Fantasy football is a big business in the United States, and it just keeps getting bigger.
The number of fantasy football players has grown dramatically over the last decade, with the most significant expansion coming in just the last few years. The Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association (FSGA) put the total number of fantasy football players in the United States at close to 40 million, nearly double the number who played 10 years ago.
Though football is an American pastime, the NFL’s efforts to grow its fan base around the globe have also led to a boom in the popularity of fantasy football outside the United States.
Growth in fantasy football players
The FSGA has been tracking the growth of fantasy sports for more than three decades, estimating that close to half a million people played some form of fantasy sports in 1988. That number doubled within three years and reached a total of three million by 1994.
The expansion of the internet and easy-to-use fantasy football platforms like ESPN and Yahoo led to a fantasy sports boom over the following decade, with a total of 15.2 million players in 2003 and 32 million by 2010.
The vast majority of those players prefer fantasy football, the FSGA reported:
- 79% of fantasy participants play fantasy football
- 32% basketball
- 22% baseball
- 12% hockey
- 11% Soccer
- 11% NCAA Football
- 9% NASCAR
- 9% Golf
- 8% eSports
- 7% NCAA Basketball
- 4% The Bachelor
- 4% CFL
Most of those playing fantasy football are more than just casual participants. A 2022 Morning Consult survey found that 74% of respondents who played fantasy football in the last year said they visited fantasy-focused websites for advice or insights “often” or “sometimes.” Another 75% said they check on their fantasy sports league either “once a day” or “a few times a week.”
ESPN sees fantasy football growth
As the total number of fantasy football players in the United States has increased, ESPN has seen an all-time high in the number of people joining its ESPN Fantasy Football platform. The Worldwide Leader in Sports reported that it set a record with 12 million first-time players in 2023.
ESPN noted that it had 10 million unique visitors to its ESPN Fantasy App on September 10, 2023, the first Sunday of the NFL season.
And the people playing fantasy football through ESPN are younger than users of other popular apps.
“Also, according to recently released Comscore data, fans using the ESPN Fantasy app in August had a median age of just 35.4,” ESPN reported. “That’s three years younger than TikTok, four years younger than Instagram, seven years younger than Twitter/X, and 12 years younger than Facebook.”
Worldwide expansion of fantasy football
Fantasy football is quickly gaining a foothold outside the United States. ESPN’s Adam Weinfuss reported in 2021 that while foreign players make up just 5% of those using the ESPN app, that number is starting to grow in places like Nigeria and the Philippines.
Running a fantasy football league outside the United States can be a challenge, especially in places where games are being played in the wee hours of the morning. Daryl Michael Lim, who runs a league in the Philippines, said if he wakes up to use the bathroom at 3 a.m. — close to halftime of the 1 p.m. ET slate of NFL games — he’ll find “30 or 40 messages in the league’s Facebook Messenger group chat.”
Lim estimated that there are thousands of fantasy football players in the Philippines, even though basketball is the dominant sport in the island nation.
That tracks with the United States, where fantasy football casts a large shadow over the fantasy sports landscape.
“Fantasy football is king,” Mitesh Mehta, senior vice president of betting and gaming at NBC Sports Next, told the Morning Consult. “It’s 1A, B and C.”
