(*) MASTER NOTES: We can't see where this is going
Apr 10 2015
Last week in this space, Ron Shandler talked about the divide between full-season games and shorter-term games. In that piece, he convincingly spelled out the demographic that generally characterizes the full-season fantasy player, and how that demographic varies from the daily player.
The impression is that there's not much overlap between the two camps; no middle ground. But myself, I live in that middle ground. I'm in my early 40s, I've been playing full-season fantasy games since my teens. I've also been playing the daily games for the past couple of years, and very much enjoying them... truth be told, at least as much as my traditional full-season formats.
Ron's piece from last week generated a ton of feedback in the comments area. There's also a lively discussion in our subscriber forums, where the pro- and anti-DFS crowd are sort of feeling each other out.
It strikes me that, even a few years into the emergence of these new formats, the level of discussion here hasn't moved much past the surface level. Those who are opposed to the daily games say things like "It's gambling." Those who are opposed to full-season games say "They are too much of a commitment." Let's be clear: I'm passing no judgment either way. But the discussion hasn't progressed much beyond those initial perspectives.
One point from Ron's piece that rang true for me—the idea that our full-season games have changed a lot over the years. We don't compile stats from the Tuesday and Wednesday USAToday anymore. We don't have to spend time on our summer vacations trying to find a pay phone to register our FAAB bids for the week. We don't play 4x4 (much) anymore.
These daily games are still in their relative infancy: we're in the 4x4, USAToday publication schedule-driven era of DFS right now. What is it going to look like in five or ten years? We can't really predict that, other than to say that if these games stay as well-capitalized as they are today, the pace of growth and change will be faster than anything that we've seen over the past 30 years in the full-season fantasy world.
Along those lines, something caught my eye this week: Tout Wars is sponsoring a daily-game competition for its full-season players. This is, of course, another example of how the DFS space is infiltrating the traditional marketplace. But the structure of the Tout Daily contest really caught my eye: every Friday night, there's a private contest for the Tout entrants. There are prizes each Friday, plus rolling scores over four-week periods are used to determine qualification for a late-season championship round.
When I saw this, I immediately thought of my longtime Scoresheet league. I play in this league with some college buddies and other long-time acquaintances. It used to be cut-throat: everyone prepared to the n-th degree, there was a lot of trash talk. But as we've all moved from our leisure time-filled 20's into our family responsibility-filled 40s, the league has gone moribund. We all love the league still, and would never let it die. But we can barely find the time for draft prep, let alone trash talk. There's a flurry of activity around the August trade deadline, but outside of that, in-season activity is rare. We joke frequently that in another 20 years when we all retire, the league will get back to being as cut-throat as it was when we were in our 20's.
Why did the Tout Daily competition make me think of this Scoresheet league? Because when I read about the structure of this Tout Daily format, I thought, "now this is something that the guys in that league might actually have time to get into, and really enjoy." The opportunity to only play the game on Friday nights, but compete against each other privately for some sort of prize, and bragging rights? That is right in this group's wheelhouse.
We don't have to wait for some future DFS world for that to play out: you can do stuff like this now. (USAToday's FantasyScore game is particularly friendly to these sort of play-against-your-friends contests). And it makes me wonder: in the current state of affairs, the full-season fantasy game experience is interpersonal, it's about competing with people you know. The DFS experience is about taking money from people you don't know.
But will it always be that way? Maybe not. Or at least, maybe the two formats—full-season vs. daily— that are so locked in opposition now, will eventually adapt, build a bridge, and find some common ground. And once that happens, maybe the players in both spaces will follow suit.
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