Along with the invention of the most fundamental technology in the field of computer science — Internet, Fantasy sports was born. Yes, you read it correctly. Fantasy sports has been around ever since the 1960s. Former owner of Oakland Raiders — Wildred “Bill” Winkenbach, better known as father of fantasy sports, contrived the idea of fantasy football in Milford Plaza Hotel (NYC, USA). This fantasy sport dealt with American football and was coined as GOPPPL (Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League). Most of the participants were football journalists, members of American Football League.
The modern Rotisserie system can be traced back to 1970s in New York City. A sports writer named Daniel Okrent rejuvenated the idea of fantasy sports. He along with his friends while at a restaurant in Manhattan named La Rotisserie Francaise created fantasy league. Back in those days, this was purely for mingling and socialising. The statistics were recorded manually.
As the idea of fantasy sports was nurturing, so was the technology of internet. The synergy between fantasy sports and internet sparked a great chemistry. And then Internet changed Fantasy Sports forever!
Fantasy Sports Industry Today
As we see today, the industry is thriving and prospering. It has been evaluated that fantasy sports industry is now a multi-billion dollar industry. Fantasy sports is no more just for socialising.
Fantasy sports is a religion now.
An estimate provided by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association showed that 29.9 million people age 12 and above in the U.S. and Canada played fantasy sports in 2007.
But Hey! There is a dark side to everything.
The industry is plagued with a myriad of challenges. The annual growth of this industry is the reason for annual growth in number of hackers, identity thieves, zombie farmers, phishers, datanappers etc.
- Duping: In this case, cheaters tend to duplicate items of rarity to dilute the value of the item, thereby increasing inflation. This is essentially done by injecting a bug in the game. As a result of duping, the in-game economy is sabotaged.
- Fraud and cyberattacks: Identity theft is the most common form of fraud in gaming. Hackers may get access to credit card details of other players to purchase in-game items. There’s a need to defend the data since data is the new oil.
- Unfair and complex revenue sharing models: Let’s face it: gaming is no more simply about recreation. People’s livelihood depends on it now. The stakeholders at stake in the gaming biz expect fair and direct distribution of dividends. The problem arises when platforms like GOG, Steam take a large percentage of the generated revenue. Oftentimes revenue doesn’t get clearance for many days before finally reaching the end user. The smaller studios and indie developers take a hit because of this.
(We have recently discussed blockchain eliminating these issues in our previous article)
Magic Bullet = Blockchain
Blockchain is a decentralised technology whose fundamentals rest upon heavy duty cryptography. A blockchain ledger is public which means that anybody can run it on their computer and look into the records on it.
The blockchain ecosystem employs tight security which makes fantasy sports domain extremely transparent and safe from hackers. It is impossible to breach the system and tamper with any records. This facilitates user’s trust. Even the operator of the platform can’t make changes if they wanted to. Ultimate level of fair gameplay is achieved here.
Everything is driven by smart contracts. This means that the shareholders, employees, users have to abide by certain conditions all along. Nobody would want to violate the contract. This adds accountability into the system.
The dividends (winnings) can be easily, accurately, securely transferred into different accounts in real time in form of crypto tokens. This is not necessarily money. These crypto tokens can hold anything of value. The process of transferring the asset is P2P with absolutely no third party involved in the end-to-end process.
With employment of blockchain technology, the fantasy sports industry is never going to be the same again. Therefore we believe a version 2.0 is inching closer. In fact, every industry would be expecting a next version which is going to transform them.
This is the tip of the iceberg. The distributed ledger technology is all set to reshape the world today as we see it. It is not just limited to the fantasy sports industry, but in every industry wherever there is movement of assets. The way we talk about internet today is probably going to be the way we would be talking about blockchain 20 years from now. Even as we write this article, people over the world are devising solutions to combat with the problems that affect the industry.
