Fantasy football provides entertainment, boosts social ties. But experts say high stakes may cause stress.
More than 29 million people play fantasy football each season, ranging from casual office, friend and family groups to high-stakes buy-in leagues. And with the 2024-25 NFL season kicking off Thursday night, fantasy players will be putting the finishing touches on their rosters in hopes of dominating their league and earning bragging rights (and maybe even some money).
Fans of fantasy football say it adds an extra layer of entertainment to the games they’re watching. More importantly, it also gives them a sense of community, whether they’re competing against co-workers or strangers online. For some people, it’s a way of staying in touch with old friends; for others, it’s an opportunity to find common ground and connect with fellow sports fans.
But are there any downsides to playing fantasy football? Here’s what experts say about the growing game and its effect on our mental health.
The pros
One of the biggest benefits of playing fantasy football is the social interactions it involves. As Arlen Moller, a professor of psychology at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, told American Heart Association News last year, the “foundational versions of the season-long game are usually played between friends and family.” According to Moller — who noted that he himself belongs to a fantasy football league that keeps him connected to college buddies living around the world — these social interactions can offset feelings of isolation and loneliness.
Behind the social factor, Renee Miller, a professor in the department of brain and cognitive science at the University of Rochester in New York, sees another bonus. She tells Yahoo Life that playing fantasy football — which involves processing rankings, analyzing player strengths and weaknesses, strategizing week to week — can also be a mind-strengthening exercise.
“It’s a problem-solving activity,” Miller says. “It forces you to think of things maybe in different ways, makes you do research … so it can be a brain-strengthener.”
There are also the positive effects of being a sports fan in general. As media psychologist Pamela Rutledge previously told Yahoo Life, identifying with a team or player can foster a deeper sense of community and self-esteem. “Group membership helps shape an individual’s self-image,” Rutledge explained. Seeing your favorite team or the players you’ve added to your roster succeed, therefore, can be a real high.
The cons
Of course, as anyone who has seen their team crash out of the playoffs can attest, it’s not all wins. That can bring disappointment to any fan, but the added emotional investment of playing fantasy football can make a loss or bad performance particularly stressful and hard to swallow.
And not all investments are purely emotional; the stakes are higher when money is on the line. Though its focus was on fantasy soccer — which, in the case of the Premier League, runs for 38 weeks compared to the NFL’s 18, representing a bigger commitment for fantasy players — a U.K. study published this summer found that players involved in more cash-prize leagues had the most mental health concerns.
That same study also found that mental health concerns were most likely to be reported among those who considered themselves highly engaged with the game, spent more time monitoring their fantasy team’s performance and frequently compared their team to those of other competitors. But study co-author Gary Britton, of the Queen Mary University of London, noted that the news wasn’t all bad.
“While the results of the study might seem worrying on the one hand, on the other hand all of these involved/engaged groups also reported more positive mood as a result of playing [fantasy soccer] compared to people who are less involved/engaged in the game,” he said in a statement.
According to Jennifer Eakins, a fantasy football expert who has contributed to outlets including Yahoo, casual players who are in several leagues may spend between three to five hours a week managing their team. When there’s a sizable sum of money to be won and the level of competitiveness rises, so does the time spent on crafting the perfect team.
“When you're missing friends or loved ones' events in order to focus on setting lineups or staying on your phone for the entire family dinner checking scores and injury reports, you're probably overdoing it,” Eakins tells Yahoo Life.
“Too much of anything can be a bad thing,” adds Miller, who teaches classes about mental disorders and writes a lot about fantasy football. “I think some people can become addicted to fantasy football, especially in some of the daily games.” Daily fantasy games, Miller notes, can be more isolating as people typically do it alone, and because it follows a model that’s similar to sports betting — creating parlays to multiply earning potential — issues with addiction are easier to come about. “This is where there is danger of addiction around daily fantasy: winning and then wanting to chase that good feeling you get when you win,” Miller says.
How to play responsibly
There are processes and safeguards players can put in place to protect from overextending themselves, emotionally and financially. “The easiest thing you can do is set an amount each week and that’s the amount that's in my account,” Ben Heisler, host of the Benny & the Bets podcast, tells Yahoo Life.
When it comes to season-long fantasy games, Eakins says players have to make a choice not to spread themselves too thin. “Making the decision to cut back on the volume and actually doing it can be freeing for those who feel like it's too much of a time commitment or those who get flack from their spouses or partners for time spent [playing],” she says.
Miller agrees that although there may be negative effects for some players, there are benefits that outweigh the risks for most people.
“You can have too much of anything, whether it’s food, gambling or sex or fantasy football,” she says. “There’s healthy and there’s unhealthy ranges ... but I think it’s relatively rare. I’ve yet to come into contact with someone who has a legitimate mental problem due to their fantasy play.”
Yahoo News is part of Yahoo, which also owns Yahoo Fantasy Sports. Yahoo News maintains editorial independence.
