Categories: OLD Media Moves

Fantasy sports as business journalism

Stephanie Mehta of Fortune writes about how the business magazine is using a fantasy sports strategy to connect with readers.

The magazine has launched the Fortune Fantasy Sports Executive League, which allows readers to create their own “Executive Dream Team” and track how their choices measure up to other readers as well as experts. Readers will be able to see how their picks line up with Fortune’s annual Executive Dream Team announced July 26.  

Mehta writes, “Executives like to compare business to sports. They use sports terminology to describe their strategies and they quote famous jocks…. And business journalists and investors love to debate corporate victories and foibles almost as much as sports writers and fans enjoy bickering about their favorite teams…. So it seemed natural for Fortune to find a way for readers to create their own imaginary rosters of real corporate executives — a sort of fantasy sports for avid followers of the business world.”

She goes on to write, “Participants can pick their dream C-Suites from more than 90 of the world’s top executives representing nine different corporate functions… The fantasy game is part of Fortune’s annual Executive Dream Team feature, in which the editors engage in a similar exercise. We ask the question: What would be the ultimate corporate management team? What group would be the business equivalent of the 1927 Yankees?”

Mehta says,  “Running a big company, like managing a professional sports franchise, is harder than it looks. The Fortune Fantasy Sports Executive League gives the rest of us a little bit of a glimpse of what it is like to build a strong corporate team—while having a little fun along the way. Play ball.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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