Fantasy League Games Flood Internet

Once a week, while sitting around and waiting for his clothes to dry at the Laundromat, Matthew Sales makes last-minute decisions on who gets in the game and who warms the bench.

Should Tim Duncan of the San Antonio Spurs get a spot in the lineup? Will Montreal Expos’ Urgueth Urbina make a comeback after missing most of last year with injuries?

Sales is a fantasy sports manager --he coordinates several teams from his cell phone while doing laundry or from his computer while on lunch break at work.

Sales isn’t alone. In the last few years, simulated sports on the Internet have bloomed into a national pastime. While online companies don’t release specific numbers on how many people use their fantasy sports services, it’s safe to say they number in the millions.

“I grew up watching baseball, but I don’t think I enjoyed it as much as now,” said Sales, a Web site designer at a company in Rochester, N.Y. “When there’s someone at bat who’s on my team and they hit a home run, it’s totally cool.”

Typically, a group of friends or co-workers can sign up for a fantasy league in nearly any sport with one of the major online services, including Yahoo!, ESPN, CNN-Sports Illustrated or CBS SportsLine. At the beginning of the season, participants either pick or are assigned real-life sports players to their teams.

Then, late at night after all the day’s games have ended, the online services plug every player’s statistics into their computers. Those statistics are translated into points, which are used to rank the teams in the fantasy leagues.

Fantasy sports players unanimously agree that the online games increase the level of interest and interactivity in the sport.

“The thrill of a sports fan being able to assume the role of a real-life manager takes your passion for a sport to a new level, to take your favorite players and put them together in a lineup,” said Tonya Antonucci, director of production for Yahoo news, sports and weather.

These games are successful because anyone can play, regardless of their interest or knowledge of the sport, said Geoff Reiss, senior vice president for programming, production and operations at ESPN.com.

“You can have 10 people in the league with different levels of commitment and everyone have the same amount of fun,” Reiss said. Leagues often develop cultures based on the personalities of the managers, he said. Message boards, included with all the online services, allow managers to gloat about players on their teams or joke about competing managers.

Al Hickson didn’t understand what the big deal was until he started fantasy teams of his own.

“I was confused by their excitement about it,” said Hickson, who owns Montana Properties construction company in Atlanta and manages a team he named the Swamp Foxes. “I’ve liked the Braves since I was a little kid. With fantasy sports you pay attention to the whole league rather than the teams.”

Now Hickson said he’s hooked on it, and he has teams with CNN-Sports Illustrated and ESPN.com.

“You can get sucked in pretty deep,” said Hickson, who spends between an hour and an hour and a half daily on his teams. “I just quit if I feel it’s taking up too much of my time.”

Fantasy sports have come a long way from the pre-Internet era, when small groups of friends tediously added up statistics from newspaper box scores every day, Reiss said.

“Back then, fantasy sports were the domain of geeky fans,” Reiss said. “There were all kinds of social barriers keeping it from getting bigger. People would say, ‘You’re in a fantasy league? I’m going to call security.’ ”

Although fantasy sports have grown in ease of play and popularity, they’ve also lost something from a chummier time with college buddies or work colleagues, Reiss said. They would meet, usually at one of their houses or a diner, hold a draft for players and decide on the rules of the game.

That kind of social interaction has been diminished by the world of the Internet, where friends are known by screen names and statistics added by computer rather than pencil and paper, he said.

“There are few things as much fun as everybody sitting around a table someplace and battling it out for players every year. That’s one of the areas of unfulfilled promise,” Reiss said. “I’m sure we’ll get there.”

Since ESPN.com launched its first fantasy football league in 1995, the market has exploded. The NCAA Tournament Challenge during March Madness drew 800,000 people this year. Yahoo’s auto racing game had 700,000 players last year.

Football and baseball are neck-and-neck in popularity, each season drawing more players than the season before, according to the online services.

Most every service is free, except for ESPN’s, which charges about $30 per team each season. The other services make their money from advertising and sponsorships.

For example, Yahoo is host to banner ads. Miller Lite was a primary sponsor of their auto racing game and Southwest Airlines advertised on the NCAA Tournament game.

The Web sites also benefit from their free games because they lure people to their main sports pages. Yahoo had 8.3 million unique visitors to its sports pages in February, according to Jupiter Media Metrix, a company that tracks Internet usage. ESPN.com was second with 6.6 million visitors.

When the season is over and the points have been added up, what does the winner get?

“Bragging rights,” Sales said. “You go out with your friends and get a beer and say, ‘Yeah, remember when I won last year?’ ”

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www.fantasysports.yahoo.com

www.games.espn.go.com

www.sportsline.commissioner .com

www.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/ fantasy