Decoding Fantasy Football: A Ludic Perspective

Fantasy Premier League, the fantasy football format built around the English Premier League, serves as the subject of this game studies inquiry into how players navigate the tension between skill and chance. Framing its analysis through established game definitions and Caillois' typology, the work positions fantasy football as a rich site where agon (competition and skill) and alea (luck and chance) intersect in everyday decision-making. The study uses an ethnographic, qualitative design, drawing on interviews and co-playing sessions with nine FPL players in Hyderabad, India, and situates this small sample against broader industry figures, including roughly 59.3 million North American fantasy players in 2017 and over 6.3 million FPL players worldwide.

The findings describe a participant group that was uniformly male, consistent with the low female representation typical of fantasy sports research, despite targeted recruitment efforts. Players, with between one and six years of experience, were driven chiefly by competition, bragging rights, and a desire for public presence, which the authors explain through the concept of "presencing." Their squad-building approaches varied considerably, ranging from value-for-money analysis and goal-focused selection to loyalty toward a favored club, all constrained by fixed budgets, team limits, transfer rules, and irregular fixture schedules.

Participants relied on fixture lists, team form, news outlets, and statistical platforms, and many followed football intensively, with some watching more than a hundred matches annually. Their club allegiances frequently competed with the pursuit of high-performing players, revealing the emotional complexity of the format. Rather than abandoning strategy when misfortune struck, players tended to intensify their research, and the FPL app enabled a gamified second-screen experience during live matches.

The authors conclude that these players were engaged, knowledgeable, and strategically mature, and that fantasy play deepens fandom while blending skill with chance. They further suggest that such engagement may benefit English Premier League viewership in India, though this claim rests on a small qualitative sample and should be regarded as suggestive rather than established.