At the International Association for Communication and Sport summit my lovely bride and I presented some interesting and unique research. We met the friend of some friends and he was telling us about why he quit playing fantasy sports. It was an interesting conversation and led to a pretty basic research question: why?
It turns out that while there’s a reasonable amount of scholarship about why people gamble and play fantasy sports, there’s not a lot of work done studying why they quit. So we’re cornering the market. And here’s the first bit of that work, a pilot study. We told some of the best sports media scholars in the world about it today. She discussed the quantitative part of the mixed-methods study, and left me to discuss the qualitative themes. Here’s some of the takeaways, which I’ve already shared on Bluesky.
This version of the research was titled “That’s it, I quit!: An analysis between the relationship of quitting sports gambling and enjoyment.”
If you need a citation: Smith, L.R. & Smith, K.D. (2026, March 11-13). “That’s it, I quit!: An analysis between the relationship of quitting sports gambling and enjoyment.” [Conference presentation]. IACS 2026 Summit, Dublin, Ireland.
Just presented some new research with @laurensmith.bsky.social. Turns out there’s not a lot of work done studying why people stop playing fantasy sports.
Let’s dive in!
#IACS26
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.org) March 13, 2026 at 8:45 AM
We met a guy who had strongly passionate feelings about why he no longer played fantasy sports. So we developed a mixed-methods instrument to study it. We approached this from a motivations perspective.
@laurensmith.bsky.social used PANAS and ENJOY on the quantitative side.
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.org) March 13, 2026 at 8:45 AM
We learned, from one person, that you can actually do some version of UFC fantasy sports.
We also learned, from other great scholarship, that gambling has the highest suicide rate of any addiction disorder (Vijayakumar &
Vijayakumar, 2023).— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.org) March 13, 2026 at 8:45 AM
Lauren broke down the quantitative data, I unpacked a bit of the qualitative. We had 50 respondents, 37 identified as male, 12 as female. The slide below has a few standout answers. Most said they quit because of the time invested, loss of money, loss of interest, stress, changing life priorities.
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.org) March 13, 2026 at 8:45 AM
Eighty percent of the respondents could point to a specific incident that motivated them to quit. Most revolved around lost money, time spent, stress from building and dealing with lineups and, curiously, dissatisfaction with player performance and player injuries.
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.org) March 13, 2026 at 8:45 AM
We asked the quitters group where they spend their time now. Fully 60 percent said nothing about watching sports. Some 18 percent of them used specific phrase like “stress, attention, focus, relaxing.” Work, spending time with family, exercise filled in the time. So did video games and reading.
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.org) March 13, 2026 at 8:45 AM
Nineteen of the 50 respondents wish they had quit sooner. The rest said no. Only one person, as you see here, indicated any regret at not playing.
Thirty-eight percent said they’d play again. All of those said they would impose limitations and low stakes on their participation.
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.org) March 13, 2026 at 8:45 AM
We wondered if they missed it; 36 percent said they do not.
Of the rest, 30 percent missed the competition, 18 percent missed the social aspects of fantasy sports. Sixteen percent we categorized as other.
Almost all said what they DON’T miss is the stress involved or the time invested.
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.org) March 13, 2026 at 8:45 AM
Eight members of the quitters group said they’d spent more than $1,000 playing fantasy sports. The highest was $5,000. A personal appeal made them stop. They talked at length about how things have turned around for them.
One person self-reported spending 800 hours a year on fantasy sports.
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.org) March 13, 2026 at 8:45 AM
Now if you’ll excuse me, after a day full of conferencing, and an evening full of networking and socializing with friends and colleagues, I have to finish my notes for tomorrow’s presentation.
