A Complete Guide to Fantasy Sports App Development

59.3 million.

That’s the total number of fantasy sports players in the USA and Canada alone.

This shows that fantasy sports is a lucrative industry. Many international and regional corporations are dabbing into fantasy sports app development.

Are you also thinking of developing a fantasy sports app? Then you have landed on the right page. This blog aims to explain everything about how to create a fantasy sports app. With this detailed blog post, you should be able to explore the various challenges, trends, and tech stacks involved in developing Android and iOS fantasy sports apps.

Furthermore, you can choose to hire Android app developers or iOS developers to assist you with seamless development.

An index of the topics that this post covers:

• Overview of fantasy sports app development market
• How fantasy app works
• Knowing competitors – knowing popular apps in the market
• Developing your unique selling point
• Features to include
• Following tech trends to make your app better
• Tech stack for fantasy sports app development
• Challenges in fantasy sports app development
• How to monetize your app

Fantasy Sports App Development – Market Overview

With more fantasy sports applications coming in, this market is one of the fastest growing businesses in the world. Studies predict the market size to reach $48.6 billion by 2027.

Before you create fantasy app, here are some factors to consider. They will help you decide what category you wish to choose whether it is fantasy football app development, Cricket, or anything else.

Football, baseball, basketball, hockey, and cricket are some popular types in fantasy sports. The football segment accounts for the major fantasy sports market share. However, the fantasy cricket segment is likely to grow with the highest CAGR of 17.9% from 2021-2027.

By platform, the market is divided into website, and mobile application. In terms of market share, mobile application segment leads. Reports predict this segment would exhibit the highest CAGR of 14.8% during 2020-2027.

As discussed above, we see some solid competition between football and cricket. The cricket market is a new phenomenon. It’s a good time for someone like you to launch an app and ensure a strong market position. When it comes to choosing a platform, as you can see, mobile applications win.

Now that you have the basic information to create fantasy app, it’s time to know how these apps work.

How Fantasy Sports App Works

Before we talk about how to build a fantasy sports app, let’s check how these apps work!

Users assemble virtual teams of real players. These teams compete based on the statistical performance of those players’ in actual games.

The workflow of a fantasy app looks something like this:

1. Choose the Match: After login and OTP verification, users select a match of their choice.
2. Form a Team: the next step is to form a team as per the requirements of the game. For instance, if a user selects cricket, they need a team of 11 players. There are many ways to form a team. Most prominently used ways are Serpentine, Auction based and offline drafting.
3. Captain: the users select a captain of the team.
4. Team Division: as per the rules of the game, the user forms multiple teams. Virtual players too can join the team of their choice.
5. Team Management: users can modify the team they created at any point during the game.
6. Reward Distribution: players receive points as per their performance. The team with the highest points is the winner.

Examples of Fantasy Sports App

If you want to create fantasy app, begin with analyzing companies who are into this industry. Study what they offer, what the features are, what is their app design like. This will provide a clear understanding of the industry scenario.

Secondly, this will help you know your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. You can always make competitors’ weaknesses your strength and attract more users. Analyzing competitors doesn’t mean you should copy what they are doing. Observe them and come up with the best creative ideas. Here are some of the top fantasy sports apps:

1. FanDuel Mobile: FanDuel, the daily fantasy sports app in the United States. It became the first official sports betting partner of the National Hockey League. This iOS-compatible application conducts huge contests transforming players into overnight millionaires. FanDuel offers sportsbook, online casino, and online horse race betting products and services.
   Want to develop an app like FanDuel Mobile? Hire iOS developers from Biztech and let us know about your requirements. Our team will help you construct a robust, secure, and highly-profitable fantasy sports app.
2. Draftkings Mobile: Established in 2012, Draftkings is an American daily fantasy sports contest. It also works as a sportsbook operator that allows users to enter fantasy sports leagues and win money. This platform has around one million bets and has over 8 million users. This platform focuses on major American sports, tennis, mixed martial arts, etc.
3. Dream11: Dream11, India’s biggest fantasy sports app. In 2012, the company reported 1 million registered users. This grew to 2 million in 2016 and to 45 million in 2018. The platform allows users to create teams and play with the real-time performance of the players. Users can win rewards and prizes by earning more points and gaining top ranks. The gaming platform has multiple sports such as cricket, football, basketball, kabaddi, hockey, volleyball, handball and baseball.

Looking for solutions to create fantasy app? We can assist you in building your app. Whether it’s creating a clone app solution, or a custom feature, let’s see what suits best your requirements.

How to Create a Fantasy Sports App – Highlighting your USP

Think of one thing that will set you apart in this growing industry. It could be anything, a promise to deliver the best gaming experience, or functionality that a user won’t find in other apps.

Let’s see some features that can work as your unique selling point before we get to know how to make fantasy apps successfully.

1. Referral and bonuses – Referral helps users to get extra points when a new user joins with their referral code. Such free points are something that sports fans crave for. Even DraftKings and Fanduel include this approach for increased user engagement. This can work as a marketing strategy where with the help of existing users, you attract new audiences to your platform. This will help you boost your foot traffic.
2. Achievement badge – An achievement badge works as a gamification feature. Today, many applications are using gamification to increase user engagement. When the user reaches a certain level in the game, a badge appears on their profile. This is a good way to keep users motivated and engaged on your fantasy sports app platform. You can take a step ahead by providing a social sharing option. When users share their achievement with their friends on social media, you are likely to get new followers and registered users. You can even have other gamified elements like virtual goods, quizzes, progress display, etc.

Now that we have started discussing features you need to create fantasy app, let’s talk about them in detail.

Features to Include in Fantasy Sports App Development

These are some essential features that you need to consider when you create fantasy app.

• Real-Time Analytics – users today have become more demanding. They want real-time analytics that can help them improve performance. When you create fantasy app, consider including features like activity analysis and live tracking to increase user engagement.
• Customization – personalization is no longer an option. Users don’t just want what comes with the app. They expect app owners to give them the ability to customize their feed. You can do so by letting the users customize tournaments to compete with other players. You can even personalize push notifications for offers, game levels, etc.
• Live Streaming of Video – live streaming feature is a good way to monetize your app. You can include the feature in the premium version of your app where users can stream the match live and get all updates. Further, to increase re-engagement you can provide match highlights by showing short videos.
• Gamification – in the above section, we talked about how gamification is effective in increasing engagement. Let’s see what more similar features you can include in your app.> Player prediction where users predict the name of the player and win points or get a certain rank.> Users participate in in-app quizzes to check their knowledge. Each correct answer bags them points or coins which they can later use to unlock a level.

Now, let’s see what features an admin panel needs.

• Geo-location – with GPS position tracking and monitoring, you can send push alerts to users about ongoing tournaments around them.
• Customer Relationship Management – Integrating CRM in the application helps in generating responses for various users’ queries. This makes them feel attended. Users can further share their valuable feedback on the application. This is an effective way to enhance customer experience.
• Admin Dashboard – a must-have that displays all relevant information. This includes total matches, upcoming matches, LIVE matches, total participants, and total earnings. Moreover, a dashboard helps to check, manage, and update things like rewards, users, transactions, etc.
• Custom Mail Reminder System – with this feature, the admin can send custom mails to the participants informing them about upcoming matches, or share any information related to their players or team.

The features you include in your app depends upon your budget and other requirements. If you want to integrate any of these features in your app then we can help you. Let’s build a feature-rich app for your business.

Making Your App Better with Technologies

Given below are some ways of bringing sports and technology together to make your app remarkable.

1. Artificial Intelligence for Personalization

Artificial intelligence has the potential to elevate sports to a whole new level. Therefore, the application of AI in sports has become a common thing in recent years. You can utilize artificial intelligence to suggest the content that a user might like. For instance, sending personalized notifications or offering individualized contests based on available user data. Using deep learning algorithms, you can predict intentions based on user behavior. This can particularly help the admin. AI can offer deep CRM analytics that will help in knowing the user’s expectations and behavior. By partnering with a fantasy sports app development company, you can effectively leverage AI for offering personalized services.

2. AR/VR to Offer a Life-like Environment

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are generating possibilities for users to experience an immersive life-like environment. Sports companies with the help of smart glasses and 3D projections are experimenting to engage and entertain users. You can create a custom sports environment with augmented reality where the players and opponents are computer-generated. This will help give a realistic experience to users. You can even create 3D demo videos for any sport. This way, these technologies are the best solutions for offering entertainment in the industry.

3. Blockchain for a Secure Payment

Whether it’s subscription or selling merchandise, you need to offer a secure transaction that users trust. Blockchain is a decentralized technology network. This reduces the chances of fake transactions, documents or any other information. Integrating blockchain with the help of a fantasy sports app development company will ensure safety of information and increase processing speed. Secondly, this technology is changing the face of rewards and points in fantasy sports app development. With blockchain integration, players can pay or withdraw a winning amount in cryptocurrency.

4. Social Media Integration

For the app industry, social media has become an important tool for customer relations, marketing, and customer care. Here’s why you must integrate social media into your app.

• With social media, you can connect with users across the globe and inform them about your app.
• It’s a cost-effective way to increase brand awareness.
• Social sharing features can increase engagement as your existing users will share their experience on social media platforms with thousands of followers.
• Social media integration can improve your app’s functionality by allowing users to login with their social media account.

App Design that Users Love

When you create fantasy app, keep in mind that data is imperative. It’s not like a video game where the user presses the key faster to win. Users playing fantasy sports are more calculative and demand data such as performance score, player data, etc. Therefore, your focus should be on designing an app that makes this analysis of data easier. From user profile to scoreboard, make sure the information is easy to access and there is less clutter. This brings us to having a minimal UI to have a maximum impact. This means the mobile screen should look clean, with no extra elements, easy navigation, and choosing the right color palette and fonts.

Second comes user experience. The most important component of UX in fantasy sports app development is onboarding. The app’s initial screen i.e. the sign-in or log-in page should create a smooth user experience for the user. Make sure that the onboarding process is not too lengthy or descriptive. Otherwise users are likely to avoid signing in. With the help of a fantasy app development company, you can take care of all these points.

Wondering what UI/UX practices you should follow? Let’s help you create fantasy app with an intuitive and user-friendly design.

By now you should know how to create fantasy apps and the features to use. But, which technologies should you choose for building such an app? Let’s take a look!

Technology Stack for Fantasy Sports App Development

The app’s performance depends a lot on the technology combination that you choose during its development. While there are a number of elements that affect the choice of tech tools. Here’s a recommended tech stack.

Challenges in Developing Fantasy Sports app

The biggest challenge is not during fantasy sports app development but after you develop the app. The competition in the market is tough. The popular platforms have that marketing expertise and budget. The question is how you will attract the traffic towards your app.

Creating a great platform is not enough. You need to engage and retain the users. Have engaging content on your platform like prediction articles/videos, match reports, etc. Influencer marketing is another option. Yes, it’s possible with a tight budget. There’s something called micro-influencers – influencers with a dedicated following 10k-100k. They are likely to charge a small fee, and they actually have a loyal community who do look to them for recommendations.

If not anything then FB promotions, paid marketing, social media, email marketing, etc. are always there for your rescue.

Our marketing team can guide you through forming an app promotion strategy. Does your business need the power of social media or influencer marketing, let’s help you find out.

Understanding the Revenue Model of Fantasy Sports App

Do these app owners earn money? Yes. But how? Let’s find out. Once you have your app, you can utilize these strategies to monetize your fantasy sports app.

1. Advertisements: Mobile ads are one of the most profitable revenue models for fantasy sports app. CBS, Yahoo, Disney earn a huge amount of their earnings through advertising. They are an easy way to start earning. You display commercials inside the app and the ad networks pay you. The amount depends on the genre of the app and the kind of ad unit. For example, the average revenue of rewarded video ads per impression in the US is $0.02.
2. Merchandise: Another way to earn is by selling merchandise. You can charge for custom t-shirts with a photo of famous sports players.
3. Freemium: In this model, the users can download the app for free, but they can get complete access to advanced functionality only after they make a purchase. You can utilize this approach where you give additional features, ad-free gaming, etc. only to paid users.
4. Participation Fees: You can earn by charging participation fees from the user. Two popular fantasy sports apps named DraftKings and FanDuel, organize contests and charge a participation fee for the same. Most of their revenues come from these cash-prize contests.

Over to You

By now you have enough information to create fantasy app. If you want to develop a fantasy app, you need to partner with a fantasy app development company. We can help you work on your idea and develop an app from scratch.

Our process typically includes – analysis phase where we research and understand the scope of your project. After preparing the initial design and app flow, we move on to the development phase. After development, when our QA team is confident that the app is all-ready without any glitches, we hand it over to you. The marketing experts at Biztech can help you promote your app and reach the right audience. To create fantasy app, contact us and our team will get back to you with a detailed estimation.

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