This past Sunday marks the first
time in a while that a Philadelphia quarterback is amongst the highest
earners in fantasy points for a given week. Nick Foles played simply out of his
mind against Oakland, passing for seven touchdowns and 406 yards on 28 pass
attempts. Talk about a good day. But all of the hype surrounding the day that
Foles had may not have been such big news for many sports fans if they didn’t
own fantasy football teams.
The article we read this week
dealing with a study on fantasy sports’ relationships with the media
highlighted another part of the importance of this growing phenomenon. The
study went online and sent surveys to Internet users via sports discussion
boards, and asked questions to answer whether or not there were correlations
between fantasy users and prior sports played, amount of sports watched and
amount of time on the Internet. The findings showed that fantasy league
participation does have a relationship with media use in general. Not
surprisingly there was also a finding that fantasy users find it important to
be a sports fan. This discussion also talked about the motives behind viewing
sports and the Role Playing Theory. When fantasy owners take on leagues they
get to act as managers and leaders of their team, giving them a role of the
owner in a real life situation and making decisions about their teams. Through
the reading the importance of access to information was also a key part of
fantasy sports and leagues. Now more than ever, there is a seemingly endless
amount of data for fans and fantasy owners to look at and decipher to help them
make decisions on their teams.
Overall this study makes it
pointedly clear that there is a correlation between internet usage and fantasy
ownership, along with strong relationship that the more time one spends online
the more time they will spend watching sports and sports highlights. The amount
of study and research into the world of fantasy sports is only in its early
stages. Along with this growing activity there will come more and more data like
this study to help reveal the importance of using sports media to look at
fantasy sports.
No comments:
Post a Comment