We are approaching a year since Fantasy Sandbox started to provide news and analysis on the business of fantasy sports. It has been a great year spending in this space as I have meet new faces that are great people in the industry.
As we start our second year, I wanted to state something explicitly to the site that we will be adding to Fantasy Sandbox and that is advocacy of fantasy sports. I suppose that is why I started the site, but I wanted to state it as a focus of this site to promote the awesomeness of fantasy sports that causes us to obsess over this past time.
If it is good for fantasy sports, this site will advocate for it such as healthy growth of fantasy sport in popularity and revenue. If it is not good for fantasy sports, this site will speak out against it such as turning fantasy sports into a gambling only centric game. I use the example of the game black jack to highlight this. No one really plays black jack for the fun of it, it is only played as a gambling game that requires a money wager to support its existence at all.
Over the last year, I've collected and analysed the fantasy industry and collected a bunch of numbers to help shape the industry as we look on the past year.
$1.4 billion in annual revenue for fantasy sports
source: IBIS World
41 million fantasy sports players in the US and Canada
source: FSTA
1500% growth of daily fantasy in last 4 years
source: FanDuel
$13 Billion in lost productivity because of fantasy sports
source: Challengers, Gray and Christmas
5 hours monthly spent on ESPN tv
17 hours monthly spent on ESPN web
source: Walt Disney Company
5.1 million visitors to Yahoo! fantasy app
4.9 million visitors to ESPN fantasy app
source: Nielsen
3 of 4 fantasy owners prefer to play with someone they know
source: Crave Online
Keep playing, keep reading, and keep fantasizing
Rick Duong
