Failure™ Magazine

Women Against Fantasy Sports

Online support group for fantasy sports widows a hit with dispossessed wives and girlfriends.

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under Sports

Allison Lodish, co-founder of Women Against Fantasy Sports.

When Allison Lodish’s husband first started playing fantasy football, she viewed it as an innocuous pursuit. “Had I known where it would lead, I may not have been so eager for him to take up this hobby,” she says, having since reconsidered her initial stance. Over the course of the past five NFL seasons, her husband of 13 years has spent an inordinate amount of time reviewing player statistics, drafting teams, managing lineups, making trades, and trash-talking with fellow fantasy league participants—time that could have been better spent, in her opinion, with her and the couple’s two children.

Her hubby’s descent into fantasy football addiction explains why the 36-year-old Lodish—who emphasizes that she enjoys watching sports—decided to engage in a little good natured “retaliation,” partnering with Nichole Jordan and Azar McMaster to found Women Against Fantasy Sports (WAFS), a Web-based support group that provides an outlet for women to address their significant other’s fantasy sports compulsion. The trio launched womenagainstfantasysports.com in August 2008, and today the site has close to 3,000 registered members, who keep in touch via the message board, which is populated by individuals with user names like Myhusbandbelongsto6league [sic], ManningsSuck, and Ih8fantasydorks.

The site’s users might be surprised to learn that one of WAFS’s founders is male, and a recovering fantasy football addict to boot. McMaster says he once participated in ten fantasy leagues simultaneously—the year he “hit rock bottom,” as he puts it. “I wasted too much time on fantasy football,” he admits, an endeavor that involves mock drafting NFL quarterbacks, wide receivers, tight ends, placekickers, and team defenses, and then using their statistics to determine the outcome of weekly head-to-head matchups. “I realized that there were enough fantasy dorks to support an online gathering place for sharing stories and buying cool stuff that pokes fun at our addiction,” he continues.

There’s no denying that WAFS’s potential audience is huge. According to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association, fantasy sports is a multi-billion dollar industry, with 27 million U.S. adults participating in any given year. (An estimated 15 percent of the audience is female, and in spite of WAFS’s name, the group readily welcomes interested males.) Yet it’s obvious that the site caters to women, generating revenue via advertising and WAFS apparel, which includes the “I thought I was your fantasy” T-shirt, and black hip hugger-style shorts that convey the message Closed for the fantasy season in white lettering on the crotch.

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