Fantasy Football is a fantasy sports game in which participants, arranged into a league, each draft or acquire via auction a team of real-life American football players and then score points based on those players' statistical performance on the field. A typical fantasy league will employ players from a single football league, such as the NFL or an NCAA division. Leagues can be arranged in which the winner is the team with the most total points at the end of the season, or in a head-to-head format in which each team plays against a single opponent each week, and at the end of the year the team with the best win-loss record wins the league. Most leagues set aside the last weeks of the regular season for their own playoffs.

The game originated in 1962 from an idea of Bill Winkenbach, then a limited partner in the Oakland Raiders, with assistance from Bill Tunnell, the Raiders' public relations man, Scotty Stirling, the beat writer from the Oakland Tribune, and George Ross, the Tribune's sports editor, as well as Philip Carmona, Winkenbach's friend. The idea emerged during a three-week road trip the Raiders took to the East Coast. Winkenbach and the others fleshed out the idea during the trip, and upon their return, formed the first fantasy football league, the GOPPPL.

The two main types of competition formats are 1) Head-to-head, with weekly games played against specific opponents, and 2) total points, in which cumulative points during the season determine winners.