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How Has Covid-19 Affected Fantasy Sports?

Fantasy sports is a popular hobby that allows players to build their own dream team and compete against other players’ teams in fantasy leagues. To up the stakes, players often wage money as if betting on real sports.

Line-ups are selected using virtual versions of real-world athletes and the performance of each athlete is based on their real-life performance stats. These stats are updated in real time in keeping with the performances displayed in each match. Much of the fun comes from the fact that athletes’ stats are constantly changing – a good team can suddenly become a bad team if all the athletes in real life stop performing well.

Because fantasy sports is closely based on real-world sports, the impact of Covid-19 on real world sports has had a similar impact on fantasy sports. But just how much of an impact has it had – and are things getting better?  

A tough year for fantasy sports

Fantasy sports has suffered this year. Without real-world sports to base their models off, fantasy sports sites have seen a big decline in users. A study of fantasy sports in Pennsylvania found that revenue between March and June this year was almost half the amount earned in March to June of 2019. Revenue reached an all-time low in April when practically no professional sports were taking place.

Some fantasy sports sites have had to cut back on staff and operating costs. Fortunately, most sites have managed to stay alive. This includes many smaller sites that have managed to cling on throughout the pandemic (the types of sites that many of us non-pro players are likely to use). 

Renewed hope as games return

Many sports leagues including NFL, MLB and English Premier League have been going ahead in the last couple months. Blogs have been posting winning DFS picks once again and the excitement over fantasy sports has been returning. As a result, users have been coming back and revenue has been growing again.

Players are definitely being more cautious given the uncertainty surrounding Covid-19 (NBA for instance has already proven to be very unpredictable this year with numerous cancellations and postponements). Providing no more lockdowns are implemented, things should steadily return back to normal in the future.

What to expect from fantasy sports in 2021?

The pandemic will hopefully start to ease away in 2021 and real-world sports leagues will be able to get back to their normal format (many of the leagues going ahead this year are shortened due to being postponed). Fantasy sports should boom from this as a result.

The Olympics has been postponed until next year, which could affect the regular schedules of some leagues. At the same time, it could be a great opportunity to get involved in fantasy Olympics (yes, like pretty every sport, it exists!). Japan’s Olympic minister has stated that the games will go ahead ‘at any cost’ – unlike announcements made on some other sports leagues, this suggests a certain level of certainty. 

What do you think?

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