who created fantasy football

Wilfred “Bill” Winkenbach is most widely credited with creating fantasy football (for American gridiron football) in the early 1960s.

Quick Scoop: Who Created Fantasy Football?

For what most people mean by “fantasy football” (the NFL-style, stats-based game):

• Inventor: Wilfred “Bill” Winkenbach, an Oakland businessman and minority owner of the Oakland Raiders.

• When: The concept and rules were drafted in 1962 during a Raiders East Coast road trip in a New York hotel room.

• First league: The Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League (often called the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prediction League, GOPPPL) started in 1963 with eight teams.

• Co-creators involved: Raiders public relations staffer Bill Tunnel and Oakland Tribune reporter Scotty Stirling helped shape the original rules and structure.

A Tiny Origin Story

Picture a group of football-obsessed colleagues in 1962, stuck on a road trip with a struggling Raiders team, trying to make the season more fun. Winkenbach, who had already experimented with fantasy-style games for golf and baseball, suggested building a league where each person “drafted” real players and scored points from their on-field stats. In that New York hotel room, the group sketched out rules that would become the foundation of modern fantasy football, then brought the idea home to Oakland and launched the first league.

Fun Side Note: Soccer “Fantasy Football”

If you mean association football (soccer) fantasy games, those trace back separately: an Italian journalist, Riccardo Albini, created the first major fantasy soccer game, called “Fantacalcio,” in 1990, inspired by American fantasy baseball.

TL;DR:

• NFL-style fantasy football: created by Wilfred “Bill” Winkenbach in 1962, first league launched in Oakland in 1963.

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

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