Bloomberg News
Sept. 5, 2004 12:00 AM
Dave Cushard, a 32-year-old financial planner from Marshall, Mich., sits in his office scanning streams of statistical data and lists of top prospects.
He's not searching for a hot stock, but a productive running back for his $1,250 fantasy football team.
Cushard, who works for American Express Co., is among a growing number of armchair quarterbacks participating in fantasy games with entry fees and payouts that dwarf the typical office pool. At least seven leagues have grand prizes of $100,000.
“High-stakes games are just exploding in popularity,” said Cushard, who teamed with rock singer Meat Loaf on a baseball fantasy team this year. “It's a chance to challenge yourself against the best of the best. These tournaments are the ultimate arena when it comes to fantasy sports.”
Cushard was to travel to Las Vegas on Saturday to compete in the National Fantasy Football Championship, which also has drafts in Chicago and New York, and pays out $250,000 in total prize money.
He's among 224 participants who have paid $1,250 each to draft a team of
National Football League players that scores points based on statistics.
Alex Kaganovsky, a married, 36-year-old father who owns a medical supplies business in Brooklyn, N.Y., has already spent close to $5,000 for fantasy teams this year. He was to participate in the New York draft on Saturday and the separate World Championship of Fantasy Football4 in Las Vegas on Sept. 12. The World Championship of Fantasy Football has a $1,450 entry fee and a $200,000 grand prize.
Free start
Like many fantasy sports participants, Kaganovsky started playing free leagues on the Internet. He joined money leagues about five years ago and recently made the jump to high-stakes games. While most players say they thrive on the competition of fantasy sports, Kaganovsky said the gambling is the biggest draw for him.
“The money made it that much more interesting,” said Kaganovsky, who spends three to four hours a day doing research for his fantasy teams. “It's definitely time-consuming, but it's not work, it's a hobby.”
Glenn Karrant, a 45-year-old financial planner for Mellon Financial Corp., calls fantasy football his passion.
“I live it, breathe it, sleep it,” said Karrant, who is married, has a 3-year-old son and lives in Plantation, Fla. “I spend a lot of time on it, much to my spouse's regret. But I'm not a gambler, I'm a family man. I hardly spend any money on myself, so (my wife) didn't disagree with what I've spent on fantasy sports.”
Karrant said he's spent up to two hours a day during the past several months preparing for his draft.
TDs from whom?
On Monday, he spent part of his morning at work trying to figure out if running back Chris Brown4 will get significant opportunity to score touchdowns for the Tennessee Titans after
Eddie George's4 off-season departure.
“The money would be great, the icing on the cake,” he said in an interview. “But to say I beat all my peers would be the ultimate. I want to put what I've learned to the test.”
Greg Ambrosius, who runs the National Fantasy Football Championship, said he envisions a time when fantasy drafts are televised to a national audience.
Ambrosius, the editor of Fantasy Football Magazine, said there are similarities to the World Series of Poker, an event where the grand prize rose to $5 million from $1.5 million in five years.
“It's the kind of thing where everyone who is drafting a fantasy team this weekend would watch and say, ‘Boy, I could win that $100,000,'.” said Ambrosius. “It's the ultimate armchair sport where everybody feels they're smarter than the next guy.”
High stakes
With the surge in popularity of high-stakes leagues — there were only two last year with a first prize of at least $100,000 — Ambrosius said there's more of a risk that leagues will fold.
Payday Sports planned to award $1 million to its overall winner this year, but reduced its first prize to $100,000 after getting only 60 players instead of the 600 it wanted to pay $3,600 for a team.
“Maybe America is not quite ready for that yet, at least not at the volume we were looking at,” said Dave Cella, president of Payday Sports. “But there's definitely a market. Fantasy football is not going away. It's getting bigger and bigger.”
More than 15 million people in the United States played fantasy sports last year, including 12 million in fantasy football, according to a survey conducted by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association. Many are in free leagues or in leagues with entry fees in the range of $10 to $100 and total payouts of $100 to $1,000.
NFL's game
The NFL hasn't missed the opportunity, either. The league had 1.3 million people play its fantasy football games last season on NFL.com, according to Neilsen Media Research Inc.
The NFL, which bans players and all other employees from betting on its games, doesn't consider fantasy football gambling since it doesn't involve direct wagers on the outcome of games, Commissioner Paul Tagliabue has said.
http://www.azcentral.com/sports/card...05fantasy.html
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