As fantasy football grew more popular, the NFL began adapting

By the late 1990s, CBS, ESPN, and Yahoo had all launched their fantasy platforms, allowing the game to grow even more popular. By 2009, the NFL took note and began offering coverage that explicitly focused on fantasy metrics, including “RedZone,” a popular Sunday show that allows viewers to tune into the most crucial moments from around the league—or across their fantasy rosters.

Most TV viewers simultaneously watch a second screen

83% of American TV watchers simultaneously watch a second screen, like a phone, laptop, or tablet. Sometimes that screen might complement what's on the screen (like fantasy football managers watching a game while watching their rosters) but other times it is entirely unconnected.

Fantasy sports can have adverse health effects

Experts warn that fantasy sports, including fantasy football, can encourage obsessive use because they offer hits of dopamine. Daily fantasy games, which function more like gambling, are especially problematic.

Fantasy football is now a $10B industry

Curious about how fantasy football grew into a global empire? This video breaks down how a losing Oakland Raiders team led to the first form of fantasy football, long before the internet and smartphones made it a worldwide phenomenon.

An estimated 49 million people played fantasy football in 2022

The number, estimated by the Fantasy Sports and Gaming Association, has grown exponentially since the start of the century. While fantasy sports in general are popular, football is the most popular, with an estimated 79% of fantasy participants playing fantasy football.

Fantasy sports can also offer community

Fantasy leagues often carry over from year to year, allowing people to hang on to (or forge) connections with others. Matthew Berry, a fantasy football analyst for NBC Sports, argues, “the truth is it’s all about the people. It’s not the draft, it’s not the trash talk or the punishments … It’s the people who make the draft and the trash talk and the punishments and the winning what it is.”

​​Some allege the NFL has shifted gameplay toward fantasy

Recent rule changes in the league have increased passing and point-scoring, which critics argue is motivated by a desire to appeal to fantasy-loving viewers who might be frustrated by slower, lower-scoring games.

'Daily fantasy' is a high-stakes subset of fantasy sports

The form, pioneered by platforms like FanDuel and DraftKings, uses anonymous daily leagues and large payouts, looks more like typical betting than the season-long, community-minded setup of more traditional fantasy.

A 1930s card game birthed modern fantasy sports

"National Pastime" used the statistics of real Major League Baseball players to determine a winner, creating the template for the modern fantasy sports model.

'RedZone' intentionally appealed to fantasy fans

This short documentary explains how the NFL Network show quickly became a hit for football fans, especially those looking to monitor the stats for their fantasy teams.

How fantasy baseball fights the loneliness epidemic

Experts believe the erosion of traditional community organizations has led to a loneliness epidemic. This deep dive explores how fantasy baseball has filled the gap for some men, providing a stand-in social network.

Fantasy sports' roots go back to an 1860s parlor game that simulated real-world baseball.

Sports media have also embraced sports betting

For decades, ESPN kept its distance between reporting on games and talking about gambling lines. Sports teams refused to have franchises in Las Vegas, fearing it would harm the sport. But since 2018, that has changed. ESPN’s personalities regularly pick games, and the company has also launched its own betting app.

Fantasy football is a head-to-head game based on NFL stats

Competitors draft players from across the NFL, then earn points for their real in-game achievements, like touchdowns, receptions, and interceptions. The team with the most points in a given week wins.

The NFL is so successful because it is perfectly suited for television

The predictable weekly cadence of football games ritualizes the experience of watching together, and their relative scarcity makes every game meaningful. With the stop-and-go play of the sport, there are predictable, repeating stoppages to allow broadcasters to sell lots of advertising inventory. The league sits in the sweet spot compared to MLB (many games) and NBA and soccer (continuous play with fewer ads). This Acquired episode distills fascinating insights into the NFL's business and history.

Television transformed college football into a national spectacle

The rise of televised games in the mid-20th century expanded college football’s reach far beyond campus stadiums—turning regional rivalries into national events, boosting revenue, and cementing the sport as a Saturday tradition across the country.

By the 1980s, fantasy football was a national activity

The Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League was a private league, but by the end of the ‘60s, a bar in Oakland opened the first public fantasy football league. Over the next few decades, the game grew more popular, as evidenced by this how-to article from a 1980 issue of “Inside Sports.”

The inventor of fantasy football first experimented with two other sports

In the mid-1950s, Wilfred “Bill” Winkenbach, a part-owner of the Oakland Raiders, concocted two fantasy sports games: one for Major League Baseball and one for the Professional Golfers’ Association. In 1962, he invented fantasy football alongside two writers from the Oakland Tribune.

Experts suggest the industry could be a $45B business

Sports betting used to primarily consist of who would win and the points spread, but the rise of online betting apps has fueled a substantial increase in parlay bets. "Existing markets are still growing at a rapid clip," said Noah Naparst, who evaluates sports-betting companies for Goldman Sachs. "So we’re not mature yet, but we’re not in the early wildcat days of the market anymore, either.”

The 'second screen' effect has realigned the writing for Netflix's original shows

As more subscribers put Netflix on in the background, the company has encouraged more expositional dialogue in its original scripts. Filmmaker Justine Bateman claims the streamer doesn't "want anything on your show to distract [viewers] from their primary screen."

Mental health experts caution against youth sports betting

People in their early 20s represent the fastest-growing group of sports gamblers. That fact concerns mental health professionals, who warn that early exposure to gaming primes children’s brains to seek digital rewards.

Sports betting, explained

Since a 2018 Supreme Court decision overturned the Bradley Act, which spurred a state-by-state legalization of online gambling, sports betting has become a rapidly growing multibillion-dollar industry.

One writer believes fantasy is a form of realism

The literary genre has become massively popular in the 2020s, turning a previously marginal form into a mainstream concern. Spufford, a literary novelist who grew up loving books that explored fantastic worlds, argues that fantasy is so popular because it so accurately reflects the real world.

Some experts equate prediction markets to the new crack cocaine of gambling addiction

An addiction psychiatrist at UCLA says betting apps are far more potent than traditional gambling, citing a 19-year-old patient who lost $180,000 and hadn't left campus in a year, cycling through sports bets, crypto, meme stocks, and prediction markets on his phone. This interview explores the extreme edge of the nascent industry.

Explaining the rise in adult sports leagues

Community sports leagues shifted from publicly supported entities to privatized ones in the 1990s, as tech advances streamlined registration processes. Millennial interest drove significant growth in social sports leagues for adults, growing much faster than other kinds of sports. A few industry leaders have benefited from this shift.

Even athletes aren't immune to the sports-betting craze

While gambling scandals occasionally blew up before 2018, the widespread legalization of sports betting provided athletes with more opportunities to bet on the games they were playing.

Prediction markets and sports betting are not forms of investing, despite how some fans portray them.

A major dopamine hit from social media use comes from unpredictability—not knowing if the content users post or share will get the 'like' from other users, triggering cycles of anticipation similar to those experienced with a slot machine.

The 300 best fantasy football players ever

Fantasy leagues (and their corresponding group chats) are no strangers to arguments, and this list will likely inspire a few spirited ones. Ten ESPN writers were asked to pick 30 of the undisputed greats of fantasy football, making for a fascinating look back at the all-stars of the digital gridiron

Americans spent nearly $150B in sports-related bets in 2024

These bets ranged from who would win the World Series to what color clothes famous celebrities would wear to the Super Bowl. Experts believe the industry will continue to grow.

Taylor Swift's relationship with Kansas City Chief's star Travis Kelce helped boost the NFL's popularity, especially among younger generations.

Social media platforms benefit not just from ensuring they have satisfied users, but also from the personal data they scoop up and can then sell to online advertisers.

Consumers are buying more books now than they were 20 years ago, thanks to a 2020 boom and a popular literary corner on TikTok.

A 2024 cheating scandal cast doubt on the industry

In 2024, National Fantasy Football Championship, a fantasy league with big payouts, fired one of its employees for manipulating data. The episode cast doubt on the relatively unregulated industry, despite the league coming down hard on the nefarious worker.

A Netflix docuseries turned the sport into a national obsession

Throughout much of its history, Formula 1 racing was a European sport that failed to ever find a major audience in the US. That changed with "Drive to Survive," the Netflix docuseries that premiered in 2019. This analysis from two communications professors unpacks how the series has successfully presented the sport for an American audience and cultivated a dedicated fanbase in the process.

Frictionless online gambling platforms accelerate compulsive behavior

As of late 2025, as much as 95% of bets are placed online, where "always on" betting and a variety of formats, such as prop bets and parlays, encourage users to keep participating. Experts warn that the normalization of gambling through advertisements also reduces the perceived danger of addictive gambling.

The internet has changed how fans understand wrestling

Maintaining the illusion of professional wrestling—or kayfabe—was once considered the most important aspect of running a successful promotion. That’s changed over time, with wrestling’s most serious fans growing as interested in the stories behind the scenes as they are in the matches taking place in the ring.

One fantasy football league has been running for over four decades

The Fantasy Football League began in 1980, before fantasy football was available online. The group, which began in Northern California, originally used a touchdown-only format because it was easier to score in the preinternet era.

Among most mainstream sports broadcasts, sports betting ads appear most often in women's basketball and hockey

A random selection of 50 different sports broadcasts tracked one sports betting reference every four minutes. In one of the randomly selected hockey games, the longest stretch of no gambling reference lasted about five minutes towards the end of the game.