Fantasy sports didn’t turn into a $100-plus billion industry on accident. It didn’t become one of the most prevalent legal ways to gamble in the United States over night. It’s been a process — one that has led to fantasy sports players morphing from an underbelly of society to becoming part of the mainstream.
With the addition of the daily fantasy sports aspect of this game, revenue has increased on a grand scale in recent years. And in reality, the prevalence of Americans playing the “fake” game has played a major role in this.
According to this new study, 20 percent of Americans 12 years of age or older currently play fantasy sports.
Courtesy of Bryant Surety Bonds
That’s an absolutely huge number, considering today’s fake sports landscape primarily includes investing cash into the game.
These figures come from Bryant Surety Bonds, who has been tasked with helping fantasy sports operators within the industry. Even more so than the 20 percent, there are some other interesting numbers to focus on here. A total of 40 percent surveyed indicated that fantasy sports will be a life-long passion for them. And over the course of the past three decades, the number of fantasy players has increased from a half million to nearly 60 million.
Surely, the advent of the Internet as a primary source to play fantasy sports has helped. But that’s an absolutely huge growth in just a couple generations. This is magnified by the fact that 44 percent of players use the Internet to play. That number stood at 68 percent in 2013 — meaning that mobile play has been on the rise big time.
With professional sports leagues trending towards embracing the idea of fantasy sports, we can only expect the industry to continue its growth here in the coming years.