Fantasy soccer draft season is right here—and it’s now not a boys’ membership.
Of the 62.5 million folks enjoying fantasy sports activities within the U.S. and Canada, 35% are girls, in accordance with the Fantasy Sports activities & Gaming Affiliation’s 2023 survey. The development is simply rising: Girls 35 and older visiting the Yahoo Fantasy app—the top-rated app for fantasy soccer—grew 61% yr over yr as of final month.
For the uninitiated, fantasy soccer lets gamers draft their very own groups of actual NFL athletes. These groups compete in a league that runs alongside the NFL season. When your quarterback throws a landing or your working again racks up yards, your fantasy rating goes up too. Draft days normally occur in late August or early September, simply earlier than the brand new season kicks off.
One all-female Yahoo Fantasy league, Tequila, Ta-Tas, and Tight Ends, held its draft on the Yahoo Fantasy Draft Weekend in Las Vegas August 22 to 24. The league was began by commissioner Samantha Metcalf, a lifelong Seattle Seahawks fan. “I prevented fantasy soccer for some time as a result of I figured it could devour my life. And it has, but it surely’s been actually enjoyable,” Metcalf tells Quick Firm. “I used to be capable of finding fairly simply 10 different girls associates of mine that have been sufficient into soccer that I figured they’d have enjoyable with it.”
At this time, Metcalf’s Seattle-based league consists of 12 girls spanning completely different generations and backgrounds. “All people’s busy and I really feel like typically, particularly girls, are so busy working a family and making an attempt to do all the pieces else, they suppose The place am I going to squeeze this in?” she says, noting, nevertheless, that after the league acquired going, the ladies have been hooked.
They’re a part of a broader motion of girls stepping into the sport. A Yahoo Sports activities survey with DKC Analytics forward of final season discovered that of the 22% of respondents who stated they’d be enjoying fantasy soccer for the primary time, half have been girls and almost one in 5 have been Gen Z. Yahoo Fantasy as an entire hit an all-time participation excessive in 2024, surpassing its earlier peak in 2015.
The “Taylor Swift impact” could have had one thing to do with it. One in 10 folks surveyed stated they’d paid extra consideration to fantasy soccer for the reason that singer struck up a high-profile romance with Travis Kelce of the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs. Relating to assembling a staff, 37% fee “drafting gamers who’re courting my favourite celebrities or influencers” as a very good or wonderful draft technique.
Nonetheless, most girls be part of for a similar causes males do. “It’s the enjoyable camaraderie between folks,” Metcalf says. Then there’s the pleasant competitors and the social side.
Analysis backs that up. A examine by the North American Society for Sports activities Administration discovered that each women and men are motivated by enjoyment, engagement with the sport, and social bonding.
The place girls differ is they’re additionally motivated by the will to compete in a male-dominated area. Metcalf says: “My husband really asks me for recommendation on who he ought to draft and who he ought to play.”
