How Fantasy Sports And Fan Fiction Are Effectively the Same Thing

I’m not a big overall sports fan, but I am a big fan of my baseball team, the San Francisco Giants. I went to games every summer growing up - at the ‘Stick and later at AT&T Park - and still rant about Game 6 of the 2002 World Series. It doesn’t matter than they’ve won three World Series since then – it still hurts.

Being a sports fan is the same as being a fan of anything else. It’s a sub-culture where you have a specific, sometimes impenetrable lingo. Instead of watching movies or reading books, you watch games. Everyone buys the t-shirts, the assorted memorabilia, and get extremely emotionally invested in it. And it even has its own version of fan fiction – fantasy sports.

Fantasy sports are where a group of people create their own imaginary sports teams out of real players and then play against other teams based on how their players do in real life. It’s a multi-player role playing game, where people are effectively playing at being a team manager – drafting players, having a budget on who they can “afford” on their team and then playing out the results of their decisions in real time.

Ok, so how is a role-playing sports game the same as writing fan fiction?

Fundamentally, fan fiction and fantasy sports are both transformative fan activities. Which is to say, fans take the thing they are a fan of and use the pieces to create something else. For fan fiction, it’s new stories. For fantasy sports, it’s new teams. Fans create something new and different from something they love.

The two overlap in other ways as well. Both require a high level of knowledge and commitment to the fandom. For fantasy sports, you need a level of knowledge of all players to decide which players you want, and commitment with following all those disparate players throughout a season.  For fic writers, its knowledge of the characters and the world in which they exist.

Both are also communal fan experiences. Fan fiction doesn’t have to be, but many people post their work for other fans to enjoy and discuss. Fantasy sports are inherently communal – you create a league with fellow fans and you all play against/with each other. The point is not just the game but interacting with people who also enjoy and care about it.

There are of course, some significant differences. Fantasy sports are competitive endeavors. Fan fiction, despite the occasional ship wars, doesn’t have to be. In an ideal world, it is celebratory rather than competitive. Fantasy sports are also less creative. While you can create whatever team you want, you’re bound by how the players perform in real life and who is currently playing. You can’t, for example, have Willie Mays and Babe Ruth on your team. Fan fiction doesn’t have those restrictions. Any scenario is fair game, including things that contradict or ignore canon. You can’t go against canon, ie how the players actually perform, in fantasy sports.

And, of course, sports fandom and fantasy sports are far more condoned and normalized in our society than, say writing Harry Potter slash fic. 

Yet despite these difference, the two share a fundamental DNA if you will. At the end of day, both are ways for fans to not just enjoy their fandom, but become an active part of it, transforming it into something different, both for their enjoyment and that of their fellow fans.