Date: 25th October 2021 at 10:34am
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Are you interested in learning more about fantasy football? Continue reading to familiarise yourself with a beginner’s guide to the latest football trend.

If you are a self-confessed football fanatic or only dabble in the sport when your favourite team is playing, you have probably heard the term fantasy football being thrown around. It is, in the simplest of terms, the process of assembling a virtual team of recognisable football players in an attempt to score points based on their genuine statistical performance on the pitch. If you are still unsure, continue reading to find out everything you need to know.

A brief history

As of 2017, there are over 50 million active fantasy football players in the United States and Canada alone with the vast majority of fans taking to a number of leading sports betting platforms like William Hill for example, to sharpen their skills and bet on their favourite players in a safe online environment. It may be a relatively modern phenomenon, but the origins of fantasy football can be traced back to the early 1960s when the basic rules of the game were first established in Oakland, California. In the following decades, the popularity of fantasy football spread to neighbouring states and led to the inauguration of the Indoor Football League, or IFL, in the early 1980s in Cleveland, Ohio. It was the late 1990s, however, when fantasy football entered the mainstream and CBS launched an online competition that ultimately encouraged other sports networks to follow suit.

The different league types

If you have only recently been introduced to fantasy football, it may benefit you to familiarise yourself with the different league types available to choose from. A typical fantasy football match can be organised in a number of ways, but the most popular methods tend to be head-to-head and all-play. By opting for head-to-head, for example, a fantasy team will play against a different fantasy team from the league once a week. The team that receives the most points wins whilst the team with the fewest points loses. By branching out and opting for all-play, on the other hand, all teams must play one another once a week with the highest-scoring team posting a 13-0 record and the next highest-scoring team posting a 12-1 record, for example.

The scoring system

If you have familiarised yourself with the basics and decided to get involved with fantasy football, you must familiarise yourself with the scoring system ahead of time. This can differ depending on which league type you choose but tends to follow the same standard set of rules for all leagues and matches. As the season runs its course, for example, players will be allocated points based on their overall performance on the pitch with their points at the end of the season indicative of their standing. This includes points added, as well as removed, for length of play, goals scored, goal assists, clean sheets, penalty saves, shot saves, yellow cards, and red cards.

The acquisition of players

If you are interested in playing fantasy football, you must also know how to acquire what is known as your initial roster. This can be done by snake style or auction. When it comes to snake style acquisition, for example, teams are organised into a specific spot in the order starting with first and ending with last. An auction, on the other hand, is, as the name suggests, the name given to the process of managers betting virtual cash on players in order to fill their roster.

In recent years, fantasy football has taken the sport and gambling worlds by storm. If you are unfamiliar with what it entails, however, it can be impossible to know where to begin. It may therefore benefit you to familiarise yourself with a brief history, the different league types, the scoring system, and the process of acquiring players.

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