Fantasy Sports as Markers of a New Collective Identity and a Motivation to Participation in Social Activities (Mainly fo
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Fantasy Sports as Markers of a New Collective Identity and a Motivation to Participation in Social Activities (Mainly for Men) Sahil Shah 1 & Andrei Markovits 1 & Zack Blumberg 1 & Margot Douillet 1 Received: 3 September 2020 / Accepted: 9 November 2020/ # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract By analyzing the responses of 1075 fantasy sports players, the paper highlights the differences among players of the four leading North American team sports of football, baseball, basketball, and hockey. Motivations for participation vary in each of these sports. Whereas the study confirms that fantasy football is the most prominent among the four, it also highlights key characteristics that define fantasy baseball, basketball, and hockey players. In particular, the study demonstrates that for fantasy football players the main driving force in their participation centers on general sociability, a form of cultural capital and shared connection that is common among friends at the bar and the office. In contrast, for fantasy hockey players, participation in the game is more about reinforcement within their group, a solidification among a self-selected and devoted cluster of fantasy hockey players that revels in its confined, almost cult-like, associativity. Keywords Fantasy sports . Fantasy football . Fantasy baseball . Fantasy basketball .
Fantasy hockey
1 Introduction From its humble beginnings in the late 1980s and early 1990s confined to a very small area of sport-and-statistics-obsessed men to its nationwide explosion during the Internet era, fantasy sports have become ubiquitous in American society. Whereas at the outset of this phenomenon it was fantasy baseball that held the undisputed dominant position in the fantasy sports hierarchy, there can be no doubt that in the twenty-first century, fantasy football has become king. The popularity of fantasy football and fantasy
* Sahil Shah [email protected]
1
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Shah et al.
baseball have led to the rise of other fantasy sports in the United States, most notably fantasy basketball and fantasy hockey, though there exist related items such as fantasy golf and fantasy lacrosse among others. A word is appropriate here pertaining to fantasy Association Football, known as “football” in much of the world, but “soccer” in places like Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States in which rival football codes assumed hegemonic cultural status and the Association game did not. Paralleling this limited cultural proliferation in the United States when compared to its hegemonic domination in many countries, in America’s fantasy world as well, fantasy soccer plays a secondary role in the American fantasy landscape in contrast to its dominance in the world. In 2017, 59.3 million people enjoyed fantasy sports in America, which amounts to nearly 20% of the population of the United States (Fantasy Sports Industry Demographic Analysis 2017). The different paths taken by each fantasy sport and its varying degrees of popularity compar
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