Fantasy football was created by Bill Winkenbach, an entrepreneur and minority owner of the Oakland Raiders football team. The game was first played in 1963, after Winkenbach conceived the idea during a Raiders road trip in 1962. The first league was called the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League (GOPPPL) and included notable figures like Scotty Stirling and Ron Wolf. The concept was inspired by earlier fantasy games Winkenbach had developed involving golf and baseball in the 1950s. The first fantasy football draft took place in a hotel room in New York City, and the game awarded points based on real-life player performance, primarily touchdowns and field goals.

There is a separate mention of an entirely different fantasy football game invented in 1990 by Italian journalist Riccardo Albini, known as Fantacalcio, which is based on European football (soccer). However, the original American fantasy football game was created by Bill Winkenbach in the early 1960s.