Who: Dr. Kim Beason

What: Associate professor, park and recreation management, Ole Miss

Founder, Fantasy Sport Research Specialists LLC

Back in 2001, Dr. Beason went searching for studies on fantasy sports consumers, curious to find out why people played and what impact these games had on professional sports. He found the area lacking. Seeing a need for better understanding of this growing phenomenon, he decided to collect the data on his own but was stonewalled in his attempts to connect with companies that could provide customer lists.

That led the Ole Miss professor to trudge out to Las Vegas (not a bad destination if you have to trudge) and pitched his idea to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association (then known as the Fantasy Sports Players Association). He offered to match the group’s funding through the first three years of a research project in return for the FSTA encouraging its members to supply consumer targets for the research. A partnership was born.

From the first study in 2002 and 2003, Beason’s pursuit of learning more about those who play fantasy sports quickly grew into popular and valuable research on the fantasy market and the consumer-spending habits of participants. Businesses used the data to court advertisers and more effectively target consumers. Media outlets latched onto the numbers to reflect the growth in this particular entertainment industry. Perhaps most importantly, the study’s valuable findings have driven up inquiries from FSTA constituents, which has in turn enhanced the breadth and depth of the information collected.

“Dr. Beason is the godfather of fantasy sports market research,” says Jeff Thomas, president of the FSTA and CEO of SportsBuff.com, which owns this site. “He took a chance on our small association many years ago, funded many of his own expenses to help kick off our research efforts and is now recognized as the top fantasy sports consumer behavior expert in the world.”

The project grew to the point that in 2006, Beason founded Fantasy Sport Research Specialists LLC “to serve as a clearinghouse for research,” an enterprise he shares with three partners. Although the annual FSTA study - whose sixth set of annual results were presented at the FSTA conference in Chicago on July 8 and 9 - is the company’s primary focus, there are other considerations as well.

“We also explore fantasy sport as a medium to teach children, relationships and differences between the fantasy sports and gaming industries, and fantasy sport in the workplace,” Beason says. “FSRS also conduct specialty-market, branding and product-development research for individual fantasy sport companies.”

Not surprisingly, all of this work stemmed from a career as a fantasy-sports player that began in 1989 with a keeper football league at Ole Miss. Beason quickly learned in his second season not to mix business too closely with pleasure, however, when hosting the league’s draft in a campus classroom nearly got him fired.

“My butt was in a sling for about 2 weeks,” he says. “I had to convince them (they were still skeptical) that what we did wasn’t gambling but a game of skill, and the league fees - 30 bucks - was given to the winner.  I ended up hanging on to my job by promising to never, ever, conduct another fantasy sport event on campus.”

Then again, one might argue that the lesson didn’t really take root.

“Heck, I play and research fantasy sport as a (small) part of my job!” Beason says. “Talk about fortunate.”

Dr. Kim Beason, professor at Ole Miss University and FSB-appointed “godfather of fantasy sports market research,” has sent out the call for consumer lists for the next round of studies, in conjunction with the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

Below is the text of his request:

Everyone,

Dr. Kim Beason of the University of Mississippi will be begin our sixth annual FSTA consumer behavior/market survey shortly and is once again seeking input from the FSTA membership and subject lists. The survey includes more than 40 questions and provides great insight into the behavioral habits of fantasy players. New data lines for 2008-09 include social networks’ influence on fantasy sport, fantasy-consumer brand preferences and investigation into free-play providers, to name a few. Of course, you can forward any question ideas you have to Dr. Beason soon so that he may add them to the questionnaire.

A hot list of consumer names that Dr. Beason can use to select a representative sample would be VERY helpful to assure the FSTA research is the best available. In order to accurately reflect the tendencies of fantasy players, we’d like as many FSTA members to help out as possible. Your contact list is confidential and Dr. Kim will not release your consumer contact information. Please help out as we’d like a good cross-section of free sites, pay sites, baseball sites, racing sites, football sites, all sports sites, mail-order games, high-stakes games, etc.

If you have confidentiality clauses that prohibit sharing your clients’ contact information you may want to consider embedding a link in your website that would lead your interested members to the survey or send an email to your customers yourself with the survey http address attached. Another option that may take more time is building a list of your consumers willing to take part in the survey.

Remember: any contributor that generates a response of at least 100 subjects for the study will receive a detailed, exclusive demographic account of your customers’ responses free and additional exploration of your customers at reasonable rates. From past experiences, to generate 100 responses requires current and reliable customer lists of at least 4,000. If you embed the link you can remind consumers to respond throughout the data-collection period. The larger the list of your customers, the easier to select a random sample and increase the responses.

For 2008-09 I request consumer lists with last names beginning with U through Z and A through C.
The main fall consumer behavior study will begin in December and conclude January 10, 2009. The spring survey period will begin in May and conclude August.

An e-mailed prepared list (the best, helps establish trends), embedded website link or protected e-mail sent through your server will assure we have an industry-wide representation of the fantasy sports industry. Contact Dr. Kim for details on email links and HTML tags.

Deadlines:

1. Suggestions for survey questions — Sept. 1.
2. Lists of subjects we can use for a random survey. Please include Name, Full Address, and email. We send both email and U.S postal surveys each year. — ASAP, but no later than Oct. 31.
3. Email link you can send to your consumers — Aug. 25-Oct. 1
4. HTML link for your members-only website — Aug. 25-Oct. 1

Dr. Kim Beason
225 Turner Center
University, MS 38677
662-915-5555
hpbeason@olemiss.edu