Shaun Bell has played fantasy football with the same 16-team league for more than 20 years. Instead of picking his squad alone in front of a computer in his living room, the Nashville-based high-school football coach travels with friends—or foes, depending on how you look at it—to different destinations throughout the U.S. to draft together.
Bell’s league, which has been together since high school and began turning drafts into trips in college, has hit spots including Tampa, Las Vegas, and Gulf Shores, Alabama.
“When we first started doing this we were kids, and if you would have told us that it was going to stick around and stay forever, I’d have called you crazy,” Bell tells Front Office Sports. When they first started traveling, draft vacations weren’t common, so “a few places actually denied us because there were so many of us.” This year, some league members weren’t able to go far for family reasons, but they still hosted an event all together in downtown Nashville.
As sports fandom changes rapidly with increasing commercialization, especially as betting proliferates, the connectivity and even simplicity of fantasy sports has endured. Fantasy Sports and Gaming Association data shows that as of 2023, 19% of American adults participate in fantasy sports; that’s up from 13% in 2014. Since then, many popular platforms continue to grow; 14 million fans played fantasy football on ESPN in 2025, setting a participation record for the fourth consecutive year.
The camaraderie of fantasy sports is increasingly hopping offline. Destination fantasy drafts—booking a trip for a league to draft in person at a select location—has grown from niche practice by the most ardent fantasy-heads like Bell, to events hosted by major hospitality providers.
“[A few guests] came to us with the idea that they wanted to bring a group down to host their fantasy draft,” says Paul Cohen, CEO of Colibri Boutique Hotels, which holds properties in Mexico and the Caribbean. “We’re like, that’s a great idea. So we went beyond that and invited others to come down and host their drafts as well.”
Cohen’s conversation sparked a collaboration with content creators and the local tourism board to invite leagues to The Draft at La Zebra: their first fantasy-led getaway hosted by former NFL head coach Rex Ryan. The four-day experience took place at a hotel in Tulum, Mexico, known for its sports bar and frequented by former athletes. The setup included dedicated draft rooms, and even draft tips from the veteran coach, with four-night packages starting at $850 per person.
“I think about 70 [guests] in total came down for the drafts,” Cohen says. “This will definitely be an annual event.”
Baha Mar in the Bahamas hosted its third-annual ESPN Fantasy Football Ultimate Draft in August. BetMGM held an online contest through their app for one league to win an all-expenses-paid trip to Las Vegas to draft. The Mohegan Sun FanDuel Sportsbook offers daily draft-centric packages that include food and drinks, plus a draft board and other swag. SoFi Stadium, home of the Rams and Chargers, held a draft party for leagues this season, as did single-A baseball franchises including the Fresno Grizzlies and Ontario Tower Buzzers.
TrophySmack, which specializes in custom championship trophies for fantasy leagues, has added draft-destination-centric offerings to its lineup, including easier-to-travel-with championship belts and custom draft boards for in-person get-togethers.
This year, they also became the official awards provider for Draft Nation, a fantasy football event at Circa Resort & Casino in Las Vegas that features live drafts and expert panels. TrophySmack also hosts drafts for the global Scott Fish Bowl fantasy football tournament that raises money for charity. TrophySmack CEO Matt Walsh tells FOS he estimates a five-fold increase in hosted destination-draft events in which they’ve been involved.
“Now, every single waking moment is on a screen. The opportunities to have a human connection, and hey, if that human connection can be ridiculously awesome and over-the-top and outrageous, sign me up, right?” he says.
Bell’s league, the Innsbrook Fantasy Football League, travels every year, while others do it to mark a league anniversary (or whenever its members can pull it off). A league commissioner or assigned member will discuss sites with its members and organize the trip, costs are usually split among members, and other activities may be also arranged around the draft. Golf and gambling are popular. Some leagues, like the one Lakewood, Ohio–based Jacob Rosen is in, tack on unique experiences, like crab boils in New Orleans and hiring a professional auctioneer to emcee their draft in Las Vegas.
“Once we noticed that we were all sticking together, we thought, ‘How can we take this to the next level?’ We don’t get to see each other all the time because we’re all married or having kids and life, work and all that stuff—you don’t have the freedom you did,” Bell says. “So [we look at] what can we do on an annual basis to make sure that we all get together at least one time a year, and all get to hang out and go through the memories of life that we’ve had over these 20-plus years of being together, or just have that one time a year that we do get that freedom to be boys again instead of grown men.”
They haven’t planned their trip for next year yet—though they hope to one day get to Australia.
Austin Szlendak, a San Francisco native going on his 15th year in the same league with his college friends, has similar motivations for traveling. His league, which has visited Palm Springs, San Luis Obispo, and Catalina Island in California, plus Scottsdale, Arizona and Lake Tahoe, Nevada, says the point is less about “an epic destination vacation.”
“As you get older and responsibilities go up, it gets harder and harder to plan trips in general with buddies,” Szlendak says. “I just feel lucky that I have 12 friends that are as obsessed with watching football and fandom of the NFL as I am. It makes it a hell of a lot easier to sell it to your home life, ‘Hey, I’m going away for a weekend and this is what I love.’”
