24 Days to NYC: Fantasy Sports and Broadcasting: The New World of Statistics

By Will Mossa,    FSGA Event News

Before Rotisserie Baseball emerged in the 1980s, no one knew about the statistic WHIP (Walks and Hits per Innings Pitched). Now it is a standard part of every statistical presentation during television broadcasts. Baseball terms such as WAR, and OBP and football data such as yards after contact once were for only the front office executive. Today that data is widely used in all aspects of fantasy sports.

Fantasy sports is about understanding and evaluating statistical information in a variety of sports, and this has influenced the television broadcasts that are looking to provide useful information to the game’s 41 million players in North America.

The Fantasy Sports Trade association will feature a fascinating look at how fantasy sports has influenced broadcasts during the 2015 Summer Conference on June 22-23 in New York City.

Ariel Helwani, an MMA sports producer for AOL will moderate a discussion of how the rise of fantasy sports as a desirable broadcast audience also has influenced the storylines, statistics and graphical presentation of the modern sports broadcast. Joining Helwani on the panel are Harold Bryant, executive producer and senior vice-president of production for CBS Sports, Seth Markman, a senior coordinating producer for ESPN and Bob Vorwald, executive producer for WGN-TV in Chicago.


The 2015 FSTA Summer Conference is June 22-23 at the Crowne Plaza Times Square Hotel in New York City. Registration for this event is still open. To register, go to www.fstaconference.com.