Do Fantasy Sports contribute to the commodification of players?
Far too often in sports, certain analysts tend to refer to athletes in somewhat dehumanizing ways. Some journalists and talking heads talk about athletes in regard to their value as it relates to their contracts and their contributions to their team. Owners and general managers look at players through that same prism. Even some fans judge players by what they bring to their favorite team. Heck, the entire concept behind sports drafts revolves around judging players based on their potential value to a team. Does fantasy football foster the same sort of treatment of the athletes?
In Thomas Oates and Zack Furness’ “The NFL Critical and Cultural Perspectives”, they discuss the “vicarious management” culture of the league. In short, Oates and Furness believe that this culture allows fans to “identify with the institutional regimes of the NFL (and the authorities who conduct them) rather than the athletes.
By n0 means is this philosophy limited to the NFL. I’ve read enough articles where columnists rate players based on trade value and worst contracts lists to know that to be true. According to Oates and Furness, players are looked at as property that is “often valuable but ultimately expendable.” Looking at players as property is problematic, particularly in leagues like the NFL and NBA where roughly three quarters of the players are African Americans and most of the coaches, GM’s and owners are white.
In fantasy sports, fans get to step into the shoes of an general manager and pick the best players for their respective teams. Fantasy sports fosters the same commodification of players, perhaps more so than the actual sports do. Unlike owners and GM’s, fantasy sports players are not financially tethered to the athletes they select, outside of the players entry fee if it’s a pay league. They don’t have to worry about paying the players if they drop them from their team. they don’t have to crunch numbers (financially) or a salary cap (unless they play daily fantasy games). Fantasy players can drop the actual players with no consequence if they feel the athletes have outlived their usefulness.
In Nayanika Mookherjee’s The Spectral Wound, she alludes to the appropriation of the stories of rape in Bangladesh and how the women themselves become less important than the idea of them. The story of the rape takes precedence over the women who have to live with that trauma and continue to struggle.
While you can’t compare the marginalization of rape victims to football players, Oates and Furness allude to similar sentiments in their book. Both men hint at the notion that the vicarious management of the NFL invites fans to support the brands like the league and Madden and the companies that run the fantasy leagues over the players that make them popular.
At the end of the day, the athletes remain the most important aspect of sports and drives endeavors like fantasy sports. There is no on field/court product without them. Unfortunately, owners and GM’s often relegate them to chips that can be cashed in for something better (it doesn’t have to even be other people, it can be draft picks or money). Even the highest paid players make a fraction of the billions that leagues like NBA and NFL make in revenue. Fantasy sports is an important part of that culture. They get to pretend to be GM’s of a franchise in every aspect, all the way down to the marginalization of the most vital part of the games.
