Larry Schechter unlocks the history of fantasy sports
How pretend leagues captured the imagination of wanna be sports executives.
Fantasy sports have spawned generations of keyboard coaches.
Image by ChatGPT
Larry Schechter’s 2014 book, “Winning Fantasy Baseball,” became a bestseller on Amazon. In his new work, “The History of Fantasy Sports: And the Stories of the People Who Made It Happen,” he takes a deep dive into how fantasy sports became a worldwide phenomenon.
Some chapters of the book get a bit dry – there’s a sameness to stories of some college buddies who over beers decided to start a fantasy game, publication or website – but those are offset by entertaining tales that Schechter unearthed in the 18 months he spent researching the book. That includes revisiting how Daniel Okrent – a well-known writer and editor – helped bring Rotisserie Baseball into the world.
Schechter took part in the following Q&A for this website.
Sports Literate: The most interesting part of the book to me involved Daniel Okrent and his role in helping to start Rotisserie baseball. It’s funny how Okrent eventually grew tired of all the attention he received as a fantasy pioneer versus his renown as a writer and editor. Do you think he has mixed emotions about that duality in his life?
Larry Schechter: Clearly he does, and I think this is shown in my book. He was an editor at magazines such as Esquire, Life and Time, and was the first public editor of The New York Times. And he wrote several award winning books. Thus to be known primarily for inventing what is really just a game, albeit incredibly popular, is almost insulting to his writing accomplishments.
He has often said, "If I bring peace to Israel and find a cure for cancer, my obituary will still say, ‘He invented Rotisserie Baseball.’”
You do a good job revisiting the legal obstacles to online daily fantasy games, which always seemed like a workaround for gamblers looking for action before the Supreme Court opened the door to legal sports gaming. How much financial trouble were DraftKings or FanDuel in before the high court’s 2018 ruling?
The 2018 ruling legalized sports betting, and DraftKings and FanDuel added sports betting to their offerings. Prior to that is when they were in big jeopardy.
One of the keys in the creation of daily fantasy sports (DFS) was the 2006 passage of UIGEA, which exempted fantasy from being considered gambling. The legislation didn’t require a fantasy contest to be a minimum length of time in order to be exempt, meaning a contest as short as even just one day was allowed.
But later on, several state attorneys general questioned the legality of DFS based on state law. The most prominent was in 2015 New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who launched an investigation and threatened to shut them down. This is covered quite extensively in my book and ultimately the New York State legislature passed a bill legalizing daily fantasy. Had the bill failed, which it almost did, DraftKings and FanDuel may not have survived.
Your book has a funny anecdote about Bobby Bonilla and Cal Ripken Jr. being among some Baltimore Orioles who played fantasy football in 1996. Are there other professional athletes who you know are into playing fantasy sports?
Yes, many play fantasy. My book mentions Maurice Jones Drew playing fantasy football and he always tried to take himself in round #1. (For several years, he was worth a first round pick for fantasy football.)
There's a fantasy football league I've heard of that includes Mike Trout, Alex Bregman and several others.
There was a famous incident two years ago where Tommy Pham slapped Joc Pederson before a game, got suspended for three games, and it was because of a fantasy football disagreement.
In your opinion, will the explosion of online sports betting cannibalize some of the audience for fantasy games, or will it drive interest in fantasy even higher?
As you suggested earlier, there's a fine line between gambling and DFS. The introduction of DFS has really expanded fantasy sports participation because it makes it easy for people to play even one day at a time whenever they want to, without needing the commitment of six months for baseball or 18 weeks for football. (There's a chapter in my book about the FSTA.)
There's also a crossover of people who play fantasy (both season long and daily) which is why the Fantasy Sports Trade Association a few years back became the Fantasy Sports and Gaming Association. Also on some fantasy radio shows, websites, etc., you will now see content sometimes about gambling in addition to fantasy sports.
Reading about some of the earliest iterations of services or publications catering to fantasy players is kind of like reading about families gathering around radios to listen to ball games in the 1940s. Looking ahead, what kind of changes might artificial intelligence bring to online fantasy games?
I have no idea what AI might be able to do, but there has already been an evolution where years ago you had to get box scores from the newspaper and manually calculate all statistics – which was very time-consuming – to computers making this much easier, and then the internet helping fantasy explode because it became so easy to participate and play.
When I started playing in the early ‘90s I would have to wait a few days after the week ended to get a report in the mail to see how my team fared against everyone else. Now you can see stats and standings updated online within a few seconds of a play occurring on the field.
