The Reality of Fantasy Sports: A Metaphysical and Ethical Analysis

Abstract

Fantasy sports have become a major sector of our sport industry. With millions of participants worldwide and billions of dollars generated, fantasy sports have become a fixed part of our sport spectatorship. However, this prevalence has come without much intellectual investigation. Therefore, in this paper I discuss the metaphysics and ethics of fantasy sports. After providing arguments for the consistency of fantasy sports with prominent descriptions of play and games, I compare fantasy sports to other genres of play and games – sports, card games, ‘cybersports’, and spectatorship. After this juxtaposition, I delineate how fantasy sports are different from their real sport correlates. Fantasy sports are second-order games that are parasites of their real-sport counterparts. The differences between fantasy and real sports change our collective cultural views of the correlating real sports. While much good comes from the popular participation in fantasy sports, there are also drawbacks. That is, while fantasy sports participants tend to be more engaged spectators of sports, they also tend to only focus on particular, sensationalized aspects of the sports to which their fantasy ownership correlates.

Keywords:

• fantasy sports
• play
• games
• football

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank John Gleaves, Peter Hopsicker, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments during the preparation of this manuscript.

Notes

1. Using the term, ‘Fantasy Football Gods’, is St. Amant’s (2004) reification of the forces that unpredictably (to the fantasy owner) alter the performances of players on Fantasy Football teams.

2. Rice gained 28 yards on 8 carries (Hensley 2011).

3. The Wall Street Journal provides evidence that the ball is only in play for an average of 11 minutes during a 60 minute football game. And football broadcasts generally last longer than 3 hours (Biderman 2010).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chad Carlson

Chad Carlson is in the Department of Kinesiology and Sport Studies at Eastern Illinois University. Correspondence to: Chad Carlson, Eastern Illinois University, Kinesiology and Sport Studies, 2554 Lantz Arena, 600 Lincoln Avenue, Charleston, IL 61920 USA. E-mail: [email protected]