The History of Fantasy Sports dives into how a few fun, spontaneous game ideas turned into a massive, global industry. Author Larry Schechter spent 18 months talking to the key players behind the scenes, uncovering the passion, quirks, and hustle that built today’s fantasy sports world. It’s an entertaining, behind-the-scenes look at how a hobby became big business.

There is so much knowledge in this book, but written in a way that a new fantasy sports player like me can appreciate it. But I'm sure there is a lot more nuance to people who have grown up playing and watching sports. I was a history major and love reading non-fiction, this book may be slightly too dry for some, but I enjoyed it.

Thank you for the ARC via netgalley.

As a fantasy sports fan, this book was interesting to get more context of all sports. I think it was almost too much information, however, a sports fanatic would love this and it would make a great gift to sport fans. I think this could’ve been a shorter read, but I appreciate getting this ARC and learned a lot!!

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for this complementary ARC in exchange for my honest review!

This book is an incredibly detailed history of fantasy sports - from the early beginnings in the 1960s to the boom of the late 80s up to today. The amount of research that must have gone into this book is impressive and I felt that the content was exclusive - nothing was missing.

Although the content at times can read like a (well-researched) Wikipedia article, some sections, including the important legal cases, were very interesting and new information to me. I also appreciated that the author covered all sports worldwide and not just the most commonly played fantasy sports. I came into fantasy sports in the mid-2000s and had no idea of all the challenges that came before it - including the difficulty many had to find a way to make money off of it.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has played fantasy sports - to really appreciate what happened to lead up to where we are today.

This book interested me because my husband, brother, father, and son have played and continue to play on fantasy sports teams. I've also known some engineers who have worked in the fantasy sports industry. The History of Fantasy Sports is incredibly well researched to provide the decades long fantasy sports arena.....long before everything was available electronically.

There are terrific entrepreneurial stories where men and women dropped out of their careers and swung for the fences to create fantasy sports for hundreds of thousands of sports enthusiasts. And of course, there was litigation. The litigation chapters were directly out of David vs Goliath and to everyone's surprise, the "little guy" won.

The true meaning of fantasy sports are the long standing relationships. Many leagues have been in existence for over 30 and 40 years with very few team members leaving their league. It's an amazing story about friendship, sports, business, and passion.

A very thorough and well-researched look at the history of fantasy sports. At times, the entries read more like Wikipedia pages, and the cultural impact could be further highlighted, especially toward the beginning - I found that it took some time to get into a good rhythm moving through the book.