Pushkin

It's always sort of dumb to pick a single moment when everything changed, but there actually

was a moment when the American sports fan changed.

It came in 1979, before the start of the baseball season.

A writer named Dan Ockrent taught a bunch of friends a weird new game he'd invented.

Dan's game worked like this.

The players each picked their own baseball team from the entire pool of real life current

baseball players. Your imaginary team gets credit for whatever those baseball players do in future

real life baseball games. You win by being the best at

predicting what individual baseball players will do. This kind of game

eventually got called Fantasy Baseball. Fantasy play spread to other sports. People

sometimes bet money on their fantasy teams. They might pay a fee to enter a

fantasy tournament and the winner gets to keep the pot. But the money isn't

really the point. The point is to spend all baseball season with your friends and

your fantasy teams. But then in 2009, this company in Scotland gets created

by some tekeys who aren't even interested in sports.

Fan duel, it's called.

These teckeys think they might find a way to make money off fantasy sports,

by speeding it up, by making it a daily competition.

Instead of waiting all season to see you won your league,

you pick your teams for a single day of games.

Instead of one contest per baseball season,

...