FANTAZZLE FANTASY SPORTS, INC.

December 14, 2010

_______________________
Contact Information:
Michael Sprouse
P: 703.879.6580
Email: thought.leadership@fantazzle.com

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
www 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
Contact Information: Michael Sprouse
Email: thought.leadership@fantazzle.com PAGE 2

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?
Contact Information: Michael Sprouse
Email: thought.leadership@fantazzle.com PAGE 3

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.
Contact Information: Michael Sprouse
Email: thought.leadership@fantazzle.com PAGE 4

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
Contact Information: Michael Sprouse
Email: thought.leadership@fantazzle.com PAGE 5

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.
Contact Information: Michael Sprouse
Email: thought.leadership@fantazzle.com PAGE 6

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.
Contact Information: Michael Sprouse
Email: thought.leadership@fantazzle.com PAGE 7

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
Contact Information: Michael Sprouse
Email: thought.leadership@fantazzle.com PAGE 8

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.
 Contact Information: Michael Sprouse
Email: thought.leadership@fantazzle.com PAGE 9

_________________________
1 http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/57050
2 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.html
9 http://www.pcworld.com/article/136374/add_fantasy_football_to_list_of_top_online_timewasters.html
10 http://www.star-telegram.com/2009/12/11/1825336/fidelity-fires-four-for-playing.html
11 http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_38/b4195081511463.htm
12 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080530132051.htm
Contact Information: Michael Sprouse
Email: thought.leadership@fantazzle.com PAGE 10

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 Information
Fantazzle Fantasy Sports
Michael Sprouse
703.879.6580
thought.leadership@fantazzle.com
http://www.fantazzle.com

Fantazzle Links
Fantazzle Blog - http://www.fantazzleblog.com/
LinkedIn - http://www.linkedin.com/company/fantazzle-fantasy-sports-games
Twitter - http://twitter.com/Fantazzle
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fantasy-Football-Games/181650511730