Fantasy Football Insurance: Good Or Bad?
An insurance company in Long Island is offering insurance on your fantasy football season. And we can’t say we here at “SportsBiz” are too surprised.
The Web site for Fantasy Sports Insurance Inc.quotes my article from last year when it was estimated that Tom Brady’s injury could have shifted $150 million in fantasy winnings.
The idea is pretty simple.
If any of the stipulated top 50 players go down for a significant part of the season, and you’ve paid for their insurance, Fantasy Sports Insurance will pay your entry fee back.
In order to collect, you have to select a player (one policy allows you to group three players), pay the insurance –- roughly 10 percent of your entry fee -– and watch that player miss roughly two-thirds of the games with an injury.
I think some leagues might insist on staying away from this idea, as some might argue that it takes the fun out of a horrible injury. After all, everyone was laughing at the guy who took Brady last year. If he had insurance, the joke wouldn’t be as good.
But Henry Olszewski, who is one of the two brokers who dreamed up the idea, said that some leagues are requiring fantasy players to buy insurance. Why?
“The nightmare scenario is the guy who loses his player and either starts trading away his team or sits idle,” Olszewski said. “That affects the entire league. If that guy has insurance, he’s playing with the house money and that guy has more motivation to see what he can do to be competitive.”
Olszewski said that the brokerage, whose policies are underwritten by Lloyd’s of London, has sold close to 400 policies so far and that they expect business to pick up over the next week.
What about players who can't be insured, either because they are not in the top 50 or they are viewed as an injury risk? That list includes Ben Roethlisberger, Fred Taylor, Torry Holt, Brett Favre, Matt Cassel and Chad Ochocinco.
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