Friday, July 28, 2006 10:35 PM CDT
Value of these leagues is no fantasy
By RICK DAWSON, Staff Writer
rdawson@jg-tc.com
CHARLESTON -- Baseball fans like Jeff Owens pay token attention to the legal battle brewing around them. When Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM), baseball’s internet arm, defends its right to distribute licenses to whatever fantasy sports vendors it pleases, at whatever price, it may go largely unnoticed.
The repercussions of an upcoming September trial could be felt by the average Joe for some time, however. And the number affected could extend to many in Coles County who participate in this popular pastime.
The Fantasy Sports Trade Association estimates that nearly 18 million Americans spend more than $150 million annually playing in fantasy leagues. Rotisserie League baseball, launched by New York Times public editor Dan Okrent in the mid-1980s, was the first of its kind. Ever since, fantasy members have taken the statistics of current players to build fictional teams before squaring off with one another in virtual competition.
As a professed fantasy baseball and football junkie, Owens, the station manager at WEIU, has cause to be annoyed at current developments. In 2005, MLBAM purchased the right to grant licenses to fantasy vendors from the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA). Fantasy vendors, who turned a profit by keeping stats and managing leagues for individuals online, now were subject to expensive licensing fees. Some were denied licenses altogether.
One of those companies, CBC Distribution and Marketing Inc. in St. Louis, sued MLBAM last year. The dispute involves whether major league baseball has the intellectual property rights to control the use of player statistics for commercial ventures.
Owens and a group of friends who get fantasy services through Yahoo, one of the largest fantasy vendors, are caught in the middle. Should MLBAM win, sooner or later the cost of joining a fantasy league online may reflect the outrageous cost of going to a ballpark itself.
“I don’t think we could walk away from it,” Owens said. “We would have to do it manually, which would stink in terms of the time consumption. Ten years ago when we did it, not all of us had as many kids and as many responsibilities as we do now, so it would be a little bit of a pain.”
Pain or no pain, this is a runaway train that isn’t about to lose momentum. Owens and six of his own league’s original members, including C.J. Raboin, discovered how addictive fantasy sports could be nearly a decade ago. Their draft day, held in September every year, is known as the “Guys’ Christmas,” a raucous time spent on a golf course or at a friend’s house.
Albeit under the watchful eye of spouses.
“We all know we’re probably on that tight leash whether or not our wives will allow us to stay,” Owens said. “One thing I have learned is that my wife’s birthday is Sept. 7 so I always make sure we don’t have any draft dates then.”
Owens may be exaggerating. It’s hard to pin down the average fantasy member, but it isn’t always male. Tracy Wavering joined her husband Jason, who works with Raboin at Diepholz Auto Group, in creating a fantasy league for their extended family around Charleston. A Kansas City Chiefs fan, she’s now hooked.
“There’s a lot of worse things men could enjoy,” Tracy said. “It’s fun because you want to watch the games more. There’s a lot of bragging rights that go along with that. I don’t think it’s necessarily a sports thing. There’s a lot of hazing going on between those guys.”
Nor is it always a dedicated nut who’s participating. As proof, Raboin said he joined a hockey league once and wound up winning despite having an actual dislike for the sport. The competition and numbers fueled the interest.
“I didn’t know (squat) about hockey,” he said. “I would just click on the stats that I needed and I’d go and pick them up. If I needed a guy to give me penalty minutes, I’d go click on penalty minutes and, ‘Oh, these guys have got a lot of penalty minutes.’
“It was enjoyable because it was funny. I knew just enough to be dangerous.”
Raboin, a former athlete himself, says he runs into all types of people. Some, like his experience with hockey, know next to nothing about a sport upon entering. Others have probably inherited a bizarre form of sports expertise only known to fantasy veterans.
“I read a lot of fantasy stuff and there’s just nerds, just people who’ve probably never played football in their life,” he said. “But they know stats.”
Said Owens: “When you know the third-string receiver on the Houston Texans, I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing. You learn to know the backup quarterbacks for every team in the league. You pay attention to the transaction wire. To me, sometimes transactions in the NFL season and the injury report are more important than the big, prep-page article.”
In the old days, Owens and Raboin would do everything with a pen and paper in hand. Raboin, the commissioner of one of his four leagues, rose at 6 a.m. every morning to peruse the sports pages and gather stats. Trades or free agent moves were conducted by phone, sometimes during late hours of the night.
“Ten years ago everybody walked in (to the draft) with four magazines,” he said. “You don’t really need to buy a magazine anymore but you do it just because it’s there.”
Now the administration of the league is easier. Drafts are still organized in June, but less time is needed afterward. Because of automated fantasy services, Owens says it’s rare to put in more than an hour or two once the season begins.
The legal dispute in St. Louis could endanger all of this, but Raboin has a feeling such a blow would be incidental.
“Get the newspaper early Monday morning and start getting the scores together,” he said. “I think our league is so strong that it’s not going to disband from it. We’ll just go back to the old way of doing things. It worked for three or four years that way.”
Contact Rick Dawson at rdawson@jg-tc.com or 238-6855.
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