Fantasy sports continues to grow in popularity, with many different sports now offering an online product. There are several different fantasy platforms, with over 7 million people on Yahoo alone. Baseball was the first sport to be used for fantasy purposes, with roots back to the 1960s.

Nowadays, many different sports offer a fantasy product, from the four major sports to others like golf and car racing. For the sake of this article, I’m going to focus on the four most popular sports, namely baseball, basketball, hockey, and football. I play all four of these every year, and there’s definitely some pros and cons with each. If you’ve played any of these, you also know that the time commitment can impact how committed you stay throughout the year.

Won all 3 of my fantasy sports leagues 2 weeks in a row. pic.twitter.com/WsOeVrCDpk

— Haley (@whoreforsports) November 21, 2023

Least Fun: Basketball

Basketball is definitely my least favourite of the four major sports. There are some aspects of this sport that lead to the fantasy product being extremely frustrating. Most of all, it’s the fact that players seem to take days off for ‘load management’ reasons. This means that you could sometimes go a full week without a star player playing a game, which is super frustrating. Compared to other sports, there also seems to be a bit more predictability, as there are fewer players to pick up throughout the year to help your team out.

Pretty Decent, but some frustrating aspects: Hockey

Hockey has a lot of variation in terms of player performance every year, but there are some annoying things about it. For one, teams don’t really release a whole lot of information. This is true about both injuries as well as which goalies will start in net in a given game. It’s happened to me multiple times where I haven’t got word if a goalie will start until after rosters lock for the start of the game. The NHL should really regulate this so that information comes out ahead of time, like in other sports. Degenerate gamblers and fantasy nerds would appreciate it.

The Best Intro Sport: Football

Football is probably the easiest fantasy sport to get into due to the nature of how the matchups are set up. Unlike other sports that require you to set up your lineup daily, in football, you only have to set your lineup for the week. This makes it easy to stay engaged and also makes each week exciting, as most teams play on Sunday at the same time. The waiver system of picking up players each week is also probably the most fair way to acquire players. The higher number of injuries in football also means that many potential league winning players can become available throughout the year.

The Best Fantasy Sport: Baseball

Alright alright, I am most definitely biased with this one, as baseball is my favourite sport. But hear me out. The baseball season is a marathon, with 162 regular season games in roughly 185 days. This means that this fantasy sport is the most fulfilling, as there is always a lineup for you to set every single day. For that reason, baseball is also the most intense, and the biggest time commitment. Unlike other sports that heavily value opportunity (i.e. a starting running back in football is very valuable), baseball is all about production. It doesn’t matter if a player has an amazing opportunity if he doesn’t take advantage of it. Throw in the fact that baseball is the OG fantasy sport, and it’s a no-brainer.