If you’re new to the world of fantasy sports, here are some reasons you should give our fantasy W-League competition a go this summer!
The concept of fantasy sports has been around since the 1960’s, giving fans the chance to become more involved in their favourite sporting leagues in a fun, yet competitive environment. Today it represents a large part of the sporting landscape, with nearly 60 million players involved in fantasy sports in North America alone. However despite it’s obvious appeal, fantasy options for women’s sports have remained largely non-existent.
Back in 2016 we had a group of friends playing the fantasy A-League men’s competition, so we thought we’d try and convince them to try fantasy W-League as well – only to find that no competition for the women’s league existed! A quick google search confirmed that this wasn’t just a problem in Australia, with fantasy football not even available for the more established international leagues such as the NWSL and FA WSL. Fantasy football can be a fun way to interact with your favourite teams and players, and it seemed unfair that women’s sport fans were missing it. This is why we started ShePlays – to provide fans of women’s sports the chance to give fantasy football a go, in a friendly, positive environment.
How it works
In our fantasy competitions you will be given a set budget ($550,000 for W-League 2019/20) from which to select a team of 15 players. These players will then earn fantasy points based on how they perform in games, getting points for achievements such as scoring and assisting goals, creating chances, or keeping clean sheets. Players may also earn bonus points for excelling in a range of statistics including passing, tackling, and shooting. Each week you will have the chance to make transfers, select your captain (who will earn double points), and to pick your starting formation. You can then compete against your friends, family, or work colleagues in your own mini-league to see who’s team can earn the most fantasy points over the season. Everyone will also be competing on our global leaderboard, to find the ultimate #ShePlaysDub Champion!
What we’re trying to achieve
We strongly believe more needs to be done to improve gender equality in sport, and we hope our platform can help work towards achieving this goal by
a) improving the visibility of the players in the league,
b) increasing the W-League fan base, and
c) lifting fan engagement,
as a way to encourage further investment in the sport. One of the benefits we’ve found from participating in fantasy football is that it is a great way to learn more about some of the lesser known players in the league – at the start of the 2018/19 season a lot of fans may not have known the names of some of the younger players in the league, such as Hollie Palmer, Leticia McKenna, Jenna Onions, or Indiah-Paige Riley – but I can guarantee that every one of our ShePlays managers certainly knew about them by the end of the season, as they quickly became some of our most popular picks! Watching a game that doesn’t feature your local team also becomes a lot more exciting when one of your fantasy players is involved – we found from our FIFA Women’s World Cup competition that over half of our users watched more games during the tournament due to our fantasy competition. We hope that by doing our bit to help increase match attendances and TV viewer-ship, we can show that there is a large (neglected) appetite for women’s sport, that is simply waiting for proper investment.
Finding detailed statistics and information on female athletes can be almost impossible for any bar the top tier national team stars. We believe this is an important issue to address as
a) the players deserve proper recognition, and to be treated like the superstars we believe they are; and
b) helping fans learn more about the players can help foster an emotional connection between the players-fans-clubs increasing the likelihood of people attending games more frequently.
To fix this, we are aiming to build up an encyclopaedia of player bios, where people can come to learn about a players sporting (and non-sporting) background. We currently have over 70 detailed FAWSL bios, and will be adding W-League player bios shortly! We’d love to be able to include photo’s from players junior football days, fun facts, stories about their first sporting experiences, or even profiles of their pets, so if you’d like to help out with this please let us know!
The most important reason you should give our fantasy W-League competition a go this summer…
Most importantly, as you will hopefully find out, fantasy football is a lot of fun! Here at ShePlays we strive to create a positive, friendly environment focused on lifting people up and celebrating their achievements. So help us celebrate the talented players we are lucky to have access to in the W-League, while having fun along the way!