Who's raking in the dough because of fantasy football?

So who's making money in the explosion of fantasy football? According to Scott Minto, director of San Diego State Sports Business MBA Program, the NFL as well as the game hosters such as ESPN and Yahoo are the ones cashing in on recent growth. In addition, the ecosystem has been so healthy it has been able to support other business such as fantasy content providers.

MY TAKE: For fantasy football to continue to grow, the ecosystem of partners is going to be important. If everyone is able to make money with this growth, than the ecosystem will be self sustaining.

An issue that the NFL will need to look at is cannibalization of its own revenue in two ways: Game Attendance and NFL.com fantasy growth.

The NFL is benefiting when game hosters like ESPN and Yahoo increase in popularity because it makes the NFL games more popular in terms of viewership. This is commonly known as a halo effect.  What it still hasn't translated to is game attendance. NFL attendance has not yet returned to when it attendance peaked in 2007. When a fan of NFL would rather sit at home and follow their fantasy teams instead of attending the game, then the NFL will need to decide which is more important to their business.