Let’s face it. How many of us haven’t dreamed of being coaches for their favorite team from an early age? Now often these dreams come true thanks to games such as fantasy football: it is estimated that in Italy 6 million people play it every year, dividing into fantasy football leagues and giving away more or less substantial prizes.
You will therefore surely have heard of Fantasy Football, if you have not already tried to play it or you are still part of a Fantasy Football League. We are talking about a game based on numbers and statistics linked to the performance of individual players on the pitch during matches. A game that has also become a business: fantasport is worth 12 million euros in our countrya figure that is growing year after year.
But how was fantasy football born?
A project that was born in the late 80s thanks to Riccardo Albini’s passion for sports statistics. In particular, you should know that sports statistics were widespread in the USA, especially in baseball, and that they were divided for each individual player: from the appearances to the points earned in each game. Many different statistics, around which “Fantasy Baseball” was then created (and the same was done with American football through “Fantasy Football”).
So what does Albini have to do with all this? In Italy, football has always been the sport par excellence: the most followed at the stadium, on TV from home and also the most practiced at a competitive and amateur level. Even in the age of the Internet, as it demonstrates ExpressVPN’s Infographic on Most Watched Sports Streamingfootball is the sport most followed by the people of the web.
Even in football, there are many different statistics: those relating to goals scored or conceded or red and yellow cards remedied, assists and fouls. All these statistics then influenced the final score that the player received in the report card at the end of the game by the sports newspapers.
And it is precisely here that Albini invents what today is the game of fantasy football. In fact, based on the vote in a player’s report card and his actions on the pitch, he thus conceives the “fantavoto” that is assigned to the player. Playing fantasy football, each player of his team will take a fantasy vote and by adding these votes, the total score obtained by his own fantasy team was obtained.
How does fantasy football work?
The list of all the players present in the Italian Serie A, where the odds and roles are present: each player has a specific role, which is the same as on the pitch. In addition, online portals and newspapers that offer lists of players for fantasy football also enter the cost of the player’s card (i.e. a recommended amount for purchasing the player).
Each person who participates in a Fantasy Football League (on average made up of 8 or 10 players, just in rare cases of 12) when creating his fantasy team has the possibility (and obligation) to choose:
- 3 goalkeepers
- 8 defenders
- 8 midfielders
- 6 forwards
To make all these purchases, the player has a limited number of credits available, called “ghosts”: it is an equal sum for all participants in the League (usually these credits are obtained by paying the participation fee: to create the final prize pool of the League, each participant puts the same amount to participate). Before the start of the fantasy football competition, the participants of a fantasy football league must meet to hold the fantasy football auction.
During the auction, participants must purchase the players they prefer and find most ideal to form their team. Usually the auction takes place on call: in turn, each participant calls the name of a player and then begins to bet upwards (starting with the goalkeepers and ending with the attackers). There can also be auctions in alphabetical order (where you start calling from a letter) or sealed-envelope auctions (where participants make private bids to buy players).
The rules of the fantasy football game
And here comes the time for calculations and mathematics. Before the start of each matchday of Serie A, each participant of a Fantasy Football League must field their own formation (complete with substitutes on the bench). Once the lineup has been deployed and the real matches have started, the team can no longer be changed.
To choose who to field, it is necessary to know which bonuses and penalties are assigned to the players according to the fantasy football rules. In fact, at the end of each matchday the sum of the points obtained by a team depends on the sum of:
- The votes of the 11 players lined up
- Goals scored by their own players
- Goals conceded by your goalkeeper
- Admonitions
- Expulsions
- Assist
- Missed penalties and penalties scored
- Own goal
These are the main stats to keep in mind, even though each fantasy football league can have different rules. For example, one of the most used additional bonuses is that of the defense modifier: that is, if you deploy at least the 4-player defense, you get a bonus if the average rating of the 3 best defenders, plus the goalkeeper, exceeds certain values.
The vote of the players is often taken by averaging the report cards received for the performances on the field, as now many services that offer the game of Fantasy Football have internal editorial offices that take care of giving the votes. Taking the vote, the bonuses are added and the malus is subtracted, thus obtaining the fantasy vote: then adding all the fantasy votes of the players lined up, you get the final score obtained by your team.
Depending on the final score obtained, your team will score more or less goals, which are calculated according to the goal bands applied to the Fantasy Football League where you play. For example, you usually need to score 66 points in total to get 1 goal (equivalent to an average of 6 as a fantasy vote for each player deployed). Scoring less than 66 points is equivalent to making zero goals.
The remaining goals are calculated differently. There are those who use 4-point goal bands, that is, if the first goal snaps to 66 points, the second goal snaps to 70 points total, while the third goal to 74 points, the fourth to 78, and so on. Those who use 6-point goal bands (so the second goal would start at 72 points) and those who use mixed bands. To give a trivial example, if you use the 4-point goal bands and two teams collide where the first scores 71 points, while the second scores 67 points, then you would get a final result of 2 to 1 (therefore the victory of the first squad). All these calculations are carried out automatically by the various applications that are used to play Fantasy Football, even if there are still people who prefer to do the calculations by hand for each day.
