The Ridiculous History of Fantasy Sports, Part Two

Summary

Ridiculous History: The Ridiculous History of Fantasy Sports, Part Two

Released August 1, 2025 by iHeartPodcasts

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1. Introduction to the Fantasy Sports Series

In the second part of their engaging series on the history of fantasy sports, hosts Ben Bowlin and Matt Frederick delve deeper into the origins, growth, and cultural impact of fantasy sports. They explore the entrepreneurial spirit behind early fantasy sports platforms and examine the industry's evolution over the decades.

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2. The Genesis of a Fantasy Sports Platform ([04:09] - [07:50])

Ben Bowlin recounts the initial brainstorming sessions that led to the creation of a fantasy sports website. The idea sparked when a fantasy baseball player approached the team with a request to simplify league management:

Ben Bowlin ([04:09]): "Could you build me a website that makes it easier for me to share stuff with my fellow fantasy football league?"

Matt Frederick likens this moment to a "light bulb moment" in business, emphasizing the founders' recognition of a market need:

Matt Frederick ([07:21]): "It's the perfect example of being on the ground floor of something where you see a need and you recognize it because it's something that you're into."

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3. Overcoming Challenges and Early Growth ([07:50] - [13:14])

The team faced numerous challenges, including a lack of initial technical development and the need to rapidly produce a functional platform. Their commitment led them to "pull the advertisement" before even having a company name or artwork:

Ben Bowlin ([10:10]): "They were just so committed. They had such faith in their idea that they went ahead and pulled the advertisement."

Launching commissioner.com around New Year's Eve 1997 marked a pivotal moment. The founders worked tirelessly, often sacrificing sleep to ensure the platform's success. Ben highlights the relentless dedication required during this phase:

Ben Bowlin ([11:46]): "Once we launched, I gave myself three hours of sleep a night because we had to get ready for the baseball season."

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4. The Acquisition by CBS Sports ([22:42] - [23:26])

As commissioner.com gained traction, boasting 800 separate leagues by the next baseball season, industry giants like ESPN and SportsLine took notice. This rapid growth culminated in CBS Sports acquiring commissioner.com for $46 million on December 7, 1999. Ben reflects on this milestone:

Ben Bowlin ([23:00]): "It's the most surreal thing."

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5. The Evolution and Popularity of Fantasy Sports ([23:26] - [28:06])

Fantasy sports transitioned from a niche hobby to a widely popular activity, fueled by increased accessibility through the internet. Statistics from Babu’s reporting illustrate this surge:

Ben Bowlin ([24:47]): "Fantasy sports has a culture that you can trace throughout the late 20th century. But it isn't until the advent of the Internet that it becomes wide scale popular."

By 2022, participation had skyrocketed to over 62 million people, demonstrating the industry's massive expansion.

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6. Intersection with Gambling ([37:30] - [44:47])

The hosts engage in a nuanced discussion about the blurred lines between fantasy sports and gambling. They explore how daily fantasy sports (DFS) platforms like DraftKings and FanDuel operate under legal exemptions, categorizing DFS as games of skill rather than chance. Max Williams raises concerns about the potential for DFS to act as a gateway to more traditional forms of gambling:

Max Williams ([27:56]): "It's considered a game of skill because it's a lot of research, not luck because it's really hard to win."

Ben adds to the conversation, emphasizing the psychological impact and addictive potential of instant gratification in DFS:

Ben Bowlin ([38:03]): "Daily fantasy kinds of perspective, it's not the same thing as the season long fantasy leagues. They're very different."

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7. Expanding Beyond Traditional Sports ([44:47] - [47:07])

The podcast highlights the diversification of fantasy sports into non-traditional areas such as esports, cricket, rugby, and even sumo wrestling. Ben points out the global popularity of sports like cricket compared to baseball:

Ben Bowlin ([46:38]): "Cricket is much more popular globally than baseball. So it should come as no surprise that there are fantasy leagues for cricket."

This expansion underscores the versatility and universal appeal of fantasy sports across different cultures and interests.

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8. Conclusion and Future Outlook ([47:31] - [48:13])

As the episode wraps up, the hosts reflect on the journey of fantasy sports from humble beginnings to a billion-dollar industry. They express excitement for the future, envisioning continued growth and innovation within the space. Ben shares a personal anecdote about winning a World Cup fantasy football league, highlighting the social and community aspects that make fantasy sports enduringly popular.

Matt Frederick ([47:31]): "We're talking about, you know, it's a lot of times about finding a community, a friendship and people with similar interests."

The hosts also acknowledge the ongoing challenges and ethical considerations surrounding the integration of gambling elements into fantasy sports, leaving listeners with thought-provoking questions about the industry's trajectory.

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Notable Quotes:

• Ben Bowlin ([04:09]): "They weren't originally thinking about fantasy baseball at all... I have a system. I will calculate the results myself."

• Matt Frederick ([07:21]): "It's just the perfect example of like, an aha moment in business."

• Max Williams ([27:56]): "It's considered a game of skill because it's a lot of research, not luck because it's really hard to win."

• Ben Bowlin ([38:03]): "Daily fantasy is arguably hacking people's neurochemical processes."

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Final Thoughts

"The Ridiculous History of Fantasy Sports, Part Two" offers a comprehensive and entertaining exploration of how fantasy sports evolved into a mainstream phenomenon. Through insightful storytelling and candid discussions, Ben Bowlin and Matt Frederick shed light on the entrepreneurial grit, technological advancements, and cultural shifts that have shaped the fantasy sports landscape. Whether you're a seasoned fantasy player or a curious newcomer, this episode provides valuable perspectives on an industry that combines passion, strategy, and a touch of absurdity.

Transcript

[Ben Bowlin]

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show fellow Ridiculous historians. Thank you as always so much for tuning in and this is a mid game announcement. We are partway through a series on the inspiring Ridiculous history of fantasy sports.

[Matt Frederick]

Oh yeah, why don't we just go ahead and join ourselves? Already in progress.

[Noel Brown]

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[Ben Bowlin]

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[Matt Frederick]

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[Noel Brown]

Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime on the new podcast America's Crime Lab. Every case has a story to tell and the DNA holds the truth he.

[Matt Frederick]

Never thought he was going to get caught.

[Ben Bowlin]

And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology's already solving so many cases.

[Noel Brown]

Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[John Lithgow]

Hello, I'm John Lithgow.

[Matt Frederick]

We choose to go to the moon.

[John Lithgow]

I want to tell you about my new fiction podcast, One Small Step for Man, about Buzz Aldrin, one of the true pioneers of space.

[Matt Frederick]

You're a great pilot, Buzz.

[John Lithgow]

That's the story you think you know. This is the story you don't. Buzz, starring me, John Lithgow, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ben Bowlin]

So they embarked upon making their dream manifest, making their fantasy reality. They had a few ideas that didn't quite take off, like a restaurant guide, a billing system, Java architecture. Along the way, they added a new guy to the band, a guy named Matt Fortnow. And they started saying, look, we can build websites for you. If you are someone who wants to have an online presence, come to us. They weren't originally thinking about fantasy baseball at all. It took a fantasy baseball player to contact them. And this guy said to them, could you build me a website that makes it easier for me to share stuff with my fellow fantasy football league? Can you help me present this information in a more approachable way? And don't worry, I don't need you guys to do the math. I have a system. I will calculate the results myself.

[Matt Frederick]

So real quick, y' all is so a commissioner. Is that like sort of the dungeon master of the whole deal?

[Max Williams]

Yeah, yeah, They're. They're the person who runs the league. So it's very much more of an administrative position than anything where it's just like, you know, so, like, in our league, like I tell my buddy Ronnie, like, you're. You're in charge, but he kind of runs stuff a lot by a lot of us just to kind of do it. But, like, you know, at the end of the day, because obviously the online stuff does all the calculations. Now, you don't do that yourself, right? But.

[Matt Frederick]

Well, yeah, and that's the whole deal. This. This product or this platform that they were working on was ultimately dubbed commissioner because it was a way of doing the work of that individual and making everybod little more freed up to have fun with it.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah, exactly. And that was the result of a ongoing evolution. Now, our guy we mentioned earlier, Pizaras, he had already had some experience. He Played one year of fantasy football, and he went to the commissioner, the admin in charge of his league, and said, hey, man, you know, just between us, how long do you spend setting everything up for us to play this game? And the commissioner takes a second, chews it over, and says, I'm looking at about eight hours per week on this. And then this is what leads to that evolution you're mentioning there. Pizaras and his buddies say, wait, what if we can do all that work for the commissioner? You can set up your own lineups instead of having to call this guy and waste eight hours of his week. We can calculate the stats, we can put the standings up there. We can do all of this online.

[Matt Frederick]

This would be a big deal. This would be an incredibly powerful tool to offer fantasy players. So at the time, there were already some fantasy stat services, but they were expensive because of how niche it was. They charged about 300 bucks a season. The partners put their heads together and decided they would also match that price, but they would give a lot more bang for those bucks. They would make it a much better service than what was currently available. And it would be the first entirely online version of this.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah. And it's. It's a fantastic idea. It's phenomenal.

[Matt Frederick]

Well, it's the perfect example of being on the ground floor of something where you see a need and you recognize it because it's something that you're into and, you know, it would be something that you would like to have. It's just the perfect example of like, a aha. Moment in business.

[Ben Bowlin]

Right. It's a light bulb moment. However, asterisk. It's a great idea that they have not actually created just yet.

[Matt Frederick]

No, no. This is cocktail napkin stuff for sure.

[Ben Bowlin]

Right?

[Matt Frederick]

Chicken. Chicken wing napkins.

[Ben Bowlin]

Right. Everybody's two beers deep, and the vibe is great. Will this carry through tomorrow?

[Max Williams]

They have said, chip, chicken wing napkin. We have to discuss this. I'm sorry. It's the table. What sauce is on there or what sauce is. It's probably multiple sauces, you know, that.

[Matt Frederick]

One guy doesn't like in New York City. It would probably be just like a good buffalo spicy.

[Ben Bowlin]

Buffalo wing? Yeah. Yeah, probably buffalo.

[Max Williams]

Would there be like, a spicy barbecue as well, or like.

[Ben Bowlin]

I hope so.

[Max Williams]

Yeah. Okay. But it's mostly spicy hot sauce, and it's like. Is it kind of like just like, soaked in it? Like it's dried out afterwards, but it's just the entire thing's, like, kind of reddish now.

[Matt Frederick]

I don't know. Ben, what kind of wing did Cuba Gooding Jr. Force us to eat.

[Ben Bowlin]

Oh, God, he was so specific about that. No, we'll keep it in.

[Matt Frederick]

This is a true story for another day.

[Max Williams]

Yeah, I don't think we've talked about that on this show. I think we talked about stuff that I don't want you to.

[Ben Bowlin]

He was very kind to us.

[Matt Frederick]

Quiet, enthusiast of kindness, let's say mercurial.

[Ben Bowlin]

Perhaps, but everybody goes through things. It was, I believe it was a wet barbecue, actually.

[Matt Frederick]

I think you're right. It was definitely a. I want to say, though, it was a regular old buffalo, but it was wet. For sure.

[Ben Bowlin]

It was wet. I can't.

[Matt Frederick]

I can't truly speak with authority there, but I remember it being a wet wing.

[Ben Bowlin]

It had a kick to it. Yeah. So.

[Matt Frederick]

So as did Kuba. Kubo was kicked up a couple notches himself.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yes.

[Max Williams]

Yeah, I remember it being a wet wing. That is the tagline for the episode, the wet wing.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yes. So these guys are having a great time with their chicken wings. God, we're getting close to lunch. And they said, okay, the baseball season's coming up. Let's assume we have a few months to prepare. But then two days later, after they have this light bulb moment, this epiphany, they say, holy crap, guys, did you know that we can buy ad space in the back page of the largest fantasy magazine, Fantasy sports magazine itself? And this is to that earlier comparison about getting in on the ground floor. This would be like if our fearless leader, Conal Byrne, had a meeting with us about maybe starting podcast and then went to the New York Times the next Thursday and took out a full page ad saying podcasts were happening.

[Matt Frederick]

Yeah, yeah. It's called putting the cart before the horse. For sure.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah. They had the idea, they were doing the legwork. They saw, as you said, the market opportunity, but they had not written a single line of code. They were just so committed. They had such faith in their idea that they went ahead and pulled the advertisement.

[Matt Frederick]

Well, this is classic fake it till you make it type stuff. So they indeed had 24 hours to submit the thing. They had not made a company name yet. They had no artwork, all that good stuff. They designed the ad saying that they would update the stats daily. They would accept American Express, Visa and MasterCard, and they also promised a whole bunch of other bells and whistles that they had no implementation of whatsoever. Right.

[Ben Bowlin]

I love improv, man. They were just. Yes. Handing through the whole thing. If you had dropped by that meeting when they were having their frantic brain trust to make this ad, you could have said almost anything. And they probably would have been like, yeah, put it in. That's a great point. Anyway, they do succeed. They launch commissioner.com right around New Year's Eve. The ball drops in Times Square, ringing in 1997, just one hectic month. This is the moment in our film adaptation where we get the montage right. This is where we see just snippets of their frenetic process. Pizarros still has a day job. He's working at Bankers Trust. And per his own later reports, he say that during this month he slept at best an average of an hour a night. I don't know. I don't know if that's physically possible.

[Matt Frederick]

Yeah, it seems like a bit of lore, a little bit of myth making, but I think it's safe to say that in order to get something like this off the ground, in the ridiculously tight timeline that they set for themselves, sleep would certainly be secondary.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah, agreed, Right. Priorities. And he has responded to this. Pizarros later said this sounds like hyperbole, but it isn't. I worked all day, every day, about 23 hours. Once we launched. I gave myself three hours of sleep a night because we had to get ready for the baseball season. I think Michael naps.

[Matt Frederick]

Sure, that could work. In the article, Schechter talks about a moment when Pizarros took a 20 minute nap in a bathroom stall. This does not necessarily bode well in terms of the efficacy of these micro naps. Let's just say only to notice that he had rested his head against the toilet paper dispenser because his forehead now read if role is empty, slide cover to right. One of those molded plastic jobs, right?

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah. And that happens at his day job at Bankers Trust. By this point, the fantasy football idea that they're working on has started to turn a profit. Not a big profit, but it started to make a little money. And this inspires Pizarros and co. He is confident that he can leave his job at Bankers Trust and focus on all of his energy on commissioner.com. he's the software developer.

[Matt Frederick]

Every time I hear Commissioner, I just think Commissioner Gordon. It's inescapable. So back to that piece. Pizarros was the software developer, while Gersh was the business guy. He handled vendors and all of the marketing efforts. They had an office in a building that was not up to spec. Let's just say the writer says that it should have been condemned.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah. And this is the kind of war story that you'll hear later in Tales of Silicon Valley startups.

[Matt Frederick]

Classic startup lore, no question, right?

[Ben Bowlin]

No heat, no hot water. We're sleeping next to our computers to stay warm.

[Matt Frederick]

Peeing in jugs.

[Ben Bowlin]

Mice are there. You know what I mean? We're probably splitting a pizza as a celebration this first. Baseball.

[Matt Frederick]

Lots of ramen.

[Ben Bowlin]

Lots of ramen noodles. Maybe an egg if you're fancy. By the way, keynote. Just a little pro tip for our fellow Ramen fans. A dash of sesame oil. Just a bit, not too much. Yeah.

[Matt Frederick]

And the egg, no question. Crack it right in there.

[Ben Bowlin]

I think we're accidentally played our games here.

[Matt Frederick]

We're doing it again because we clearly.

[Ben Bowlin]

Had a very heavy, heavily Reliant Ramen based period of our own lives.

[Matt Frederick]

Well, so it's that up against lunch situation that you mentioned earlier.

[Ben Bowlin]

Oh, gosh, yeah. Rotisserie rame. Chicken wings.

[Matt Frederick]

Chicken wings.

[Ben Bowlin]

Okay, so you're absolutely right. A foot washed up. A shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was.

[Max Williams]

Most everything was burned up pretty good.

[Ben Bowlin]

From the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable.

[Noel Brown]

These are the coldest of cold cases. But everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA using new scientific tools. They're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it.

[Matt Frederick]

He never thought he was going to get caught.

[Ben Bowlin]

And I just looked at my computer screen, I was just like, ah, gotcha.

[Noel Brown]

On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at othram, the Houston lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[John Lithgow]

Hello, I'm John Lithgow.

[Matt Frederick]

We choose to go to the moon.

[John Lithgow]

I want to tell you about my new fiction podcast.

[Matt Frederick]

It's one small step for man.

[John Lithgow]

It's about Buzz Aldrin, one of the true pioneers of space.

[Matt Frederick]

You're a great pilot, Buzz. As far as I'm concerned, the best I've seen.

[John Lithgow]

That's the story you think you know. This is the story you don't predisposition.

[Noel Brown]

To depression, alcohol abuse and suicide.

[John Lithgow]

We'll see Buzz try to overcome demons.

[Matt Frederick]

What do you say, Buzz?

[Ben Bowlin]

Another beer.

[John Lithgow]

And triumph over addiction.

[Noel Brown]

Here's to you, Buzz Aldrin.

[John Lithgow]

Good luck to you and become a true hero.

[Matt Frederick]

Buzz and I will proceed into the.

[John Lithgow]

Lunar module not because he conquers space, but because he conquers himself. Buzz. We intercepted a Soviet radio transmission starring me, John Lithgow.

[Ben Bowlin]

Can you put it through Translate on.

[John Lithgow]

The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts?

[Matt Frederick]

Columbia, there's stuff they don't want you to know.

[Ben Bowlin]

Is there a conspiracy afoot to create a rationalization or the rollout of martial law? Every Monday, we break down the news, make connections, and reveal the stuff they don't want you to know.

[Matt Frederick]

Crypto investor allegedly tortured captive Italian businessmen with a chainsaw.

[Ben Bowlin]

New chat GPT model refuses to shut down when instructed. A secret deal between members of Mexican cartels and and the United States government.

[Matt Frederick]

Residents are reporting sightings of exploding birds.

[Ben Bowlin]

There is a video of this sphere.

[Max Williams]

Zigzagging through the sky.

[Ben Bowlin]

Listen to stuff they don't want you to know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced.

[Max Williams]

He said, you are a number, a.

[Matt Frederick]

New York state number, and we own you.

[Ben Bowlin]

Shock incarceration, also known as boot camps, are short term, highly regimented correctional programs that mimic military basic training. These programs aim to provide a shock of prison life, emphasizing strict discovery, discipline, physical training, hard labor, and rehabilitation programs. Mark had one chance to complete this program and had no idea of the hell awaiting him the next six months.

[Max Williams]

The first night was overwhelming and you don't know who's next to you, and we didn't know what to expect in the morning. Nobody tells you anything.

[Ben Bowlin]

Listen to shock incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Noel Brown]

So what happened to Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to.

[Matt Frederick]

There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond and.

[Noel Brown]

Left a woman behind to drown. There's a famous headline, I think, in the New York Daily News. It's Teddy escapes, blonde drowns. And in a strange way, right, that sort of tells you the story really became about Ted's political future, Ted's political hopes. Will Ted become President?

[Matt Frederick]

Kappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control.

[Noel Brown]

And he's not the only Kennedy to survive a scandal.

[Matt Frederick]

The Kennedys have lived through disgrace, affairs, violence, you name it. So is there a curse every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family.

[Noel Brown]

Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Ben Bowlin]

Their first time out, their first time around the block. This initial baseball season, they snagged 200 paid customers, each paying $300, as you mentioned, per season. And then they had separately 100 subscribers for football at the same price.

[Matt Frederick]

Interesting. Okay, so at this point, it was secondary football.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah, at this point, it was. At this point, there were more baseball customers for commissioner.com so they were still.

[Matt Frederick]

Kind of testing the waters to see what was going to be their most popular offering.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah, exactly. And they met with results. The next baseball season, they have 800 separate leagues. That's enormous growth. And part of that is because these guys were so nimble and so responsive. Anytime a customer came to them with a request that was not absolute wingnut stuff, they made it happen. They made it. So shout out to Picard.

[Matt Frederick]

Indeed. Max approves.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah, that's for you, Max. So this puts them streets ahead of other people in the space, like ESPN and SportsLine. @ this time, they're trying to do their own kind of fantasy thing, and they only have one set of rules that people can play. So because these guys are so adaptable with commissioner.com, they're able to relocate to a newer office. That's not quite as terrible. It's not great. It's just there are fewer mice, and.

[Matt Frederick]

This was just the beginning. I mean, it's 1998. Commissioner, not Gordon, and CBS would eventually partner up to create CBSSportsline. Commissioner.com in all caps, as Max points out, this is early.com days. So in its very first year, the fee was dropped from 300 bucks to only 100 because ad revenue was supplementing that. So they were able to decrease the subscription fee, which, of course, was a value add, and helped up their numbers. But the ad revenue ended up being way more than they bargained for in, like, a really good way.

[Ben Bowlin]

Oh, yeah, man. This is the kind of story that becomes folklore. If you've ever started your own business, you know how difficult it is to succeed in the first place. Right. You know how unimaginably amazing it is to meet this level of success so soon. This fee approach that they have is really speaking to the market. They have 10,000 football leagues very soon after it becomes the dominant business. For CBSSportsline.com one month, they got a check for $500,000. And this clocks to the big guys, the fat cats in the established sports industry. Sportsline comes to them and says, we want to buy you out.

[Matt Frederick]

If you can't beat them, buy them. On December 7, 1999, CBSSportsline.com bought Commissioner.com for $46 million. And it was a massive sea change in the lives of our heroes.

[Ben Bowlin]

And shout out to Pizarros, who later says, when I checked my bank balance that day, I half expected to see $12 or whatever in my checking account. But there were a lot, a lot of zeros. It was the most surreal thing.

[Matt Frederick]

Big moment. So with commissioner.com launching the first modern ish fantasy platform. Sorry I'm screaming. The comm is in. All caps is still hilarious to me.

[Ben Bowlin]

And it's on purpose. All caps.

[Matt Frederick]

It is, yeah, but it just makes you feel like you're supposed to yell it. The fantasy industry was off to a great start and it began to exponentially increase in popularity as Keith and Babu writes for the Miami student who states they are the oldest college newspaper west of the Alleghenies. I love anything that claims to be something the best of something west of the Alleghenies. This is a very fun flex. As my points out, I love those big claims north of the Mason Dixon line.

[Ben Bowlin]

As long as they have a caveat. It's always the caveat for me, dude. It's like I am the world champion bingo player in the southeastern north Ohio Cincinnati area.

[Matt Frederick]

The largest hot dog sculpture in the Chicagoland area.

[Ben Bowlin]

Exactly right. Especially when it's really specific geography. Like this is the world's fourth largest frying pan in this part of Missouri.

[Matt Frederick]

Largest Adirondack chair in the Rockies.

[Ben Bowlin]

Exactly.

[Matt Frederick]

I also am a big fan of the Tri State area. Anything that refers to the Tri State area.

[Ben Bowlin]

Oh, I love it. I'm a sucker for that, man. That's why I love to take road trips avoiding interstates. That's where you see a lot of cool stuff.

[Matt Frederick]

That's what we should all do. All those fun roadside attractions. See Rock City if you can.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah. Oh man, Rock City. So anyway, as Babu is reporting, fantasy sports has a culture that you can trace throughout the late 20th century. But it isn't until the advent of the Internet that it becomes wide scale popular. If you look at our friends from Fixa from Fantasy Sports and Gaming association, you'll see that from 1991 to 1994, something between 1 and 3 million people somehow participated in fantasy sports. But by 2003, that number had more than trebled. The figure rose to 15.2 million people.

[Matt Frederick]

And as recently as 2022, the number has ballooned to more than 62 million people. 62.5 to be.

[Ben Bowlin]

I don't know, man. We might need to hop on the train here because otherwise what happens when we're some of the last people who are not actively playing these games isn't.

[Matt Frederick]

It's not for me, but I do because I just don't have the.

[Ben Bowlin]

The.

[Matt Frederick]

I just don't have the knowledge to really enjoy it. And I've just never been a sports guy. I do, like you said, been enjoy the electric energy at like live sporting events. And I really do appreciate the folks drill down into this kind of stuff. But for me, I'm more into stats around like video games, you know, like leveling up characters and doing character builds and all of that. And also like music trivia and movie trivia. So I do use similar parts of my brain to I think the parts of the brain that are used in this kind of stuff, but it's just not for me. But I really dig the history of it, the bootstrappiness of it all, the scrappiness of this company and love people with passion about anything.

[Ben Bowlin]

Did I tell you? Because I think I mentioned this off air a little bit earlier, but Noel, I won a World cup fantasy football league.

[Matt Frederick]

No way.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah, totally by accident too. Because like you, I am by no means a stat wizard in the world of sports. But when Argentina took the cup recently, I accidentally made some enemies in this league that they invited me to because everybody knew that I was just guessing and woefully uninformed. So shout out to that.

[Matt Frederick]

That is really interesting that you point that out. Cause we're gonna get to a question that we sort of raised at the top. Where does this intersect with gambling? And a big difference or differentiator in this from the perspective of the fantasy sports industry is that this is entirely considered to be game of skill.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

[Matt Frederick]

Arguably though, right? Cause you can certainly still be successful at it. Wildly. So to your point, Ben, just by.

[Max Williams]

Rolling the and to be and to jump in real quick. So no, they actually for many, many years it's changed now. But like the thing that stuff like FanDuel and DraftKings were using was a special exemption in the law that deemed that fantasy sports were not gambling. So for example, my fantasy football league, we have like a $250 pie and it's pretty big for a fantasy league.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah.

[Max Williams]

But it's 17 weeks plus like the three weeks beforehand and whatnot.

[Matt Frederick]

So it's like you do get paid, you buy it. It's. So it is still kind of gamble.

[Max Williams]

I mean it is gambling, but it's. But it's considered a game of skill because it's a lot of research, not luck because it's just like really hard to win. Like it's actually a highly competitive league without that. But it's also the buy in the tradition reason why you do a buy in the league is a. Like we don't, we joke. Like it's nice to get the money. I bought a new monitor and stuff like that with the winnings last year. But the reason why you do a buy in in most leagues is because if you do for free, people just stop playing.

[Matt Frederick]

It's a barrier to entry. Right. You don't want like any, any old jabroni off the street to, to jack.

[Ben Bowlin]

Up your league and they give up four weeks in. Right? That's because really this is a social activity between friends.

[Max Williams]

You know, nothing's worse than like you play a team in a league that's like really good in week one and they smoke you and then they stop playing on week four and then everyone else beats up on them and you're like, well, I had to play them in week one and they, they. And then they quit afterwards.

[Matt Frederick]

Quick question. Are there ways, if you don't have a group of friends, are there like open public leagues that you can be a part of? Okay, they probably get quite large. Yeah. Okay, got it.

[Max Williams]

Well, the standard league size is usually around like 10 to 12 in football because there's just, there's just not, there's just not that many players.

[Matt Frederick]

So there's matchmaking basically, is what I'm saying, like.

[Ben Bowlin]

Exactly.

[Max Williams]

It's matchmaking. Exactly. No, then one last thing I want to just drop on this because you, you hit it on this perfectly. It's like fantasy is sports is way more inertom than people want to admit that it is. It's a pretty nerdy thing, I would say. That's kind of why I think I've always gravitated towards. Because I am a nerdy person. I love stats and stuff like that. And when you said matchmaking right there, I'm like, yeah, it's just like that. Madden is like the nerdiest game of all time. I tell people.

[Matt Frederick]

Yeah, you'll notice all of my parallels are video game and like nerdy board game related. And it's a really good point, Max. It does seem like there's a lot more intersections between those communities than your average, you know, roughneck sports Fan might admit.

[Max Williams]

Right.

[Ben Bowlin]

It's numbers versus numbers really. It's quantitative analysis. And this is, this is where we see again, I love that point, Max. This is where we see something that gives lie to the stereotype of maybe sports fans being meatheadish or dunderheads, roughnecks. Right. These guys are in the world of sportdom overall, these fantasy sports players are often seen as niche nerdy people.

[Matt Frederick]

And.

[Ben Bowlin]

And this starts to change in more recent decades. In 2006, a guy named Matthew Barry starts two shows on ESPN, Fantasy Insider and fantasy football. Now these give people fantasy football analytics every Sunday morning. And this normalizes fantasy league pursuits. It also shows that there's a demand for televised fantasy content. It makes me think of sort of. But to continue the video game comparison, remember when esports became a big thing, it was because they were televised and they were streamed and it became normalized to be.

[Matt Frederick]

For the longest time I thought esports had to be sports based video games. But esports refers to the entire genre of competitive gaming, whatever the type of game might be.

[Ben Bowlin]

Exactly right. Like watching people. I love watching games like Mortal Kombat or Starcraft or Smash Bros. Smash Bros. And I love hearing the excited and announcers who are like, oh, that's a block. Oh, he's doing a punish.

[Matt Frederick]

Well, if you're ever in Atlanta and I'm sure there are other versions of this that are very similar. Momocon is one of my favorite nerdom fandom conferences around here and it incorporates esports in a very big way. It's a huge part of what it's about. And you can spectate and I had never done that before and I was fascinated. So it is its own type of sport.

[Ben Bowlin]

Absolutely. Yeah. I think we're all big fans of this, even if we're not experts in the respective fields. A foot washed up, a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable.

[Noel Brown]

These are the coldest of cold cases. But everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA using new scientific tools. They're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it.

[Matt Frederick]

He never thought he was going to get caught.

[Ben Bowlin]

And I just looked at my computer screen, I was just like, ah, gotcha.

[Noel Brown]

On America's crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors and you'll Meet the team behind the scenes at othram, the Houston lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[John Lithgow]

Hello, I'm John Lithgow.

[Matt Frederick]

We choose to go to the moon.

[John Lithgow]

I want to tell you about my new fiction podcast.

[Matt Frederick]

That's one small step.

[John Lithgow]

It's about Buzz Aldrin, one of the true pioneers of space.

[Matt Frederick]

You're a great pilot, Buzz. As far as I'm concerned, the best I've seen.

[John Lithgow]

That's the story you think you know. This is the story you don't predisposition.

[Noel Brown]

To depression, alcohol abuse, and suicide.

[John Lithgow]

We'll see Buzz try to overcome demons.

[Matt Frederick]

What do you say, Buzz?

[John Lithgow]

Another beer and triumph over addiction.

[Noel Brown]

Here's to you, Buzz. Buzz Aldrin, good luck to you and.

[John Lithgow]

Become a true hero.

[Matt Frederick]

Buzz and I will proceed into the.

[John Lithgow]

Lunar module not because he conquers space, but because he conquers himself.

[Ben Bowlin]

Buzz, we intercepted a Soviet radio transmission.

[John Lithgow]

Starring me, John Lithgow.

[Ben Bowlin]

Can you put it through?

[John Lithgow]

Can you Translate on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts?

[Matt Frederick]

Columbia, there's stuff they don't want you to know.

[Ben Bowlin]

Is there a conspiracy afoot to create a rationalization or the rollout of martial law? Every Monday, we break down the news, make connections, and reveal the stuff they don't want you to know.

[Matt Frederick]

Crypto investor allegedly tortured captive Italian businessmen with a chainsaw.

[Ben Bowlin]

New ChatGPT model refuses to shut down when instructed. A secret deal between members of Mexican cartels and the United States government.

[Matt Frederick]

Residents are reporting sightings of exploding birds.

[Ben Bowlin]

There is a video of this sphere.

[Max Williams]

Zigzagging through the sky.

[Ben Bowlin]

Listen to stuff they don't want you to know on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows.

[Noel Brown]

So what happened to Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to.

[Matt Frederick]

There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond and.

[Noel Brown]

Left a woman behind to drown. There's a famous headline, I think, in the New York Daily News. It's teddy escapes, blonde drowns. And in a strange way, right, that sort of tells you the story really became about ted's political future. Ted, political hopes. Will TED become President?

[Matt Frederick]

Kappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control.

[Noel Brown]

And he's not the only Kennedy to survive a scandal.

[Matt Frederick]

The Kennedys have lived through disgrace, affairs, violence, you name it. So is there a curse? Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family.

[Noel Brown]

Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your. Our podcast.

[Ben Bowlin]

The summer of 1993 was one of the best of my life. I'm journalist Jeff Pearlman and this is Rick Jervis. We were interns at the Nashville, Tennessee Inn. But the most unforgettable part, our roommate.

[Max Williams]

Reggie Payne from Oakland, sports editor and.

[Ben Bowlin]

Aspiring rapper and his stage name, Sexy Sweat. In 2020, I had a simple idea. Let's find Reggie.

[Max Williams]

We searched everywhere, but Reggie was gone. In February 2020, Reggie was having a diabetic episode. His mom called 911.

[Ben Bowlin]

Police cuffed him face down. He slipped into a coma and died. I'm like, thanking you, but then I see my son's not moving. No headlines, no outrage, just silence.

[Max Williams]

So we started digging and uncovered city.

[Ben Bowlin]

Officials bent on protecting their own. Listen to finding Sexy Sweat on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, we wanted to end our series with one of the big questions that we teased at the top and kind of throughout this gambling. All right, so recent years, folks, we're recording this in 2025 recent years, changes in US federal and laws have kind of opened up sports gambling. They've paved the way for sports gambling. One of the most notable examples of this is something called daily fantasy, which.

[Matt Frederick]

Is funny because it's using that fantasy term. I don't know, some of this stuff feels a little predatory to me.

[Ben Bowlin]

I agree, I agree. And we've had.

[Matt Frederick]

Because it's a bit of like a. That intersection, it can be dangerous for some people and you could argue, some could that if people have that gambling bug or that, you know, that addictive gene, fantasy sports could very well be a gateway drug into the kind of online gambling that can wreck people. And I think with some of these recent changes in the law, that's more true now than ever.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yeah, because we're talking about, look to Max's point about the length of time commitment for a lot of fantasy leagues. Things like daily fantasy are arguably hacking people's neurochemical processes. Because now you've got instant gratification, you've got that instant opportunity for dopamine. Instead of playing a season long term or committing to 17 weeks, you can draft a team for a week or just a day or just make something, make a, make a prediction on a single game. And you can win money. So how is that not gambling?

[Matt Frederick]

It's a philosophical question, isn't it? At a certain point. But also it is, you know, it is.

[Ben Bowlin]

I mean, that's the thing, right? We're being so diplomatic here. Sports betting is not illegal. There are definitely legal ways to do it and there are gray market ways to do it. But sports betting in this daily fantasy kind of perspective, it's not the same thing as the season long fantasy leagues. They're very different. Some experts have said they believe people are doing daily fantasy because they couldn't quite yet legally gamble. All right, is fantasy sport, is it gambling? Is it a game of skill? Shout out to everybody who checked, checked in on our ongoing conversation about gambling in shady gas stations on stuff they don't want you to know.

[Max Williams]

So is it gambling? Is it sport? The answer is yes, it's both. Yeah, but it's like it's, you know, it's, it's a minutiae. It's like, you know, in like what proportion of it. And I mean, I'm not a daily fantasy player. I'm not a fan of. It is too much in the gambling spectrum. I like the skill, I like building my team out for the years long. But I will make an argument for daily sports right here, which is my very, very, very dear friend Kevin Cool. Who you guys, I don't think you guys have met him, but you guys have heard me talk about. He's my friend I just saw in Portland for a while. Him and I worked together for a number for about a year in a bar in Atlanta. We'd work Wednesday nights together and Wednesdays were so stupid slow and the NBA slate like, like always sucked. And so we had to find a way to get through it. And so we played a lot of daily fantasy about like, you know, it was like the Utah Jazz versus the Minnesota Timberwolves. Do we care about either of those teams? No, no one does. Okay. There are some people out there who are fans of those teams, but no, there's no one does. Portland Trailblazers might be a better example. And he's from Portland, so you can say that now. But it was something to make this game interesting and it was fun. It's a way I became much closer friends with this guy. And that's kind of what fantasy is. It's a lot of times about finding a community, a friendship and people with similar interests. It's same as nerding, nerding on gaming and talking about Star Trek and chicken wings.

[Ben Bowlin]

Yes. Podcast, right Oh, I can't believe we're still doing this lo these many years. Managers do have to not just roll the dice. Right. The story that I shared about the World cup is very much a cartoonish outlier. Everybody else who is playing this stuff is doing deep research, not just facts and statistics, but game theory, a little bit of psychological analysis or as you said, tea leaf reading.

[Matt Frederick]

That's the thing though, about this philosophical quandary around gambling, because there are a lot of gambling games that there are people that are better at it than others. Sure, poker involves some chance, but it also involves reading the room, reading people's tells. Like so many little minute micro gestures and things that go into being a good poker player. Not to mention like adherence to certain patterns and having certain types of strategy or whatever. Right. Like it's not all chance, but it's also not all skill.

[Max Williams]

Yeah. And to jump in here to talk about like that dopamine rush that you were talking about as well, which is like taking I. One of my biggest. I consider myself blessed that I don't have that itch. Gambling doesn't scratch that niche for me.

[Ben Bowlin]

And.

[Max Williams]

But I have a lot of people in my life who do have that, that itch. And I've seen them and a lot of them, I know a lot of people who don't gamble for that reason. And a lot of people who are in a lot of have caused a lot of physical harm to themselves and the people around them because of that itch. And that the thing about it is when you're playing in a fantasy league, there are people who play fantasy who do have that itch. And you'll hear like, you'll. I've been in leagues before where it's like $500 buy in and like monthly things. And then like they're talking after the season like we should go over like a thousand now it's like, okay, maybe. And they're talking about like prize, the winnings and stuff. But the truth is you're playing in like a standard league. The return is so long and it takes, it's so little relative that it just doesn't really appeal to people.

[Matt Frederick]

That makes perfect sense.

[Max Williams]

But like 20, there's like a, there's like $1,200 lineups you can play. Unlike DraftKings. I think you play DraftKings in Atlanta right now.

[Matt Frederick]

But for sure, yep, no big pass. But let's also not forget that, you know, there's certain arguments to be made that playing the stock market in a certain way is absolutely Gambling. And it all depends on your strategy and your long game and how you know whether you're a trader or whether you're trying to, like, do mean stocks and all of that kind of thing. I mean, people lose their shirt on the stock market all the time, and it can scratch that itch in the same way.

[Ben Bowlin]

What's your loss tolerance? What's your risk aversion? We do want to shout out a study from the Massachusetts Institute of technology back in 2018. They looked at the win loss records of thousands of fantasy players over multiple seasons, and they concluded, based on the math, that the game of fantasy football is inherently a contest that rewards skill. If you're looking at these United States, you'll see that the definition or differentiation between a game of skill or a game of chance has gone down to the state level. So in 45 states right now, more or less, the determination between gambling and a game of skill is whether there is, as we said, more skill, the luck in a contest. The waters have been pretty muddied with things like DraftKings and FanDuel and full disclosure, folks. On several shows in the past, I believe we have done ads for at least DraftKings, if not FanDuel.

[Matt Frederick]

Yeah, I do remember doing DraftKings. And every time you run one of those, every time you hear them, you're gonna hear that fine print about God of gambling addiction. Know, call this hotline. So there's parts of the law that do require that sort of disclosure.

[Ben Bowlin]

I will go on record again apologizing to all my friends in the real world who heard those Trojan ads I had to do. That was awkward for a lot of people, but, you know, protection's important. Okay, so we've already talked about the appeal of playing fantasy sports. We've talked about the history, which is both inspiring and arguably ridiculous. We wanted to end by noting that there are other fantasy sports than golf and baseball and football. Max said us. What about curling?

[Matt Frederick]

He did?

[Ben Bowlin]

Oh, cool. What else we got?

[Max Williams]

It's a compiler. I don't know if you can actually join curling leagues there, but there is a list of curling leagues out there.

[Ben Bowlin]

You got to be the change, right? We'll start our own curly league. We've got NASCAR and F1. We've got. Oh, like we said, esports. There's a league of legends fantasy league, a fantasy League of legends league.

[Matt Frederick]

There's a fantasy game and a fantasy league. We've got PGA Tour, which makes sense. Max admits to have had his time in the past playing fantasy golf and requests that we insert a joke about how the PGA is a flock of cowards who are now in bed with the Saudi theocracy.

[Max Williams]

I actually haven't researched that in a very long time, but I know that.

[Matt Frederick]

Leave that one there.

[Max Williams]

They separated from Liv Golf, which live golf was Saudi, and then they re merged back in.

[Ben Bowlin]

We do check out our episode on sports washing on stuff they don't want you to do.

[Max Williams]

That seems like much more in Yalls spectrum than it is in mine.

[Matt Frederick]

At least for the show.

[Ben Bowlin]

For sure.

[Matt Frederick]

Check that one out. And do also check out the episode. I think Ben mentioned it at one point earlier about weird sketchy stuff that goes on at gas stations because we do talk about in Georgia in particular, that line between what makes a machine, a gambling machine or a skill based machine.

[Ben Bowlin]

And also, if you're listening and you are not part of this crazy thing we call the United States, you're already well aware that cricket is much more popular globally than baseball. So it should come as no surprise that there are fantasy leagues for cricket. There are also fantasy leagues for rugby. And as we learned right as we were going into this episode, there are also some fantasy leagues for sumo wrestling.

[Matt Frederick]

Amazing. Yeah, I really, I'm excited for you and your sumo adventures to come, Ben.

[Ben Bowlin]

We'll see. Man, I can't wait. I. I say this every time these things come up, but I can't wait for the three of us to get on a road trip together and take ridiculous history abroad one day soon. We gotta dream big. Just like those guys at that bar who said they were gonna start a fantasy league.

[Matt Frederick]

Yeah, they did a good job.

[Ben Bowlin]

They did a great job. And speaking of great jobs, big thanks to Our super producer, Mr. Max Williams, our research associate for this series, Max Williams, as well as Alex Williams, who composed this bangin track.

[Matt Frederick]

That's right. Thanks to Christopher Hacios and Eve. Jeff Coates here in spirit. Jonathan Strickland, the Quizzter, AJ Bahamas Jacobs, the puzzler.

[Ben Bowlin]

Boom. And I think that's our show. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited for lunch, man. Yeah.

[Matt Frederick]

We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Noel Brown]

Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime on the new podcast, America's Crime Lab. Every case has a story to tell and the DNA holds the truth.

[Matt Frederick]

He never thought he was going to get caught.

[Ben Bowlin]

And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, gotcha. This technology's already solving so many cases.

[Noel Brown]

Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[John Lithgow]

Hello, I'm John Lithgow.

[Matt Frederick]

We choose to go to the moon.

[John Lithgow]

I want to tell you about my new fiction podcast, that's One Small Step for Man, about Buzz Aldrin, one of the true pioneers of space.

[Matt Frederick]

Your great pilot, Buzz.

[John Lithgow]

That's the story you think you know. This is the story you don't. Buds starring me, John Lithgow, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Noel Brown]

I'm Dr. Joy Hardin Bradford, host of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast.

[Matt Frederick]

I know how overwhelming it can feel.

[Noel Brown]

If flying makes you anxious. In session 418 of the Therapy for Black Girls Girls podcast, Dr. Angela Neal Barnett and I discuss flight anxiety. What is not normal is to allow it to prevent you from doing the.

[Matt Frederick]

Things that you want to do, the.

[Ben Bowlin]

Things that you were meant to do.

[Noel Brown]

Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the dark depths of your mother's illness. I'm Dani Shapiro, and these are just a few of the powerful stories I'll be mining on our upcoming 12th season of Family Secrets. We continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories. Listen to Family Secrets, Season 12 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ben Bowlin]

What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on Earth? Unfortunately for Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced.

[Max Williams]

He said, you are a number, a.

[Matt Frederick]

New York state number, and we own you.

[Ben Bowlin]

Listen to shock incarceration on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Noel Brown]

This is an iHeart podcast.