Evidence of Consolidation in the Fantasy Sports Industry

The fantasy sports industry is moving to a maturing stage. The large growth numbers seen just a few years ago are gone. The current recession/depression has done its share of impact but also needs to be acknowledged is the fact that the large fantasy sports sites are taking over the lion's share of the industry.

Sports leagues and sites like CBS Sports, Yahoo and ESPN are becoming the top-tier/dominant players. See the previous post on the fantasy sports business. The site FantasySportsBusiness.com has a recent post regarding consolidation in another area - reporting. As the winners of the game sites are becoming clear, so also the winners of the content/news regarding fantasy sports.

The net of the story is that the freelance writers who were the more of the "pioneers" are being moved out when the big boys realized there was something here that had interest (and viewers/clicks/etc), and not just a bunch of loser geeks talking to themselves (like this blogger!).

Quoting from the article, "There are no plans for Sporting News to retain our freelance fantasy writers, sadly. I hope other sites strongly consider taking a look at these guys’ work."

This doesn't mean that fantasy sports is failing or becoming stale. Far from it. However, the early days are over and the teenage/adult years are upon us. The large operations, whether providing, games, news, analysis, decision support, will be the main drivers of the fantasy sports industry moving forward unless new entrants can provide some innovative spark that the big players can't match. That will likely have to be something that contains some kind of intellectual property as opposed to just content and opinion, which the big players can emulate.

Are there new kind of fantasy innovations on the horizon? Perhaps, but I won't say more at this time. Stay tuned.