When Did Fantasy Football Begin?

Many football fans will have played Comunio, Biwenger, La Liga Fantasy or similar games at some point in their lives. They may not know it, but many will have wondered: when did fantasy football start? Who invented it?

Apps like Comunio, Biwenger and La Liga Fantasy have accompanied thousands of football lovers over the years, helping the sport to be lived with even greater passion and competitiveness. Typically, leagues are set up among groups of friends, work colleagues or families, and the daily use of these apps has been known to cause the occasional "rupture" in personal relationships. Aside from those purely rivalry-driven "conflicts", these apps connect the user completely to matches on the pitch — because the real-life performance of players directly affects the points users receive in the app.

The origins of the "fantasy phenomenon" date back to 1988, when Italian journalist Riccardo Albini had the idea of creating fantasy football — known in Italy as Fantacalcio. Albini bought the book "Fantasy Football" in Chicago, which laid out the rules of an American game based on baseball statistics. When he read it, he immediately thought it would be a brilliant idea to develop the same game around football. During Euro 1988 he began testing it out in a bar; two years later he published the book "Serie A Fantacalcio" with updated rules, and the game took off. Its popularity grew rapidly in Italy and in 1994 La Gazzetta dello Sport got in touch to collaborate with the sharp-minded Albini — a relationship that lasted several years. Albini and his partners later sold the company to a larger entity, but by then the fantasy phenomenon had already reached extraordinary heights.

In Spain, fantasy football arrived via Diario Marca in 1994 with the Liga Fantástica Marca, which enjoyed great popularity throughout the decade. Supporters filled in their line-ups and sent them by email or fax directly to the newspaper's editorial office. Every Monday a ranking table was published so users could check their standing. By 2002, signing up for the Liga Fantástica Marca could be done online.

Its popularity had waned somewhat until the Comunio app arrived in Spain in 2007. The platform had already been running leagues in Germany and Austria for several years, and it swiftly became a genuine phenomenon. Other apps followed — Biwenger, Futmondo and La Liga Fantasy among them. The internet has been fundamental to the development and growth of these platforms, which now attract ever-increasing numbers of users.

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