboy bachelor, was the biggest thing in American sports. He decided to capitalize on it by opening a night club named, cleverly, Bachelor III. Mark Kriegel wrote in his biography Namath: “ regulars included con men, fences, bookmakers and of course made men — exactly the kind of guys you’d expect to find in a hot East Side joint.”
Commissioner Pete Rozelle told Namath to sell his interest in the club because of its reputation but, rather than sell, Namath retired instead. He changed his tune one month later after a meeting with Rozelle. On his way out of the commissioner’s apartment, after agreeing to cut ties with his club, Namath was approached by Rozelle’s 11-year-old daughter. “Mr. Namath, I just want you to know that everyone in the Rozelle family doesn’t hate you.”
10. Tim Donaghy: In 2007, an FBI investigation revealed that Tim Donaghy, a longtime NBA referee, had bet on NBA games and fed information to other gamblers after falling into debt. The scandal was both a huge story and quickly faded from the public consciousness, almost like sports fans want to delude themselves into thinking that everything is always on the up and up.
11. Northwestern: Dewey Williams and a teammate were given a brief prison sentence for their role in fixing games during the 1995 season. Why gamblers didn’t trust Northwestern basketball players to simply lose games on their own, as per usual, is the enduring mystery of this tale.