Technology spurs growth of fantasy sports

By Ben Klayman

CHICAGO (Reuters) - If Scott Troetel is out with friends when the Indianapolis Colts are playing, he often reaches for his Blackberry to check how running back Joseph Addai is doing.

But Troetel, who is 32 and lives in Boulder, Colorado, is not particularly interested in the Colts. Addai's performance is crucial to "Addai in the Life," Troetel's fantasy football team.

Fantasy sports, where fans select real athletes for make-believe teams, are exploding onto new platforms like smart phones and social networking sites, grabbing the attention of advertisers, wireless carriers and software companies.

And with a growing number of people playing casual games on the Internet and a largely untapped market outside the United States, analysts say the market for fantasy sports can only grow.

Among companies benefiting from this growth is 4Info, which alerts its users to things like sports scores and celebrity gossip via text message, with its revenue coming from advertisers.

Of the half a billion text messages that 4Info expects to send this year, as many as 15 percent will be to people seeking sports results to feed into their fantasy sports teams, said CEO Zaw Thet.

"People have yet to realize the full potential of fantasy as it really comes to the cell phone and we'll see that over the course of the next several years," said Thet, whose company is backed by Gannett Co, General Electric Co's NBC Universal and venture capital firms.

While there is disagreement on the origin of fantasy sports, they came to wide attention with the publication of "Rotisserie League Baseball" in 1984, based on a league played by a group of New York media types and rules by magazine writer Daniel Okrent.

The appeal of fantasy leagues to sports fanatics is often cited as a factor in the early success of USA Today, which was launched in 1982 with more detailed baseball statistics than other newspapers.

"It's like you've combined the old macho notion of knowing more than anybody about sports with Dungeons and Dragons," said Robert Thompson, professor of pop culture at Syracuse University. "It turns out that's a pretty good marriage."

Troetel, for example, checks on his players at least two or three times a week, using his handheld device to go to the relevant websites. "The way I know sports now is far and away greater than if I didn't play fantasy sports," he said.

INTERNET BOOST

Fantasy sports took an exponential leap in the late 1990s as the Internet made sports results more widely available and sites like Yahoo Inc began to host fantasy sports leagues for a fee.

There are now more than 27 million players in the United States and annual revenue is in the range of $800 million to $1 billion, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

Fans already use their mobile phones to read sports news, review game scores and check on their teams. Wireless carriers are now working to align themselves exclusively with whatever sports properties they can as a way to make themselves more attractive to consumers.