Like so many fads, the fantasy football phenomenon currently
sweeping Britain is an import from the US. But unlike most, it is a
craze that observers insist is here to stay for the foreseeable
future.
According to Fantasy League, the originator of the trade-marked
professional fantasy league game, there are now around three million
people playing fantasy league games of some sort in the UK.
As well as meeting the nation’s seemingly insatiable appetite for sport,
especially football, fantasy games have proven themselves to be
effective and cost-efficient marketing tools. Nearly every major
national paper now has a game and, with the data gathered from the
entries, is using them to generate loyalty and target offers.
Games now exist for all manner of sporting interests in addition to
football.
These include Formula 1, tennis, golf, and even gardening, whereby
entrants have to guess the growth rate of plants in different weather
conditions.
IMC, which runs Marketing’s Football Crazy game, as well as other
leagues for ITV, the Daily Star and the Daily Express, says demand for
the games is high.
The marketing profession seems to have taken it to heart, with 2200
players already signed up with Football Crazy. David Atkinson, account
director with IMC, says players from all corners of the marketing world
are taking part and that the interest has ’exceeded all
expectations’.
Nobody is in doubt that running fantasy games reaps financial rewards
that far outweigh the costs.
The Daily Telegraph was among the first to enter the fray, launching a
fantasy football game halfway through the soccer season in 1993. Mills &
Allen commercial director David Pugh, who was marketing director for The
Daily Telegraph at the time of the launch, recalls: ’I could see the
advantages of it and we initially tried to sell the idea to a company
for sponsorship but nobody was interested.
’Because of the cost involved, we launched halfway through the soccer
season and we weren’t sure whether the idea would be a hoola-hoop,
lasting just a few weeks, or represent a permanent change for the
better. Thankfully, it turned out to be the latter.’
The game attracts more than 300,000 players, adding 50,000 sales to the
paper every Wednesday when the results are published.
’It was costing us more than pounds 200,000 a season but that was
nothing compared with the benefits from the 50,000 extra readers each
Wednesday,’ says Pugh.
Flushed with success, The Daily Telegraph also set up a fantasy cricket
league, which attracted 130,000 entrants.
Fantasy games are seen as a good way of fostering reader and customer
loyalty and goodwill. News International runs fantasy games in all of
its national titles. Chris Jones, sales and marketing director at News
International, says that the games attract great interest with between
300,000 and 400,000 players in The Sun’s Dream Team game; 100,000
players for the News of the World’s Goalmine, and between 200,000 and
250,000 players in the Interactive Team football game run jointly in The
Times and The Sunday Times.
Long-term goal
’They get readers involved in the game for a long time because of the
season, which ties them into reading the paper, unlike most promotions
which only draw readers in for one or two weeks,’ says Jones.
’The games are fun and only cost around pounds 2 to enter, but they
represent a genuine challenge because skill and judgement as well as
luck play a part when selecting a team. There is also a prize for most
games; in The Sun game you can win pounds 100,000 and in the News of the
World, pounds 50,000.’
But tying readers or customers into a title or product is not the only
advantage. Another big benefit, and many would argue the most valuable,
reaped from fantasy games is the personal data collected and stored on
each entrant.
It was a useful tool in The Daily Telegraph’s attempts to attract a
younger readership. ’The typical Telegraph fantasy football player is
35, male and professional, which is the type of reader the paper was
trying to attract. So the data was good to use to try to get these
people to read the Telegraph on other days besides Wednesday,’ says
Pugh.
Data can be used to collect detailed personal records. The basic
information of name and address on an original application form can be
used to mailshot people with the lure of other competitions such as
prize draws, which involve entry forms requesting more detailed data
such as occupation, date of birth and shopping habits. This can be
utilised to target readers and customers for particular products.
Marc Landsberg, advertising manager at Fantasy League, says: ’The
databases are worth a fortune to companies. It’s hard to value what the
fantasy league market is worth because it is a marketing tool with which
companies can reach their clients and papers to keep readers, but the
potential is huge.’
Fantasy League has licensed between 2500 and 3000 mini leagues in the UK
and controls 60% of the UK market. It collects the sporting statistics
for its clients who include The Daily Telegraph and Provincial
Insurance, which runs a fantasy football league for its customers.
It set up a fantasy league Web at the beginning of the soccer season in
August and already 300 leagues have been set up on it. Entrants can play
an interactive game with Fantasy League updating soccer results online
instead of by post, at http://www.fantasyleague.co.uk.
Fantasy games, particularly on a midi scale, normally have a three-tier
structure. The game is run by a client for whom the personal data and
the sporting statistics are collected and stored by an outside
operator.
The sporting statistics are gathered by a third party.
Group Four Marketing is a fulfilment house which handles The Daily
Telegraph’s fantasy football entries. It collects readers’ entries by
telephone, post and teletext, which are entered onto a central database.
Group Four updates entrants’ games plans with the statistics sent in
daily by Fantasy League.
Playing by the rules
David Roscoe, promotions manager at Group Four, says: ’The game is
fairly simple in itself but it’s the volume of data involved plus the
fact that you are constantly changing game plan values as the results
come in and as entrants transfer players between teams, that is the
problem.’
Abacus, a computer services and marketing company, collects data for the
News International games, using sporting statistics from PA Sport and
Infosys.
Martin Davies, a director at Abacus, says that budding Glenn Hoddles can
be difficult to handle too: ’We get irate people ringing up protesting
that their team has done better than we say. Sometimes they’re right but
more often they’ve misinterpreted the rules or they’ve not written the
team player clearly on their entry form and they’ve been given a wrong
player scoring fewer goals.’
Many believe that the market for fantasy games of all types is now
peaking.
’There are so many games around and generally people will only play one
game, so it is spreading more thinly now and will reach saturation point
soon,’ says Roscoe.
A lot depends on the current popularity of the sport in question. IMC’s
David Atkinson says football games have been on a roll ever since Euro
’96, but that Formula 1 and golf are proving popular. ’Some sports need
a boost to create the same level of interest as football.’
Mark Young, managing director of The Leaflet Company, set up two fantasy
soccer leagues in 1992 and has also had a good response from the
marketing sector. ’It’s such fun and there’s such a genuine interest
across the country, including from the marketing sector itself: most of
our team members are high up in marketing.’
And women are not immune to fantasy football fever. ’It’s the World Cup
next year so we’re expecting to attract back a lot of the women we lost
after Euro ’96,’ says Roscoe.
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