Fantasy Sports are becoming more popular with time, especially recently. And the popularity is only said to rise with time. However, many might not know this, but it has been around 60 years since fantasy sports have been around. It began in 1962, when Bill Winkenbach, the then part-owner of the Oakland Raiders football team, along with a few friends, created the first fantasy football league. The first fantasy sport they made was Gridiron Football.
Since then, fantasy sports have come a long way. Other fantasy sports that emerged alongside fantasy football over the years include baseball, auto racing, basketball, hockey, golf, ice hockey, NASCAR, wrestling, cricket, kabaddi, etc., to name a few.
Most famous fantasy sports:
- In the United States, Fantasy American football is the most popular fantasy sport. It has over 35 million players, significantly larger than other fantasy sports like fantasy baseball, basketball, or ice hockey. In the United Kingdom, fantasy football is the most widely played fantasy sport, with roughly more than 8 million users.
- With 50% of India’s 1.3 billion population watching cricket, it is no surprise that fantasy cricket is the country’s most popular fantasy sport, with more than 100 million fantasy cricket players.
Fantasy Football
Fantasy football is a fantasy sport where participants assemble an imaginary team of real-life football players and score points based on their actual statistical performance or perceived contribution to the field. Usually, players are selected from one specific division in a particular country, although many variations exist.
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Fantasy Cricket
Like fantasy football, fantasy cricket is an online tournament where you have to create a virtual team of real cricketers. You then score points based on their performance in real matches. To win a tournament, you need to obtain the maximum number of points and the highest-ranking on the leaderboard.
Fantasy cricket is played based on the order of the batters and bowlers, which is the most controversial aspect of the sport. Even a tiny variation in the order of the batters and bowlers can change the outcome for the entire match. The concept involves selecting 11 players and three substitutes from the pool of players. Like an actual cricket match, the main aim in a fantasy cricket match is to outscore the opposition by as significant of a margin as possible. And you can play this fantasy sport in any of the three international forms, Test Cricket, One Day Internationals, and Twenty20. If you go by country, the cricket fantasy app is the most popular in India, followed by the United States, where the Indian population primarily enjoys fantasy cricket sports.
The craze for fantasy sports shows no signs of slowing down. On the contrary, fantasy platforms have a promising future in India as fantasy sports other than cricket also gain users’ support. Along with the massive craze for sports, digitalization is another factor that resulted in the emergence of fantasy sports platforms. More and more tech-savvy millennials in India are participating in fantasy sports tournaments. While the cricket frenzy in the Indian audience is well known, these fantasy platforms allow a user to explore other segments.
