I don't know about you, but I'm sick of the whole lot.
It's not that I'm not into selling my soul (easy choice, I don't have one) or my Sundays to a fantasy world where I "own" players that play for the sole purpose of scoring me points to beat my friends based on a point scale set sometime in the summer, otherwise known as the WORST TIME IN ALL OF SPORTS. It's not that, because I really enjoy fantasy football. I play in multiple leagues, I watch a show loosely based on the subject, and I make bets on the outcomes of seasons I have very limited control over. It's all part of the experience for me.
Do you want to know what's the best part of all that experience? I chose to do it all, it wasn't shoved in my face relentlessly until I was too pissed off to ignore it, which is apparently the marking strategy of these daily fantasy leagues. I can't claim ignorance at this point, I know full well of what these leagues are, and yet I haven't considered joining one for one second. And yet I cannot escape the ads for these companies, try as I might.
A quick listing of the places I have been ambushed by DraftKings ads...
1. Cable TV (sports channels are, no surprise, the worst offenders)
2. Youtube Ads
3. Webpage Ads
4. Weekly fantasy columns on ESPN
I'm not surprised by the first three, it's entirely plausible and expected that the popular media formats will be the first to be gripped by any new company looking to advertise, but when I headed to my favorite weekly fantasy column, I was (perhaps naively) expecting it to be free of the DraftKings bullshit that had penetrated everything around me to that point.
Boy, was I wrong. I was more wrong than Columbus thinking he had made landfall in India. More wrong than Julius Caesar thinking Brutus was his friend. More wrong even than everyone in America thinking the entire cast of Grey's Anatomy wasn't inexplicably going to die over the course of the show.
Matthew Berry, one of the more entertaining fantasy sports columnists I've ever devoted time to following, is a realist. He, unlike most of the sitting members of the U.S Congress, isn't sure why he gets paid to do what he does, but that's neither here nor there. There's no complicated way to say this, so I'll just say it. In his week 1 column, he sold out big time. The entire thing read like one big advertisement to DraftKings, and his fans, the loyal, motley crew that they are, were furious.
Now, I get what it's like to be a company man. I get that ESPN and DraftKings have a sponsorship deal, and I get that Matthew Berry is not just a paid spokesperson for DraftKings, but also an avid player of daily fantasy leagues. Different strokes for different folks, right?
Well, sort of.
Do you know who the first people to force something daily relating to money on somebody else were?
The British circa 1776, that's who. And guess what, there was even a King involved. Coincidence? I think not.
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| Colonists have no use for your tyrannical daily fantasy leagues.Season long or bust. |
In middle school they told me I didn't have to join a gang if I was asked to do so. I'm telling you now that you DO NOT have to join the throngs (if you believe the commercials) of people winning millions of dollars (if you REALLY believe the commercials) playing in a daily fantasy league. You can be totally free of that pressure if you truly believe in yourself.
Not really though, it's all run by money, you'll see ads for daily fantasy leagues until you die, or until Congress decides to classify it as sports gambling and therefore illegal, and honestly, there's a better chance of a bunch of British dudes throwing away all of your tea than happening anytime soon.
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