Fantasy Sports 101: When Did Fantasy Football Start?

Fantasy football’s origin traces back to the 1960s, and the game has evolved ever since. From its humble beginnings to the more than 30 million fantasy football enthusiasts who play today, we’ll walk through the history and evolution of the game.

The Early Beginnings of Fantasy Football

Bill Winkenbach is credited with the invention of fantasy football, and funny enough, he was actually a minority owner in the Oakland Raiders at the time. The year was 1962 — four years before the NFL/AFL merger — and the Raiders started the season 0-13. Naturally, Raiders fans grew restless, and Winkenbach was desperate to make the football games more watchable.

Shuttered in a New York hotel room late one night during a Raiders road trip, Winkenbach and a few buddies created the first version of fantasy football. The next summer, in August 1963, they took turns drafting players from the AFL — Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback/kicker George Blanda was the first-ever first pick in fantasy football for all you trivia buffs — forming the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League (GOPPPL). Each week during the season, points were awarded, primarily based on the number of touchdowns and field goals scored. At the end of the football season, the team with the most points won.

The History of Fantasy Football

Nearly a decade later, Andy Mousalimas, one of the founding members of the GOPPPL, introduced the game at King’s X, a sports bar he owned, creating the first public fantasy football league. The game continued to spread slowly by word of mouth, and by the late 1980s, there were more than one million participants. 

Early fantasy leagues were time-consuming endeavors, featuring hours of combing through newspaper box scores and calling your leaguemates via telephone to let them know which players you were starting that week. Over time, new formats were introduced like dynasty and keeper leagues, with fantasy enthusiasts finding creative ways to tailor the game to their liking.

The biggest boon to the game was the rise of the internet in the 1980s, when in 1985, The Grandstand Sports Services started hosting the first public fantasy football leagues online.

In 1997, CBS.com became the first prominent media company to host fantasy football leagues, which led to even more mainstream attention. 

Thanks to online leagues, fantasy gamers could draft against friends or strangers across the world, and they no longer needed to rely on manually tallying up player stats every week. Removing this barrier to entry helped make the game more accessible to a broader audience.

Fantasy Football Today

Tens of millions play fantasy football today, as major media outlets quickly followed CBS’s example. ESPN brought on the now-famous Matthew Berry to lead their fantasy football efforts in 2007, and he’s unofficially referred to as the first “full-time” fantasy football analyst.

There were dozens of internet platforms to choose from when hosting fantasy leagues, but there still wasn’t an easy way for fans to actually watch all the most fantasy-relevant plays each week during the season. That changed in 2005 when DirectTV launched the NFL Red Zone Channel, offering commercial-free coverage on Sunday afternoons and showing every single scoring play.

By the mid 2000s, fantasy football enthusiasts could keep up with their entire fantasy roster’s scoring without constantly changing the channel.

Fantasy football had always required a season-long commitment, but beginning in 2009, Nigel Eccles and his startup, FanDuel, further fueled fantasy football’s surge by popularizing what we know commonly today as daily fantasy sports (DFS). Users were able to draft a new team each week as an alternative (or supplement) to managing the same fantasy team all season long. Within six years, the site already had more than one million active users. Three years later, DraftKings emerged as a prominent DFS competitor, and the two sites have remained industry stalwarts ever since.

There are currently a plethora of ways to get involved with fantasy football, with Sleeper among the most popular platforms today. Sleeper offers the most comprehensive league customization settings and group chat features, and you can easily set up a free league with friends in less than two minutes. Whether you’re interested in redraft, keeper, dynasty or auction leagues, Sleeper has you covered. 

Additionally, for DFS enthusiasts, Sleeper Picks is a new weekly game you can play during the NFL season to complement your season-long fantasy football ventures by selecting whether you think players will exceed or fall short of their projected stats. Sleeper is currently one of the few places that offers both season-long fantasy football options and weekly DFS contests.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who invented fantasy football?

Bill Winkenbach, a minority owner of the AFL’s Oakland Raiders, is widely credited with inventing the game in 1962. He had created similar concepts for fantasy golf in the 1950s, so a game based on player stats was not totally foreign to him.

When did fantasy football officially start?

The first fantasy football draft occurred in August 1963, when Winkenbach and a few buddies created the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League (GOPPPL). This individual fantasy football league continued for six more seasons before word eventually spread.

What is a public fantasy football league?

Public fantasy football leagues are hosted online, and the participants usually don’t know each other. Unlike a league with friends or co-workers, these leagues focus more on strategy and competition rather than the social aspect.

What is the best way to get started with fantasy football now?

The easiest way to get started with fantasy football is through the free Sleeper app. Creating or joining a league takes a matter of minutes, and it offers every kind of common fantasy football format along with customization features to really make your league your own.

Within the app, there are also games for those who prefer the paid-entry, DFS experience, such as the aforementioned Sleeper Picks and also Daily Draft, where you draft a new team each week of the season and compete for prizes.

Join Sleeper and Elevate your Fantasy Football Experience!

Now that you’re familiar with the history of fantasy football, it’s time to join a league for this upcoming NFL season if you haven’t already! Sleeper is the perfect place to kickstart your journey, whether it’s season-long fantasy football or DFS games. Sign up on their website or by downloading the app.