Information Cascade and Fantasy Football
Fantasy sports have become a major part of the sports world today, especially in football, in which individuals are able to create their own roster and set their lineups on a weekly basis while competing against other self made teams. Each week there are many decisions to be made in regards to which wide receiver, running back, or quarterback to start. This concept has several links to the topics covered in this course, but let’s focus on one topic known as information cascades and the influence to one’s decision.
As you may already know, fantasy football involves a great deal of research on the individual players and teams in order to determine what players you would like to start each week to pull off the win. Often, individuals refer to weekly “Start ‘em, Sit ‘em” articles published by various sports networks and their NFL analysts. In these reports, the experts provide insight on players regarding their health status, recent statistics, and projections on their performance on a week to week basis. Now when it comes time to set your lineup each week, you have your own intuitions about who to start but now must make a final decision in conjunction with the new insight from the “experts.” For example, if you want to start Player A and sit Player B, but the experts say to sit Player A and start player B, you are now tasked with decided to stick with your own intuition or go with the expert decision. It’s obvious that the sports analysts providing the information have more background on the issue than your own personal information, thus it is most likely in your best interest to overlook your own private information for that of the experts. In this case, you rely on the information cascade and abandon your initial decision for that of the analysts.
https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/football/news/fantasy-football-week-10-start-em-sit-em-jared-goff-is-about-to-go-off/
https://sports.yahoo.com/fantasy-football-week-10-players-to-start-or-sit-181041787.html