This game is like fantasy football, but for picking a pope

Mauro Vanetti describes himself as a “conclave geek.”

“People are usually not as much into conclaves as I am,” the Italian game developer told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. “I only watch TV during conclaves.”

It’s no surprise, then, that Vanetti is one of the brains behind Fantapapa, the hot new online game that has people building fantasy conclave teams to predict the new pope.

“It’s a really fun game to play with friends and have a laugh,” Italian student Federico La Rocca, 23, said. “Initially my dad sent it to me ironically, but now that it’s going to be the conclave, I decided to have a go and try it.”

‘Mock them in a good way’

More than 130 Catholic cardinals on Wednesday began the centuries-old ritual to elect a successor to Pope Francis.

But while the conclave itself takes place entirely in secret, people outside the Vatican are busy dissecting the politics at play and speculating on the possible outcome. 

Fantapapa taps into that energy, says Vanetti, allowing people to build fantasy football-style teams of the cardinals. The captain is the player’s pick for pope.

“The election of the pope might be seen as a very religious and pious event, but it’s also kind of a power grab in a way. So people like to imagine themselves within this plot,” he said.

“Or sometimes they want to express their distance from these kinds of manoeuvres. And that’s also something that games can do. They can make you feel inside something, or they can also make you kind of put things in perspective and make fun of them, mock them in a good way.”

By “a good way,” Vanetti means that he and his team were careful not to make light of people’s religious beliefs. 

“The target, in a way, of the game is mostly the institution. And, at least in Italy, even people that are strong believers, they are very easily critical towards the human organization, which is the Catholic Church,” he said.

While he’s not a believer himself, he says many Catholics seem to be enjoying Fantapapa.

“We even had a few priests playing,” he said.

‘The only prize you win is eternal glory’

Creating a fantasy league game about a conclave has its challenges. Unlike a sports game, the play-by-play drama of the conclave all happens behind closed Vatican doors.

“In a fantasy football game, all the players can score points during the actual games, while in the conclave, there’s only one winner, as everyone knows,” Vanetti said.

In Fantapapa, every time one of your chosen cardinals gets mentioned in the national news, you get points. But you get the biggest score — 1,000 points — if your captain gets elected pope. 

But now that the conclave is officially under way, the game is temporarily frozen. Only when the white smoke emerges from the Vatican chimney, signalling that a new pope has been chosen, will the Fantapapa winner be revealed. 

“The winner of Fantapapa doesn’t get anything material, and we wanted to be very clear about that,” Vanetti said.

Not only is betting on the new pope illegal in Italy, but Vanetti says he and his colleagues are anti-gambling advocates. 

“It’s an interesting way of also spoiling the market for the bookmakers,” he said. “The only prize you win is eternal glory, and it’s really going to be eternal because this is the first, and perhaps the last, Fantapapa ever.”

Pope betting very popular 

Pope betting is not illegal everywhere, and experts say the popularity of gambling on the future of the papacy is increasing worldwide.

It’s even topped the Europa League soccer tournament and Formula One drivers’ championship, said Sam Eaton, U.K. manager for Oddschecker, a leading online platform analyzing odds across sports, events and other betting markets.

“There’s a huge level of interest globally,” Eaton said. “I don’t think we’ve had a market like this where we’ve had so many countries interested in seeing odds.”

But, no matter what the odds say, nobody knows for sure who the next pope will be. In Fantapapa, Italian cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi is the leading the pack.

“Zuppi has some chances in the real world as well, but we believe that he was overinflated in the game just because he is the Archbishop of Bologna and he’s very likable,” Vanetti said. 

Vanetti says he picked Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle of the Philippines as his captain. 

“He’s got some chances, and he’s considered progressive,” he said.

While only a man can win the papacy, Vanetti says anyone can win Fantapapa, and a lot of players are women.

“Italian men, they — or should I say we —  tend to be very arrogant about how good we are at predicting events,” Vanetti said. “It’s a typical know-it-all attitude that’s very, very typical of Italian males. So I would really like a woman to win this.”