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September 2017

FanDuel launches the Companion Fantasy Sports “Scout” application

By Sports app
[toc]The start of the NFL the season is a busy time for the daily fantasy sports operators. FanDuel has been particularly active as daily fantasy football intensifies, rolling out a number of tweaks and innovations for the new campaign.

Having already announced changes in “Leagues” and a new “Mini” mode, FanDuel now offers a free DFS companion app called Scout.

he joins DrafKings in this department, who deployed DK Live last year.

FanDuel Scout brings internal research

Most frequent DFS users rely on a variety of websites for weekly information. FanDuel tries to streamline the process for its customers, especially the less experienced among them. Launched last week, Scout aims to allow users to do light research without leaving the FanDuel brand.

The data is provided by the sports analysis company numberFire, which has established itself as an essential resource for comprehensive player statistics. It was acquired by FanDuel in 2015, and its content is now available in Scout itself.

Senior Director of Communications of FanDuel, emily bass, developed on the game plan for the application:

FanDuel Scout is our way of making sure that you are not only up to date with the news, but also have all of numberFire’s moneyball-like information, analysis and insight right at your fingertips.

Plus, because it’s a native mobile app, we’ll be able to send all kinds of useful and highly personalized stuff right to your phone: weather, roster changes, starting lineups, etc.

A pre-game tool, mainly

Scout connects directly to users’ FanDuel accounts, allowing them to import queues and follow the players during the week.

The “News” tab is the main portal, providing league-wide updates. The application displays depth maps for positions of competence, too, with betting lines and meteorological data for each game.

FanDuel has positioned it as a way to help level the playing field for recreational users who may not be familiar with the resources used by seasoned DFS shredders. (Like numberFire, for example.)

A watchlist feature allows users to follow a group of selected players. And the “My players” tab automatically imports a list of active players from the user’s formation (s). There are correspondence notes and game logs also for each player.

Scout is available for NFL and MLB for now, while the app lists NBA and NHL like “Coming soon”.

However, other features are missing.

FanDuel Scout vs. DK Live

Scout’s release is FanDuel’s response to DrafKings launch of its own “DK Live” application. The timing puts FanDuel a bit behind the curve; DK Live suffered important development since its launch.

DK Live data is already available for the four major US sports, plus Golf. Perhaps most notably, however, it does include some fantastic scoring information live in the app.

As with Scout, users can import the players they signed up for the week. But unlike Scout, DK Live tracks and updates fantastic scores in real time.

Real-time scoring allows DK Live to present a rich set of features. There is a color code “Big game” and “Red zone” notifications, as well as updates for scoring games that include point totals for players involved.

Users can also select an individual game to see the running fantastic totals for those two teams only. There is a “Driving tracker” to keep up with every possession in real time, too. It’s like having an interactive version of the NFL RedZone channel.

Here’s a look at the features of both:

Characteristic DK Live FanDuel Scout
Integration of the parental application Yes Yes
Filter “My players” Yes Yes
News in real time Yes Yes
Short content Yes Yes
Long content No Yes
Video content Yes No
Real time score Yes No
Betting lines No Yes
Weather reports No Yes

More development to come

Scout doesn’t have any of these features in the game. Not yet, at least. Another divergence from DraftKings, FanDuel has adapted its application to the pre-match process.

Bass says the launch is just the first step in a long grind, however:

One thing we always focus on is improving the experience for our players. Sometimes that shows up in things like new game formats like championships or new sports like WNBA, other times it’s completely new ideas like FanDuel Scout…

As the sports landscape changes and our users give us more and more feedback, we will be adding all kinds of cool new features to the app. We can’t say anything for sure, but the live score is definitely something we will see added to in the future.

Incorporating numberFire’s metrics is certainly a solid foundation to build on. Nonetheless, FanDuel will likely need to develop a few more features to make Scout as useful as expected. A live score would be a good start.

FanDuel Scout is available both on the App store and Google play.

Pickup Sports App Provides Community For Users – The Varsity

By Sports app

Alicia Luciani receives a pass on the left wing and runs towards me. As I try to steal the ball from her, she passes to her left foot. I can hear the collective sound of exasperated voices behind me. Luciani left, forcing me to chase after her in an attempt to prevent her from scoring.

It’s a Friday morning, just after 9:00 a.m. on the main campus of the University of Toronto, and a group of strangers are playing a 90-minute football game. All thanks to OpenSports, an application that allows users to organize and play pickup sports.

Co-founder and CEO James Gibbons believes OpenSports, launched in June 2016, can better serve people in transition to uncharted territory. It was created after Gibbons graduated from the University of Waterloo, when he and a friend realized they weren’t as physically active as they had been in the past.

“So we started looking around and there was Meetup which was more structured events and there was Facebook which was mostly your friends, and the idea that if you can get an Uber… basically anywhere in the world on demand you should be able to get a soccer game or someone to play tennis with on the go, ”Gibbons told University.

The application can provide users with the feeling of a structured community. Back Campus Fields are one of the primary locations for hosting football matches, the primary sport used by its 5,000 base. users.

“Alicia has led the attention in the demographics of football. We’ve seen soccer is this booming sport, we’ve seen people come to Toronto but they don’t know a lot of other people and soccer is this universal language for people to come together, ”added Gibbons. .

As Chief Marketing Officer and Co-Founder, Luciani employed a multi-channel and multiplatform marketing strategy, balancing the core aspects of interacting with users while gaming and publishing games on various social media platforms.

“We really ran with this idea and built the football community. This has been an important part of the process, then learning from the engagement in the field with the people who use the app and create and join games and play, ”said Luciani, MSc in Kinesiology and exercise science at the U of T.

“We may post links to these games on various channels like Facebook or Kijiji or Reddit or BlogTo, and it brings in people looking for sports. So we kind of reach them right where they’re looking, so we’re always trying to increase our digital marketing efforts, ”she added.

While the next step will be expansion into different regions, the co-founders are still determined to tackle the issue of women’s participation in sports, an issue they have seen illuminated by OpenSports.

“We’re trying to see how we can have more female-only events because there’s this huge drop in female attendance from high school to college,” Gibbons said.

Luciani added: “In general, women are always less represented in the sporting context, and so you can see it in a mixed football match that I organize that I will be the only woman or me and someone else. ‘other and people want to see more women there.

After the game I’m too tired to tackle Luciani’s quick lap or even recount the two embarrassing occasions where I was muscular. Conversations around me unfold as new and old friends discuss previous and future games.

“There was actually this funny story [about] those two guys taking a bike trip from Mexico City to Canada; Toronto was their very last stop, ”says Luciani. “They have driven 3,500 kilometers in a month and I’m out in the field playing a pickup game hosted by OpenSports at the back of campus one night… these two guys are coming to the field and they’re not even wearing proper football gear, but they’re good enough. And so afterwards the lights go out and I hang out with them a bit and I hear about their story and it’s amazing that they got here, their whole journey is about sport, inclusion and diversity and they saw that perfectly manifested over there on the ground at U of T. ”