when did fantasy football start

Fantasy football in the American (NFL) sense started in the early 1960s, with the first full league and draft taking place in 1963 in Oakland, California. The association-football (soccer) version often called Fantacalcio began later, in Italy in 1990.

Quick Scoop

• The first fantasy football league most historians point to is the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League (GOPPPL), created by Oakland Raiders part-owner Bill Winkenbach.

• Their inaugural draft was held in August 1963 in Oakland, marking the practical “start date” of fantasy football as a game people actually played.

• The game spread slowly via private leagues through the 1970s–1980s, then exploded once online leagues appeared in the mid‑1980s and late 1990s.

• For soccer, fantasy football as a codified game was invented by Italian journalist Riccardo Albini in 1990 under the name Fantacalcio.

Mini timeline

1. Early 1960s: Concept sketched out by Bill Winkenbach and colleagues linked to the Oakland Raiders.

2. 1963: First full league (GOPPPL) drafts players and runs a season; this is usually when fantasy football is said to have “started.”

3. Late 1960s–1980s: Private and bar‑league games spread by word of mouth, still all on paper.

4. Mid‑1980s–1990s: National mail/phone and early online leagues appear, pulling fantasy football into the mainstream.

5. 1990: Riccardo Albini publishes Fantacalcio rules, kicking off modern fantasy football for association football fans.

If someone asks “when did fantasy football start,” most NFL fans are talking about 1963, but soccer fans may mean the 1990 launch of Fantacalcio.

TL;DR:

• NFL-style fantasy football: started with the GOPPPL league and its first draft in 1963.

• Soccer-style fantasy football (Fantacalcio): created in 1990 by Riccardo Albini.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.