Case - Building a Fantasy Sport Team

Fantasy Sports used to be called Rotisserie Baseball. Back In the 1980s, it was called roto for short. What is really involved in building a fantasy team? The fantasy business has been growing rapidly, and fantasy sports have become popular with sport fans. One study found that fans play for entertainment and escape, competition, social interaction, or some combination of these. A league first needs to be formed. Many leagues use yahoo.com or espn.com as a platform for managing their teams. Owners need to be found to select players. In the early stages of selecting teams, owners do not usually know everybody who is selecting a team. Still, a date is selected and agreed upon by all owners.

Next, a commissioner, or leader, is selected to start the league on one of the sites. The owner of each team then drafts his team in a rotating sequence. Owners often have a sum of fantasy dollars to spend on their time. It takes great skill to build a team that performs to a high standard, is not injury prone, hits for home run power yet also for a high batting average, and so on. But, how does an owner form a team? Does he pick players who work well together? Does he pick players on his favorite professional teams?

Do you pick a few high-salaried players and fill in with a few extra players on the bench? Do you make trades with other owners in the league who you feel are similar to you? What looks like an unorganized group of players is actually a well-orchestrated selection of players who work together like a team.

At this stage, owners are beginning to know all the other owners in the league. They establish some normal behavior. For instance, all changes in a lineup have to be completed before game time. Injured players can be replaced by the pool of players who are not currently selected. One of the reasons fantasy baseball is addictive is that owners can add, delete, and trade players for most of the season. Owners like to have rules, since this helps to keep the league on track. At the end of the regular season, the fantasy season also finishes. A playoff takes place, and one team is crowned champion. In reality, the team of owners is disbanded until the new season takes place next year.

Case Questions
1. Why do people play fantasy baseball?
a. entertainment
b. competition
c. social interaction
d. escape
e. all of the above

2. When owners meet for the initial drafting of players, what developmental stage are the owners experiencing?
a. orientation
b. dissatisfaction
c. resolution
d. production
e. termination

3. When owners trade players during the season, what developmental stage are the owners experiencing?
a. orientation
b. dissatisfaction
c. resolution
d. production
e. termination

4. You would expect group cohesiveness to be stronger during the initial drafting of players as compared to the productive stage of making trades with other owners during the season.
a. true
b. false

5. Being an owner in a fantasy league requires little teamwork.
a. true
b. false

6. Describe any experiences you have had with fantasy sports. Are these experiencesthat you would like to build a career on?