fantazzle fantasy sports: fantasy football is not a workplace distraction
TRANSCRIPT
FANTAZZLE FANTASY SPORTS, INC.December 14, 2010_______________________Contact Information:
Michael SprouseP: 703.879.6580
Email: [email protected]
FANTASY FOOTBALL IS NOT A WORKPLACE DISTRACTION
Every fall 32 NFL teams return to the playing field carrying not just the Super Bowl aspirations of their players and coaches but also the hopes and dreams of their fan bases as well. Those fan bases have grown tremendously in the last thirty years and the hoopla, hype and mania surrounding the NFL seems like it’s never been higher. There are a number of reasons for the NFL’s popularity—bigger, faster and stronger players delivering a better product, team parity, sports-only cable networks, TV broadcast deals, deluxe new stadiums and rule changes to make the game more exciting—but it would be a mistake to credit any single factor as the most important or the most critical. What has happened in the last thirty years is a perfect confluence of all of those factors that has created the five-month-long spectacle we enjoy today. But one of the factors, a fan-created outside influence, has been credited with pushing the NFL’s popularity even higher in the last fifteen years. Fantasy football.
The birth of the World Wide Web and the easy access the web provided to information during the 90s increased the NFL’s popularity as it did for many other professional sports leagues and entertainment outlets. And the information suddenly at everyone’s fingertips—in the NFL’s case specifically,
player statistics—helped drive the immense popularity of the virtual, interactive game built from those same statistics. Fantasy football allowed fans to act as general managers of pseudo-NFL teams and its popularity exploded. The creation of fantasy football leagues suddenly gave casual fans and fans that only
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followed the home team a reason to watch NFL games even when the home team wasn’t playing. It also gave them a reason to care about every NFL team’s draft picks, trades and weekly injury reports. It gave fans a reason to care about what the fantasy football experts predicted each week and gave fans more reasons than ever to care about the total NFL product; from the amateur draft in April all the way to the Super Bowl the following January.
Fantasy football quickly became a juggernaut industry so much so that fantasy football experts who were writing articles on their personal websites and blogs at the early part of the decade were soon recruited to dispense
their wisdom on the cable sports channels and the pre- and post-game highlight shows1. Fantasy football has only grown more popular since and it’s become such a cultural force and large industry that its estimated $4 billion annual economic impact is nearly equal to a quarter of the NFL’s total annual revenue.
However, whenever a cultural phenomenon like fantasy football strikes, it’s inevitably accompanied by questions concerning the side effects the phenomenon has on the workplace, the home, society at large and the economy.
During the last few years news reports, articles and journalists have all attempted to quantify the economic effects—both positive and negative—of fantasy football. As previously noted, reports from the Fantasy Sports Trade Association have estimated the boon fantasy football creates for the U.S. economy to be more than $4 billion. But a conflicting report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., an outplacement consulting firm, claims the distractions fantasy football cause in the workplace might be costing businesses more than $10.5 billion annually2. It would seem then, just by doing the math, that fantasy football has a net negative impact on the economy to the tune of $6.5 billion per year and should be banned at every company immediately. But are the numbers on both sides of this argument true? And what about any other benefits or drawbacks to fantasy football that might not be so easily quantifiable? Should HR departments and employers really block fantasy football websites like they block adult content sites or should they encourage workplace participation in fantasy football leagues due to the side benefits it brings?
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DEFINING WORKPLACE PRODUCTIVITY
To quantify the effects of fantasy football on the workplace, we must first define workplace productivity and determine what actually hinders it. Do interruptions to the general flow of the workday actually cost employers
money and if so, how much?
A widely-quoted 2005 study by Basex, a New York consulting firm, claimed that workplace distractions constitute a drag on the U.S. economy of more than $588 billion per year3. But how did Basex arrive at this number and what did they define as distractions?
Basex’s distractions ranged from emails to phone calls to instant messages to nosy co-workers, micromanaging bosses and, of course, to the ever-present lure of the greatest time thief of all - the internet (home to most of the world’s fantasy football leagues). But while it’s true that these distractions can interrupt a day’s workflow, is it really possible to quantify their exact cost, and is $588 billion an accurate number? After all, if Basex’s numbers are true then that means emails, phone calls and text messages are four times a bigger drag on the U.S. economy than a one dollar increase in the price of gas which directly costs consumers approximately $136 billion4.
Shifting the burden of proof for the $588 billion claim to Basex means they need to show that removing workplace distractions will result in a more productive worker. After all, as any Economics 101 student will tell you that removing one workplace distraction opportunity doesn’t guarantee workers will automatically turn back to work—they may simply find other distractions – this defined as opportunity cost?. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly Basex, and by extension Challenger—who claimed fantasy football costs businesses $10.5 billion annually — both have to prove that time spent on emails, phone calls or even fantasy football leagues are actually counter-productive activities. And that is a claim that is being seriously challenged by new scientific research; research that’s showing that workers need breaks and gaps during the day to let their brains rest, learn and function more efficiently.
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LEARNING & THINKING WHILE AT REST
The part of the human brain we use the most when learning something new is the pre-frontal cortex. This part of the brain works through problems, proposes solutions and allows people to process new information. It’s the nimble and talented part of the brain that helps us
function in new, challenging and stimulating environments. It’s the part of the brain used most when studying for a test or learning new material at work, but it’s also the part of the brain that consumes the most energy and it’s the part that can drain people mentally, emotionally and physically if pushed too hard.
Besides its high energy consumption, the pre-frontal cortex has another drawback—its capacity for storage. It’s simply not capable of storing much at all, which means that if we want new information to stick, it must be successfully transferred to the part of our brains that stores learned data and memories—the basal ganglia.
Unlike the pre-frontal cortex the basal ganglia is highly energy efficient. It’s so efficient, in fact, that it can allow a person to think about completely unrelated things while performing a very complex task that they’ve already learned.
As an example, have you ever commuted to work and completely forgotten the entire drive? If you have, you have your basal ganglia to thank. Driving a car for thirty minutes in traffic into, or out of, a major metropolitan area would be a terrifying and nearly impossible task for an indigenous South American Indian who’s never left the Brazilian jungle. But the basal ganglia of regular metropolitan commuters has adapted to, and retained the route so efficiently that it can allow a commuter to daydream during their entire drive.
This energy efficiency isn’t the only major difference between the basal ganglia and the pre-frontal cortex. The basal ganglia also has a much larger storage capacity, one that is billions—if not trillions—of times greater than that of the pre-frontal cortex.
Neuroscientific studies have shown that the pre-frontal cortex has such a limited storage capacity and such high energy needs that it can only spend a small amount of time on any, significant deep learning. Pushed too hard and it will begin to deplete the body’s blood sugar levels. Therefore, the exact amount of time the brain can spend on a complex task is likely somewhere between thirty and forty-five
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consecutive minutes. Any longer and the pre-frontal cortex needs to recharge or the brain turns to mush—as anyone who’s spent a solid hour concentrating on something mentally challenging will tell you.
However, after forty-five minutes, the brain might not only need a break to recharge and allow the body to restore its blood sugar levels, it might also need that time to actually learn.
Three new independent studies at Harvard, NYU and Washington University have confirmed what some neuroscientists have suspected for decades; that when at rest, the brain is still working5. It’s during these rest periods that the pre-frontal cortex is able to make sense of what was learned, absorb it and pass it along to the basal ganglia where it can be stored and recalled later. People who take naps after learning something new, for instance, retain it better than those who don’t.
These neuroscientific studies and new research is not claiming that the brain can only work for forty minutes a day before tiring out. What they show, instead, is that people in the ‘knowledge industry’ need regular breaks during the day to avoid fatigue. These studies show that breaks during the day help knowledge workers learn and perform better. And finally, what these studies signify most importantly is that the reports and figures released by Basex and Challenger are likely to be deeply and inherently flawed.
INTERRUPTIONS vs. BREAKS
When in the middle of a mentally challenging task it is best if the brain isn’t interrupted. An email or phone call during deep thinking can break up the pre-frontal cortex’s rhythm. However, once the forty-five minute threshold has passed and the worker and the pre-frontal cortex are both drained, a
break is vital to maintaining productivity and vital to learning. It’s during these necessary breaks that workers should try to answer emails, take phone calls or stroll the office and talk to other co-workers who aren’t involved in deep mental tasks themselves.
The difficulty for most workers in following this guideline is that they aren’t willing or capable of ignoring a new email or turning off their office phones and cell phones when working through a mentally challenging task. Therefore it does appear that Basex’s study might have a grain of truth to it—some workplace distractions most likely hurt productivity and cost companies money.
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But does fantasy football fall into the same category as emails and phone calls? Is it a distraction or something workers turn to during those important rest periods? Considering the absence of urgent new fantasy football information arriving during the workweek it would seem that fantasy football falls into the latter category. It’s much more likely to be something a worker turns to when needing a break.
So Challenger’s numbers risk not just being overly-inflated, but perhaps completely false. If workers require regular breaks during the day to stay mentally sharp and to learn, and if fantasy football is one of the things those workers turn to on breaks, how can fantasy football be a negative distraction that costs companies $10.5 billion per year?
Dr. Kim Beason a researcher at the University of Mississippi has conducted various independent studies on management of fantasy sports teams in the workplace. What some of his studies have concluded is that only 59% of fantasy football players manage their fantasy teams at work and only 24% of players spend as much time checking their teams at work as Challenger asserted6. This initial research was further confirmed by recent statistics released by Compete.com, a web traffic analysis service. Compete showed that fantasy football website usage peaks on Sundays and website usage during the other six days of the week was less than half of the Sunday peak7. Therefore, according to Beason’s estimates and Compete.com’s statistics, the cost to employers of fantasy football would amount to less than $2.4 billion annually—which all still assumes that fantasy football is a distracting activity rather than a beneficial one. Yet, when Challenger initially released their study, they claimed their $10.5 billion annual cost was, in fact, a ‘conservative’ estimate.
Evidence that directly contradicted Challenger’s study was widely available in 2008 yet it still took them more than two years to realize how wrong they were. In 2010 they finally re-surveyed human resources managers on fantasy football’s effect on workplace productivity. The HR managers responded and confirmed that fantasy football was not a drain on workplace productivity whatsoever8. Yet with this evidence now staring at them Challenger still wasn’t willing to go the extra step and state that fantasy football might directly assist workplace productivity due to the memory-enhancing breaks workers need throughout the day. Instead they stated that company-wide fantasy football bans would probably decrease workplace morale and employee loyalty, and since fantasy football isn’t a drain on productivity a workplace ban should be avoided. These are true statements to be sure, but they don’t go nearly far enough in touting fantasy football’s potential workplace benefits.
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Despite Challenger’s backtracking and admittance that their initial report was wildly inaccurate, the damage done by their shoddy reporting and incautious estimates has likely already been done. By falsely claiming the fantasy football industry was a drain on the U.S. economy, Challenger ignored the fact that the fantasy football industry is actually a part of the U.S. economy. Therefore any collateral damage done to fantasy football’s revenues as a result of libelous reporting would actually be a direct blow to the U.S. economy.
And evidence of collateral damage from Challenger’s reporting abounds: The headline $10.5 billion number was immediately picked up by mainstream news outlets9, soon human resources managers began blocking fantasy football websites at work. There was actually a very real situation where workers were fired for discussing fantasy football on company time10. To this day, news articles still run on highly reputable business websites11 comparing the level of damage fantasy football does in the workplace to that of pornography—a comparison with little basis in reality considering viewing pornography at work is not only a socially unacceptable activity but also distracting for long periods of time while also leading to poor judgment and bad decision-making12.
Yet due to Challenger and companies that took their findings at face level, these types of news articles persist.
MORE BENEFITS OF FANTASY FOOTBALL
Had Challenger done more than a few minutes of research before writing their report they might have realized that fantasy football and fantasy sports have more real benefits in the workplace in addition to allowing workers to take breaks. New studies by Dr. Beason have suggested that fantasy sports might soon supplant golf as the recreational activity of choice for making business contacts and influencing clients. More studies by Ipsos have shown that 50% of fantasy sports participants feel that playing in a fantasy league has increased camaraderie and employee morale at their workplaces.
And though it might seem as if employee morale, workplace camaraderie and employee loyalty are nebulous buzzwords that are inherently unquantifiable as to their value (or cost), human resources experts have been trying to calculate the dollar cost of lost productivity due to poor
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morale and low camaraderie ever since Maslow first released his hierarchy of needs in 1943. Sociological studies and research has overwhelmingly proven that happy workers are the most productive workers. The results of decades of workplace studies have shown that creating a positive, enjoyable workplace for employees—a place that makes them feel like they’re part of an inclusive family rather than part of a large, restrictive and bureaucratic organization—is best for productivity.
With decades of this kind of evidence readily available to even the most cursory research efforts it’s almost preposterous that Challenger would be willing to calculate and place an exact dollar cost on ‘lost productivity due to fantasy football’ without doing exactly the same thing for ‘lost productivity due to low employee morale caused by a company-wide ban on fantasy football’.
Which makes it seem as if Challenger’s motivations for releasing their 2008 report were less likely to be journalistic in intent rather than attention-grabbing.
CONCLUSION
Knowledge workers need breaks in the day. They need breaks to recoup and recover and learn. If fantasy football is a knowledge worker’s outlet of choice for those breaks, companies should learn to embrace it. Furthermore, in the business world’s constant search for greater productivity, management and human resources departments should strive to foster a trusting, environment free of Big Brother-like overseers. This means no company should block access to fantasy football sites and all companies should trust their individual managers to use discretionary judgment as to why a worker’s productivity has suffered. Finally, because fantasy football encourages office camaraderie it should be studied and considered as a viable supplement or replacement for other human resources-themed team-building activities.
Firms that follow these guidelines are likely to experience an uptick in employee productivity, while those that continue to put stock in Challenger’s report and block fantasy football sites will likely cost themselves productivity. And, if Dr. Beason’s ongoing research does show conclusively that fantasy football is growing into the recreational activity of choice for meeting new business contacts, making deals and forming partnerships, then firms might want to consider not just allowing fantasy football participation in the workplace but encouraging it.
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1 http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/570502 Fantasy Football Sacks Productivity. Challenger, Gray & Christmas white paper. September 4, 2008.3 The Cost of Not Paying Attention: How Interruptions Impact Knowledge Worker Productivity. Basex. 2005.4 Three trillion total vehicle miles driven in U.S. divided by average of 23mpg = 136 billion gallons of gas purchased annually.5 Tambini, A., Ketz, N. & Davachi, L. Enhanced Brain Correlations during Rest are Related to Memory for Recent Experiences. Neuron Vol.65 Issue 2. January 28, 2010.6 2009 Fantasy Sport Industry Consumer Behavior Report. Beason, K. CPRP, Fantasy Sport Research Specialists, LLC. The University of Mississippi. 7 Advertisers Take Note; Reach Peaks on Sunday and Hits Lowest on Friday. Press Release, Compete.com. November 2, 2010.8 http://challengeratworkblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/fantasy-football-not-killing.html9 http://www.pcworld.com/article/136374/add_fantasy_football_to_list_of_top_online_timewasters.html10 http://www.star-telegram.com/2009/12/11/1825336/fidelity-fires-four-for-playing.html11 http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_38/b4195081511463.htm12 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080530132051.htm
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About Fantazzle Fantasy Sports
Fantazzle Fantasy Sports Games is a unique fantasy games site that, instead of offering traditional season long fantasy games like most fantasy sites, offers daily fantasy games and weekly fantasy games that have no commitment for the entire season or even game to game. The fantasy games site is a member of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA) and is a private company incorporated in Delaware. Fantazzle's current sports include fantasy football, high stakes fantasy football, playoff fantasy football, fantasy baseball, fantasy basketball, fantasy golf, fantasy hockey, fantasy racing, and a fantasy contest for the 2010 World Cup game. The online fantasy games site offers the best fantasy sports promotions available on the Internet with its FanStock promotion points and free fantasy sports games available daily. In 2008, Fantazzle was the #1 pre-season fantasy football site for ranking players before the season over 20 sites including the biggest and best names in fantasy sports. Fantazzle is free to join and you can play fantasy sports games any day of the year.http://www.fantazzle.com
Contact InformationFantazzle Fantasy SportsMichael [email protected]://www.fantazzle.com
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