‘Season long’ fantasy sports is becoming more competitive

The ‘season long’ fantasy gaming space is becoming more crowded following moves by daily fantasy sports market leaders FanDuel and DraftKings into the sector.

This month FanDuel has launched Friends Mode, a bold new feature that takes on the bigger, more entrenched “season-long” fantasy sports providers by allowing users to set up private, recurring leagues to play against friends every week of the season.

The format of this is still “daily” fantasy, where users can draft a new team, but by making it recurring, and closed for friends, it essentially becomes a season-long structure.

FanDuel has openly referred to the season-long nature of the new facility, and CEO Nigel Eccles drove the point home this week when he referred to the product as “season long” and commented:

“Our business is growing; we’re expanding into new areas. And we’re going to be competing directly against ESPN, Yahoo, and other fantasy providers. Friends Mode is going to transform fantasy sports.”

Eccles if possibly miffed by an ‘investigative’ and largely negative ESPN article earlier this week on the alleged implosion of the daily fantasy sports vertical.

The article itself became a target for criticism for allegedly being “hyberbolic and slanted.” Even the venerable Fortune business publication slammed the piece.

The other daily fantasy sports standard bearer, DraftKings, has also been active in penetrating the ‘season long’ sector this month, launching its “Leagues” product on August 16.

This is a similar product to the FanDuel offering, and competes directly with Yahoo following the latter’s incursion into the daily fantasy sports field with a hybrid new ‘daily fantasy in a season-long setting’ product titled the Yahoo Cup.

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