Yahoo Fantasy Sports app: a new design and new content for football fans

Yahoo is a giant in the world of fantasy sports, but its app hasn’t seen a significant update in years. Ahead of the 2024 NFL season, however, the company is releasing a completely revamped version of the Yahoo Fantasy Sports App which brings a cleaner design and a huge amount of new content for fantasy players.

The new app is divided into three sections. The first thing that appears when you open the app is a list of all your fantasy teams across all sports – football is by far the most popular, but Yahoo also offers fantasy baseball, basketball and more, and some of the The team’s goal with the new app is to get you playing new fantasy games. There’s also a News tab with dedicated content for fantasy players and a Scores tab that shows all the scores that matter to you and your fantasy teams. Previously, all of this content was separate in the Yahoo Sports app, but now it’s right next to your fantasy games.

As for the basic details of the fantasy game, little has changed. Yahoo has cleaned up the app’s design so you can see your entire team on screen at once and switch between teams more easily. With new logos and icons, you can also customize your team, but the app should feel familiar to anyone who has used it before. As old as the app is, Yahoo Sports President Ryan Spoon says it’s still a huge success. It wasn’t intended to be a complete reboot, just an improvement.

The general idea behind the new app, Spoon told me, is to make it a more complete experience for fans. “When I wake up on Sunday,” he says, “give me the news. Let me change my team. And during the game, let me watch my team or the box score.” Previously, this process required two or three different applications; Yahoo now expects you to do everything in one place.

One good thing about creating a fantasy football app, says Spoon, is that you know exactly how people will use it. “Tuesday morning is ‘tell me what happened during the week and establish the waiver transfer,’” says Spoon. “Wednesday is an exemption transfer.” From Thursday to Monday night, it’s all about lineup adjustments and a million check-ins a day to see how your team is doing. Rinse and repeat, about 14 weeks a year.

Yahoo is working to improve every part of this process, including an eventual redesign of the desktop web app, but Spoon says mobile is the center of the experience. “85% of our users used the mobile app last year,” he says, “and more than two-thirds of them used it every day. Usage is very high.”

Since Spoon left ESPN for Yahoo about a year ago, he has been adding new content and features to the entire Yahoo Sports platform. As football begins this year, there will be more fantasy-related news, more fantasy-related shows, and more everything fantasy-related. Despite all its ups and downs as a company, Yahoo has somehow remained one of the most important fantasy platforms – and that seems to be the centerpiece of everything Yahoo wants to do next.