The wait is almost over. There are just four days to go before the English Premier League kicks off in what is expected to be one of the closest fought contests in its 21 year history.

But that won’t be the only closely fought rivalry. As legendary Liverpool Football Club manager Bill Shankly famously said: “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that”.

And for the millions of office workers who play Fantasy Football it is just that. Topping their private company league at the end of the season is arguably more important than which professional team ends up lifting the coveted trophy. Pride and, above all, punters’ reputations, are at stake.

For many, including 3.3m North Americans that contribute around £3bn to participate in NFL fantasy games the honour and the slim hope of winning a grand prize of, for example, VIP tickets to the 2014 NFL Pro Bowl in Oahu, Hawaii is all that is at stake with real-money sports betting restricted to just four States, while online betting is strictly off limits nationwide.

Fantasy sports betting, however, is an area that has only recently been exploited with only two million of a total of around 5.5m to 7.5m UK players ever having placed a real-money bet.

But the appetite for this type of product is huge and, with the rise in popularity of social gaming on Facebook online and on mobile, traditional real-money operators are increasingly keen to use fantasy to attract an entirely new audience.

In regulated markets such as the UK, for example, a number of innovative products including Totelfootball have recently begun to whet the appetite of fantasy players who increasingly want to put their money where their mouth is. Bragging, banter and betting go hand-in-hand.

Fantasy is the ideal product to achieve that goal. Whereas traditional fantasy game play is not regulated under gambling legislation, betting on fantasy is and it is this type of game, under appropriate licensing, where we see the real upside for operators. Using fantasy as a Trojan horse for their core products, operators can hook players in and convert them having initially shown them a softer side to their gambling brand. We believe the fantasy channel will be hugely profitable in its own right for partner operators given the high margins associated with the product – which are guaranteed.

In the past many fantasy products have struggled due to the duration of the game with players losing interest as they fall down the leaderboard. This has been addressed, to an extent, with weekly and monthly prizes.

We see the potential as enormous. Liquidity will breed liquidity and, as players see others scooping six-figure prizes and games that are inherently enjoyable, player numbers and spend will increase.

Fantasy appeals to anyone who loves sport, likes a rush of adrenalin with a small wager and enjoys the process of being a football manager for the season. Anyone can play and it’s incredible how much more entertaining games become when one of your players is involved.