Welcome to 2024's State of Fantasy Baseball!
In April 2024, I ran a short survey to collect data about how and where people are playing fantasy baseball. My goal is to help fantasy content creators produce more helpful information for their audiences, and to identify changes in how the game is played.
I received 339 responses to the survey, almost exactly the same sized sample as 2023 (344 responses). I had hoped for a increase in participation, but maybe this is still large enough that adding responses doesn't actually change the results much.
To be clear: This was a non-scientific survey. I posted links to the survey on Twitter and Reddit, places that clearly do not represent a random sample of fantasy players.
As a consequence, there are a few areas where I expect that the results are probably biased: Fantasy-baseball Twitter skews a bit towards NFBC players, so I'd wager the true NFBC numbers are a little lower than the survey shows.
Also: Last year's survey got picked up by a prominent Ottoneu account, which I think overstated the Ottoneu results. That didn't happen in 2024, so any drop among Ottoneu participation may just be a quirk of the biased sample. (I'll come back to this point several times, as it was significant enough to show up in multiple categories below.)
Think of this a sample of people who are seeking out fantasy information. If you are producing fantasy content, that's actually a pretty useful segment to know about.
Anyway, let's dig in!
First, let's look at how many leagues that respondents play in:
I mentioned it last year, but it was surprising to me how many people just play in a single league, even people who are reading /r/fantasybaseball several weeks into the season! I assumed everyone was like me and played in a half dozen leagues, at least.
For a more readable chart, I've left off the long tail of outliers, with typically just 1-2 responses at each league number above 12. Some people draft a ton of best ball leagues: This year's biggest response was 232 leagues (mostly Underdog), while another person (who favored Fantrax's best ball option) had 157 leagues.
I don't see anything in the year-to-year change to make a big deal about. It looks pretty consistent, with a reasonable amount of random fluctuation.
What sites are the most popular? Here are the percentages of people who have at least one league on each of the main fantasy sites:
I mentioned it above, but I wouldn't read too much into the drop for Ottoneu, as the 2023 survey got shared by a prominent Ottoneu account. I'd guess that the 2024 numbers are a bit closer to the truth but don't indicate any kind of trend.
Otherwise: It seems like Yahoo and NFBC are doing quite well, gaining more ground than you'd expect from the Ottoneu "shift" alone. (That is where I'd probably attribute the apparent increase in ESPN and CBS.)
Fantrax holds steady in 3rd place, but the trendline is a little disappointing. It's the only one of the "big" sites that lost ground despite Ottoneu falling more in line with expectations.
Snake drafting continues to dominate the original fantasy format (auctions), with 88% of respondents doing at least one snake draft, and only 48% bidding in an auction.
As with other questions, 2023's auction numbers were buoyed by the strong Ottoneu turnout. So I'd wait another year before I'd claim any real trend.
Note: Two respondents listed their Underdog drafts as "Other," and I counted these as snake drafts.
Here's a question I should have asked last year, but didn't think to. We'll have to wait another year to start hunting for trends.
By the time I started playing fantasy, mixed leagues were already the norm. But I started investigating AL/NL-only leagues this year, and ended up joining one of each.
AL/NL-only leagues have already ceded much of their ground to mixed leagues, and I'm expecting that those percentages continue their retreat as the earliest generations of fantasy leagues come to an end.
Anecdotally, I had an easier time finding AL-only leagues to join than NL-only, but the data show them fairly even (or even the other way around).
How many people play in leagues with daily versus weekly roster changes?
We finally get some consistency from 2023 to 2024!
You can see some growth in newer formats like draft-and-hold and best ball, which maybe lines up with the NFBC growth we saw above. (The NFBC is also a factor in the rise of weekly leagues, I imagine.)
Rotisserie and its related format of H2H categories continue to be the most popular scoring systems for fantasy baseball.
I'm a little surprised by the drop in points leagues, especially given that best ball is trending upwards. I had expected that points leagues would continue to benefit from crossovers from fantasy football, but maybe football has the opposite effect: Casual players who tried out a baseball points league aren't sticking around, leaving fantasy baseball to the traditional diehards.
It will be something to watch in future years.
Who plays in a league with n teams?
Most leagues continue to have either 12 teams or 10 teams, the standard setups on most sites.
The NFBC's unique 15-team format remains the rare format with an odd number of teams, and the numbers for 15-teamers (20%) matches up with the NFBC number above (26%)
Who are the other managers in the league?
Last year, I predicted that home-leagues with friends would be on the decline. The downward slope of baseball's popularity would make people more reliant on internet matchmaking to find others who shared their interest, and formats like best ball would accelerate this trend.
That prediction didn't come true in 2024, as respondents in leagues with friends rose from 77% to 84% while people in leagues with strangers fell from 42% to 35%.
Who plays in keeper leagues?
This is drifting towards broken record territory, but the Ottoneu contingent had a noticeable impact on 2023's dynasty totals. Dropping those responses gives the other categories a bit of a boost.
Even though 68% of people play redraft, less than 25% of people play in only redraft leagues. That means over 75% play in some kind of keeper league, and fantasy advice ought to factor that in if possible.
Who plays in money leagues?
Okay, here's a hint for this one: Ottoneu charges a $20 entry per team, mostly in non-prize leagues. So we can explain the drop in the "Entry Fee, No Prizes" category.
I also asked how much people spent on fantasy league entries. It was an optional question, but 303 (out of 339) people responded. The biggest spenders are found in the NFBC, including four respondents who put down five figures ($17,500, $15,000, $12,000, and $10,000) on fantasy baseball leagues!
The average person spent $631 on league entries, up from a $399 average in 2023. The median respondent spent $180, a slight increase over last year's $170.
What about fantasy resources (site subscriptions, tools, books, magazines, etc.)? There were 293 responses, ranging from $0 to $2,000. The average spend on resources was $85, down slightly from 2023's $93, and the median was $25 (compared to $24 in 2023).
How many people plan to enter a daily fantasy contest this year (or would if it were legal in their location)?
How many people plan to place a baseball bet this year (or would if it were legal in their location)?
As in 2023, season-long fantasy players who also play DFS or place sports wagers remain in the minority.
However, for sports betting at least, that might not last for long. The number of respondents who planned on placing a bet rose from 25% last year to 36% this year.
DFS participation among traditional fantasy players remained quite stable between 2023 and 2024. This seems consistent with the theory I tossed out last year: DFS did well when it was the only legal option, but many people would just prefer regular gambling. (Not that this matters to the DFS platforms, which have shrewdly already added sportsbooks.)
So that's the data for 2024 State of Fantasy Baseball survey! Here are my takeaways and speculation:
In a span of less than 24 hours last year, the survey received responses from 58 people who played Ottoneu (and just 4 people who played only on other platforms).
That wave of responses (and its absence in 2024) can easily explain swings of ~15% in multiple places year-over-year.
The solution is not to avoid the niche communities, but to get more responses. With enough participation, including an extra 50 Ottoneu players doesn't cause such dramatic swings.
You only need two points to define a line, but I'm skeptical of saying too much based on just 2023 and 2024.
This is partly due to the sample size problem above. But it's also that many trends will be gradual (such as the decline in traditional fantasy that I'm personally predicting).
One of the few trends I am confident about is the rise of sports betting. Honestly, though, that should be pretty obvious to almost everyone.
But it's nice to see the data bear out what everyone is thinking. And, I find it interesting that DFS may not get much of a bump even as more people are putting money into the games.
I'd love to hear your feedback about the survey and analysis. I want to improve the questions where I can, but also allow for some continuity to see trends.
That's it! Thanks for reading!
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Hi,
I'm Mays. I've been playing fantasy since I was in high school (over two decades ago).
My speciality has always been player valuation—converting player stats into rankings and salary values. VBD for fantasy football? Rotisserie z-scores? We go way back. In 2009, I started Last Player Picked, a site that generated fantasy values customized for your league.
You can find me on Twitter at @MaysCopeland or email me at [email protected].