Fantasy sports as a social experience
For the past two NFL seasons we have run an office fantasy league with the team at Heist. The majority of the people we work with don’t have any experience playing, watching, understanding or even caring about football, so our initial expectations on how popular this would be were low. Instead, it has become a favourite activity around the office, and a hilarious look at how some newcomers approach fantasy sports.
Take the Thunder Buddies for instance, they drafted their team based purely on the neck size of players. The Lions from Zion drafted as many Jewish players as they could. Both strategies yielded wildly different results, but it didn’t matter because September through February, the conversation around the office is dominated by the various happenings in the NFL each weekend.
From this experience, it has become clear that for a growing number of people fantasy sports can become a popular activity, not for the game itself, but because it is a platform for a shared social experience.
Playing for the fun of it
This experience is not unique to our team. More and more coworkers, family members and friends being introduced to fantasy sports every year by the dedicated fantasy players they know.
For this type of newcomer, the appeal in the game differs from the traditional fantasy sports participant. Typically they are not coming into the game because they are sports fans, instead there is an additional layer on top of the game that is more appealing for them.
While the competition, stat tracking, and smack talking is relevant, that is not the focus. Fantasy is a way to have a shared interest, hobby and topic of conversation. It is a way to make the experience of watching the game itself a social one.
For many people, the primary goal of playing fantasy sports isn’t to compete against their friends, it’s to play with them.
Broadening the appeal of fantasy
Fantasy sports platforms are pushing to grow their audiences and capture a bigger piece of the ever-growing revenue the industry is seeing. To achieve this, they are looking to evolve their fantasy sports products to attract more new participants with:
Shorter gameplay — daily game mean fantasy is no longer a season-long commitment, and instead you can begin and end your involvement over the course of an evening.
Different game mechanics— streak-pickers, prediction challenges and tournament challenges all bring different means of playing to win.
While this does offer a different style of gameplay, the user experience of all of the products are focused exclusively on the competitive aspect of fantasy sports, and allot few features or space to the social elements of the game.
The needs of the social poolie
Looking at the Heist Football League as a customer research group of 12, there are a couple of needs that have emerged for social fantasy sports participants that are currently being unmet by the products available:
The game is a platform for conversation — though most people watch the games on their own, they want to share the experience with their friends. They want to ask questions, discuss, make jokes and have a laugh with someone about what is happening in the game.
When OBJ made ‘the catch’, almost everyone in our league ran to their phones or Slack to share their ‘holy shit!’ and ‘can you believe it?’ There are dozens of these moments that take place each week, and this conversation is where social players get the most value out of the fantasy game.
This is a cultural conversation — Sports have become a topic of cultural conversation, and because of that the conversation goes well beyond the stat lines, plays and results. For social fantasy players, the on-field play is secondary to the moments they share together.
Within minutes after ‘the catch’, it became clear that the most important aspect of that play was the look on the sideline photographer’s face as he was too busy gawking to capture the shot of a lifetime. Scouring Reddit and Twitter to find and share memes, GIFs and jokes about this poor guy quickly overshadowed the game itself, both on-field and in fantasy.
But that was okay, because that is the purpose of playing fantasy sport for us. It is a platform to have fun, get some laughs, and most importantly, share the experience.
Unfortunately, all of this conversation is happening outside of the fantasy products we use, because they are not designed in a way that is easy or appealing for the social player to do so.
Adding the social layer to fantasy products
As fantasy sports platforms continue to search for new audiences, the design of the products must evolve to meet the needs of customers who have different needs from their experiences.
While existing fantasy sports products are being used as platforms for new players looking for a social experience, the user experience in these products needs an additional layer in order to foster, support and grow that experience for social players.
If you want to chat more about this, I’m game. Drop me a line rob@heistmade.com or @therobhayes
