How to Create a Fantasy Sports Website: A Short Guide for Your Fantasy Football Project

Serving a passionate community is probably one of the hardest challenges ever. Are fans your target audience? They are both predictable and loyal. 

You will have no problem modeling user expectations. 

Your challenge centers on managing them. Your main issue (linked to your management challenge) is delivering a high-quality fantasy sports website.

The finely tuned technical side of a fantasy sports solution is crucial for overall success. So is the entire experience.

In this post, we discuss how to start a fantasy sports website that sports fans will love.

A fantasy sport is a virtual competition tied to a real league or tournament. Its participants add to their virtual teams existing athletes that play a specific game or tournament, e.g., NBA or English Premier League. Fantasy sports participants’ success depends on selected athletes’ performance in real life. 

Daily fantasy sports (DFS) and season-long fantasy sports are two main formats.

Fantasy sports have a long history and culture around it. It once started as a tabletop game for basketball fans. The game evolved and gained traction with the help of major sports newspapers that sought to engage their subscribers throughout long sports seasons. 

The popularity of fantasy sports competitions skyrocketed with simplified access to the Internet and the launch of dedicated fantasy sports websites. 

The most popular sports types among fantasy players include:

The query ‘How to start a fantasy sports website’ is popular on such resources as Quora, Reddit, and Google.

Why? Because fans like the question ‘What if..?’

What if…

Plus, lots of other things—just let your imagination run wild.

In real life, even top-ranked squads lose competitions. 

In a fantasy football website, everything can turn out differently. 

This is why fantasy sports leagues are highly popular competitive games. 

Fantasy sport is a chance to prove theory with practice. It combines a sports manager, a betting office, and a poker tournament. Nevertheless, a fantasy football tournament does not look like any of that.

A gamer becomes a team manager. However, unlike the sports manager, the team consists of real athletes.

Gamers choose players who they think will do their best and get points based on their individual achievements in actual games (e.g., Théo Hernandez scored two goals and got a yellow card in the Champions League; therefore, gamers who picked him get +250 for the goals but –20 for the card).

Both betting and fantasy sports are games with unpredictable information, so gamers always deal with uncertainty. However, in betting, participants pick up what is available to them. In a fantasy game, players are the ones who define (i.e., get control over) the squad.

Unlike poker, fantasy football lasts as long as a real tournament lasts. Gamers do not win or lose everything immediately in one game just by being eliminated unless they play DFS.

Therefore, success in fantasy sports depends on various factors we call knowledge and experience, not just luck or prophecy. Beating others in fantasy tournaments will quickly show how brilliant someone’s ideas are.

But if you want to attract rabid fans, you must be able to answer the question: How do you create a fantasy sports website? Let’s analyze this in further detail.

When you make a new fantasy football website, you rarely revolutionize website development. This type of competition has been around for several decades. Its basic structure and modules are similar to those used to create a betting service or a trading platform. 

Yet, the formula for starting a fantasy football website differs from that of a betting competition in its goals and limitations.

For instance, daily fantasy sports competitions are still illegal in some US states, being considered a game of luck and, thus, equated to betting. Identifying risks and blocks before moving to software development is always wise.

Hence, the typical workflow needed to create fantasy sports websites looks the following way:

The IT Craft team receives a client request and schedules a call to specify business needs and limitations. The team turns the client response into a set of project requirements.

Those serve as the basis for estimating a project budget and timeline. The team suggests an implementation path and tech stack. When parties settle details, website development commences.

Design is the first step. Our designer creates mockups of all pages for fantasy football websites and sends them to the client for review. An appealing design is crucial for project success. Several iterations can be required to produce the best look and feel.

Engineers create the fantasy sports website’s front and back ends. The front end is where users interact with their devices, and the back end is where all calculations, data storage, and exchange occur. Both are equally important for smooth gaming.

It is important to create a service that the owner can manage independently. Therefore, we develop an easy-to-adjust administration panel for any responsible person to set up rules, manage winnings, and close the squads at a designated time. This blocks any further changes and prevents cheating.

An important step. We integrate a statistics provider based on a client’s preferences. The provider ensures quick, reliable match data delivery, i.e., trustworthy calculations.

Payment service providers are integrated into fantasy football websites to manage account funds and pay out winnings.

Testing takes place during the development stage. When a part of the functionality is ready, QA engineers examine its integrity, usability, and correspondence to system requirements.

An important note is that product owners can only test their fantasy football services during football matches, usually once or twice a week. Everyone must wait until the next match day to see improvements.

We can launch your website in the cloud, a preferred data center, or your internal server, whatever you choose. A maintenance team sets up the environment and helps you run your service if required. It ensures fast scaling when user demand skyrockets.

The team needs to focus on two major product parts, user functionality, and admin features during fantasy sports software development:

Simplify this step as much as possible to overcome user inertia. Still, remember to comply with local regulations, such as the minimum registration age.

Create open featured contests, which users can join immediately. Or, let them start their competition. It can be open or invitation-only.

This is the key feature of a fantasy football website. Delivering well-balanced game mechanics that require both skills and luck is crucial.

Both open commentaries during a live match and private messages are vital for maintaining user interest.

Users see ongoing and upcoming fantasy sports events from here. They can move to a specific event, check real-time feed and results, and more.

Unlocked achievements and rewards increase playability and decrease churn rate.

Offer incentives for inviting friends to increase user outreach.

History of past events helps users learn and improve their performance in the future.

Timely notifications on upcoming contests, progress in ongoing events, and changes in user rankings increase engagement. 

Integrate payment methods that are popular in a specific region. Before, research laws and authorizations. 

Admins manage and recover access to user profiles. They detect and block bots and cheaters.

Set up a new open contest dedicated to a major sports event, e.g., CS Major Championship or new NBA season.

It is crucial to update the website’s rules fast once game mechanics have lost their balance or the real game rules have been changed.

Collected data lets the business make informed decisions on system improvements and development direction.

Usually, the system updates leaderboards automatically. Still, control and timely intervention are required.

This functionality lets admins check a payment’s status and contact the payment service provider with a specific error.

Seamless integrations are crucial for successful promo campaigns. 

Admins can manage the rules of loyalty programs flexibly, thus attracting users to specific (sponsored) tournaments.

An alert system enables admins to detect glitches and malicious activities immediately.

Launch an AI advisor to help users learn faster and have more fun while playing. 

Quizzes, stylish eight-bit mini-games, and featured highlights help maintain user engagement during the long season.

It is wise to plan multi-language support in advance. Time-consuming modifications are required to turn an existing single-language website into a multi-language one.

Below is our list of core topics that challenge fantasy football game development and their respective solutions:

HTML/CSS/JavaScript are the classic technologies developers use to create fantasy sports websites.

React/Angular/Vue frameworks decrease the time needed to build and update an interactive UI.

Yii2, Node.js, and RoR frameworks serve as a backbone. These open-source frameworks ensure quick response, stability, and data integrity.

Some (not all) actions against cheating:

… and more

The list of integrated services is wide. It highly depends on your specific requirements and targeted regions. The list includes:

… and more

It is impossible to imagine a fantasy football service unavailable for smartphones. Such a limited service will miss its core audience. How to reach smartphone users? Certainly, the best way to access them is to create a fantasy sports app. 

Still, many owners have constrained budgets to launch a fully featured fantasy sports app until their service grows in popularity. 

Is there any cost-effective approach to create a fantasy sports app?  

Yes, businesses should try hybrid fantasy sports app development. This means the development team can reuse many website components for fantasy sports app development. Fast delivery becomes possible.    

To make this happen, we use responsive design technology and mobile-ready frameworks, e.g., React Native or Progressive Web Apps (PWA). 

All screens display beautifully on both desktop and mobile devices. Users enjoy great app performance. Updates are fast.

Yes, it is.

When businesses create fantasy sports websites, they enter a growing market. The number of active fantasy sports players has almost doubled, from 32m in 2010 to 62.5 in 2022, according to a report by Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association. 19% of 18+ Americans play fantasy sports. The market is far from saturation.

According to Statista research, the number of fantasy sports businesses has increased across the USA from 244 to 651 within the last decade, from 2013 to 2023. So is the size of the US market, which reached $9.48B in 2022.

Therefore, there is room for new products. Of course, you need to focus on an idea, i.e., think about how to create a fantasy sports website people would want to try. Also, hire a reliable development company that helps you launch it for a reasonable investment.

Fantasy sports development is one of IT Craft’s main specializations. Here is how we responded to business’s concerns about building websites of decent quality and on a budget:

The development team has all the skills needed to create fantasy sports websites. It works on customization, design, integration of third-party resources, testing, and adjustment.

A custom-built fantasy sports engine is based on our expertise. Existing modules enable source code reuse. The development process becomes cost-effective.

IT Craft’s fantasy football developers are ready to step in anytime. We rescue derailed projects, modernize tech stack, prepare for user growth, expand functionality, and beyond.

Here are two of many successful projects:

The client wanted to launch an app for risk-free fantasy sports experiences. 

IT Craft took over the client’s project, which had lost its pace. It used the fantasy sports engine to deliver an envisaged iOS app quickly. 

The team helped with app updates and maintenance, prolonging the app lifecycle.

The IT Craft team elaborated on project requirements and used its internal engine to launch an MVP by the start of Copa America. 

The service sparked user interest, enabling the client to expand to several leagues and competitions. Another fantasy sports operator eventually acquired the service.

Fantasy football is addictive and time-consuming. Tournament participation requires regular changes in the virtual squad to compete with other gamers. Assuming regular championships last about nine months, this would be fine for those who live and breathe the game.

IT Craft has accumulated expertise in creating a fantasy sports website and a dedicated mobile app. Our clients have their fantasy football competitions delivered faster and for less.

We can help with any solution. You can start either with website development or with fantasy sports app development.