Complete Guide to Daily Fantasy Sports App Development You would see a lot of advertisements for daily fantasy apps these days. It may seem to be a new trend in the market to you. But, is it? No, it is not. Fantasy sports have been a popular trend among sports enthusiasts for many decades. The evolution of the internet simplified the process by introducing digital elements to fantasy gaming. In recent years, we witnessed a surge in the usage of mobile applications. Among the most popular examples of enterprise mobility, daily fantasy sports app development is one of them. As per Industry Research, the market revenue of fantasy gaming is all set to reach 32,078 million USD in 2025, which was 15,680 million USD in 2019, at the CAGR of 12.67%. There is a large pool of opportunities for business leaders thinking to invest in the DFS app market. But, there might be several questions you might want to know as a decision-maker. In this guide, we are going to cover all you need to know about fantasy sports app development. The outline of the blog will include; Background of Fantasy Sports How Does a Fantasy Sports App Make Money? Six Most Popular Fantasy App Examples Features You Must Add to Your DFS App
Technology Stack for Building a Fantasy Sports App How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Fantasy Sports App? The Burning Question: Are Fantasy Sports Apps Legal? Future of Fantasy Sports Apps How Can We Help You?
Background of Fantasy Sports The fundamental concept of fantasy sports allowed participants to create teams of players participating in a real game. They would earn points respective to each player’s score as per the game’s rules. Fantasy sports started being practiced after the end of the second world war. Golf was one of the earlier games fantasy sports competitions were played on, followed by Football and Baseball. The simplicity of rules made participants take part and earn profit from such games. With the advent of digital applications, businesses digitized the concept of fantasy sports and transformed them into a big industry. Today, we have fantasy sports applications that support multiple games. Moreover, with a drastic increase in the popularity of franchise-based leagues such as the National Basketball Association (NBA), Australian Football League (Aussie rules) and National Rugby League (rugby league), and Indian Premier League (IPL), the fantasy sports market has expanded further with the inclusion of dedicated game lobbies for these tournaments.
How Does a Fantasy Sports App Make Money? Creating, launching, and managing a fantasy sports app can be a costly process. The expanded market has increased competition. Even if you hire a top-most app development company, you would need to market it properly to get the right exposure for the product. It means that you would need a product that provides you a high return on investment when released for the customers. So, can a fantasy sports app do it for you? The answer is, yes, it can. But, how does a daily fantasy sports app earn its revenues? Well, there are several ways to do it.
Buy-In Charges You can ask the app users to pay for setting up the game. You can take your commission for providing them the space for launching fantasy leagues. It is one of the most common ways to earn your revenues from a fantasy sports app.
In-App Ads Since the audience of fantasy sports apps is wide, they are considered an ideal choice for showing ads. You can integrate Google AdMob to show ads on your sports fantasy app.
Partnering With Third-Party Portals
You can partner with third-party service providers and affiliate their products or services through your applications. Using such an approach can make your app more personalized and can also create an additional source of revenue.
Six Most Popular Fantasy App Examples
You can consolidate the strengths of the top-most fantasy apps to make a complete, user-oriented, and revenue-generating app for your business.
Considering the parameters like user interface, user experience, revenues, personalization, and popularity, we have listed out six best-performing fantasy apps for you. You can take your inspiration from the below-mentioned DFS apps and get a clearer image of what your dream product will be like.
CBS Fantasy Sports CBS Sports is a complete digital sports platform that is dedicated to providing news and fantasy leagues. You can play different types of fantasy games using the CBS fantasy sports platform that includes football, baseball, basketball, and hockey. The platform is widely popular in the American region.
ESPN Fantasy Sports ESPN is an American sports channel with a global audience. The sports network has its own fantasy sports app on app distribution platforms. Users of this application can create fantasy leagues of different games including football, basketball, baseball, or hockey. The app has several user-oriented features such as drafting fantasy teams, real-time matches, and pro game scoring.
FanDuel FanDuel is among the largest fantasy sports platforms based in the United States. Users can create their fantasy teams for different leagues, i.e. NFL, NBA, PGA, NCAA, MLB, NHL, Premier League Soccer, and Champions League Soccer. You can choose a contest, draft your team, watch the score in real-time and win. The platform has become a popular and credible choice for its audience in the region.
Yahoo Fantasy Sports
Yahoo is a popular name in the world of the internet. Its fantasy app has also attained immense popularity for its rich-featured and interactive performance. Users have played private and public leagues based on daily leagues and tournaments.
DraftKings Founded in 2012, DraftKings is also a widely popular daily fantasy and sports betting app company based in the United States. Their application offers many fantasy league options at affordable packages. Users can play head-to-head, 50/50, and three-person leagues using DraftKings. The platform multi-game fantasy leagues that include games like basketball, golf, baseball, soccer, football, hockey, and even Nascar, MMA, and the CFL.
Dream11 Founded in 2008, Dream11 is an Indian fantasy sports app. The application also features multi-sports fantasy leagues. The market growth of the company has been spectacular. Their interactive user interface and marketing approach have led to the first gaming platform being a unicorn.
Features You Must Add to Your DFS App Among so many contenders in the market, how would you make your app stand out from others? There are two ways to do it; keep your app highly personalized by including adequate user-oriented features and implement an effective product marketing strategy.
Social Login Most of the applications these days, including fantasy games, allow users to use the platform using their existing social media or email accounts. Such a feature enables fast, simplified, and authenticated user login.
Leaderboard Since we are talking about a fantasy gaming platform where many users would be participating in public contests, it becomes obvious and necessary to feature an interactive and informative leaderboard where names and scores of top scorers will be shown.
Multiplayer Lobby You can invite multiple players to their game lobby. Such a feature would create a mutually competitive space on the platform within a particular range of users.
Manual & Integrated Data Feeds Users can add their teams, account details, and a lot more using the same platform. So, who manages this data? Integration of advanced data features such as feeds and manual input makes fantasy sports apps more personalized and user-oriented.
Ad-Space Your fantasy sports app can have an ad space from where admins can manage their affiliate marketing campaigns or other third-party ads.
Refer & Earn The referral policy is not something new. It is a well-known network marketing strategy to expand the user base. Fantasy sports apps are utilizing this user expansion policy on a large scale.
Multiple Payment Gateways
A lot of applications lose the opportunity to convert the customers when they fail to provide adequate payment alternatives. For fantasy sports apps, multiple payment gateways become a must-have feature.
Cryptocurrency Support Cryptocurrency is a futuristic payment option. You can enable your customers to pay or earn cryptocurrencies on your DFS app. A cryptocurrency trading app can be integrated or partnered with to make this happen. More features can be added with a more focused competitive analysis as the market of fantasy sports apps is still evolving and new features are being introduced.
Technology Stack for Building a Fantasy Sports App Which technologies can you use for daily fantasy sports app development? Technology stack can play a crucial role in defining the estimates of your budget. Even if you are not a techie, you can have a little understanding of what technologies an app development company might use to create your app. Let us explore this table.
ANDROID STUDIO
JAVA
KOTLIN
GOOGLE API
AWS
XCODE
SWIFT
OBJECTIVE C
HTML
CSS
XAMARIN
IONIC
FLUTTER
REACT
ANGULAR JS
SKETCH
ADOBE XD
ADOBE PHOTOSHOP
ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR
SASS
How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Fantasy Sports App? Before we move to answer the cost to create a fantasy sports app like FanDuel, DraftKings, or Dream11, we should know the fact that there can be variations in such cost estimations. The reason for varying costs of daily fantasy sports is the number of elements that play a crucial role in driving the estimation. The foundational process to develop a mobile app does not differ from any other app but there can be features that would need to be implemented with a different approach. From project complexity, product design, technology stack, the number of professionals being deployed on the project, development hours, geographical location of the service provider to the development platform, there can be a lot to consider to build a fantasy sports app. So, how much does it cost exactly to make a fantasy sports app? ‘Exactly?’ Well, there is nothing to be precise about it. But, we can certainly provide you with an idea about the costs. If we consider that you are hiring a dedicated team of developers from the UK or US-based app development company, it may cost you anywhere between $50 to $300 per hour. In comparison, the complete development of the product can range between $20,000 to $50,000.
The Burning Question: Are Fantasy Sports Apps Legal? In the United States and India, most of the states allow fantasy sports apps with legal status. In both countries, regional lawful agencies argued the same fact that fantasy sports apps are games of knowledge and skills which is not the case with online gambling or casino apps that are games of chance. There are a few states in both US and India where these apps are still seeking legal status So, what do we think about it? Our answer to this question would not matter as it is completely up to the law-making agencies to decide whether fantasy sports apps are to be legal in their respective countries or regions. NITI Aayog cited KPMG India’s report indicating that the user base of fantasy sports apps in India has grown at a staggering CAGR of 212% from 2 million users in June 2016 to 90 million users in December 2019. The report released by the think tank of the Indian government particularly consisted of the guiding principles for regulating all online fantasy sports apps in India. There are two options for governments or legal bodies; either they can simply ban the usage of such apps or they can regulate them under certain conditions. We have witnessed some examples where governments are making such apps highly taxable, just like alcohol or tobacco.
Future of Fantasy Sports Apps
Seeing the rate at which the fantasy sports industry is growing, it is highly probable that the industry will have a bright future in the years to come. With the inclusion of more technological tools, these apps will attract more users. Fantasy sports were there, but they came into extreme limelight when launched in the form of mobile applications. Before we conclude this blog, we are leaving with statistics that will help you understand the scope of creating a fantasy app even further. Market Size of the Fantasy Sports Sector in the United States (in billion US dollars)
Source: Statista
How Can We Help You? If you are interested in creating a fantasy sports app, we can help you utilize our expertise in developing such an app. With 14+ years of experience and extensive
industry exposure, we have been able to create result-oriented mobile applications of different niches for our customers across the globe. We provide affordable app design and development packages that make our dynamic services more accessible to more customers.
Conclusion The fantasy sports market is expanding, which means it is also becoming more competitive. If you are a business leader, you have to keep your plan business and technology-oriented. No one can guarantee you success for your fantasy app until you do not implement your plans correctly. The key to going well in this direction is to consult competent app development and business experts that speak by experience and examples. When it comes to investment, you have to be both realistic and practical about things.