Re-emergence of Fantasy Sports in USA (FS 2.0)
After a long roller coaster journey full of legalities, questions and confusion, finally the fantasy sportsindustry has reached a much stable and strong position. The dust has settled and almost all the issues are resolved with new regulations and guidelines. We are very clear on where DFS can be played and where not in the USA. The New York case, which was the biggest and most followed battlefield has been resolved in favour of DFS with a bill been signed by Governor Cuomo.
“We are on the verge of looking at a new ERA of Fantasy Sports”
Let’s take a deeper dive to understand what is it there for us in this new generation of fantasy sports as fantasy sports players and business owners.
Season Long Fantasy Sports
Despite several legal challenges and battles in last 2 years, season long format of the game has never been the area of concern. No major concerns have ever been raised about legality of this format of the game. From the view of an operator, season long is the safest format that one can offer in US market. This format ensures that users have followed their sports/leagues from a different perspective altogether. Users get an opportunity to show their skills and following of a sports or league. Even sports leagues understand the benefit of this format and have official partnerships with fantasy sports providers.
Daily Fantasy Sports
DFS is the younger and naughtier baby of fantasy sports market in the USA. It’s all about pace, strategy, skills, and passion for sports. DFS has proved itself in the last decade resulting in an exceptional growth in the number of players playing in USA and Canada. As per FSTA’s recent report, 19% of total fantasy sports players play DFS exclusively. Operators have been coming up with new formats and twists to this gameplay ensuring that users/sports fans are always engaged and excited about it.
So what lies in future for us
Fantasy sports is looking at a bright future and positive business environment across the market. It’s all about prioritizing engagement and giving importance to casual users. The idea is to make a game that is not only meant of experts, strategists, and big time followers. Operators must come up with lighter formats of games which are easy to play and win and games which are created for segments of users like armatures, experts and pros ensuring users will similar skill set plays against each other making the game fair and transparent.
Industry leaders like Fanduel and Draft king have understood this very well and it is clearly reflecting in the new feature they have launched in recent past. They have come up with small line-up games, games only for armatures/casual players, private group games where users can create a closed group of friends and play with them etc.
We, at Techracers, believe that fantasy sports operators can achieve new levels of success when innovation, data, and technology works together keeping end users engagement on top of their minds. We work as design, development and consulting partners with fantasy sports startup businesses, sports leagues and media groups to ensure products that reflect their vision and ideas completely.
