Role

UX Researcher

Marketing Lead

Duration

< 1 Month

Fantasy sports platforms are competitive by nature but often lack meaningful social engagement. Players must juggle multiple apps: one for managing leagues and another for communication, leading to fragmented experiences. FNTSY aims to solve this by creating an all-in-one platform that combines fantasy sports management with robust social features, fostering community and enhancing user engagement.

Problem Space

Fantasy sports apps like Yahoo Fantasy and ESPN focus primarily on league management but neglect the social interactions that drive engagement. As a result:


  • Players rely on external messaging apps, disrupting the experience.

  • Conversations about trades, drafts, or player performance are disorganized.

  • There is no dedicated space for casual, real-time discussions or content sharing.


This lack of integration limits the fun and collaborative spirit that fantasy sports thrive on.

Our Goal

To design a platform that seamlessly merges fantasy sports with social media features, enabling players to:

  • Interact easily with league members through group chats and discussion threads.

  • Share memes, stats, and highlights without leaving the app.

  • Foster stronger connections and drive engagement in a way that feels intuitive and fun.

Research

With limited time, we conducted a lean research phase, focusing on:


  • External Research: Examining existing platforms like Yahoo Fantasy, Sleeper, and ESPN to identify gaps in their offerings.

  • Interviews with Friends: I spoke with 3 fantasy sports enthusiasts in our friend group to understand pain points and desired features.


Key Insights:

  • Players wanted integrated chat and discussion tools.

  • Sharing memes and stats was common but required switching to apps like Instagram or WhatsApp.

  • Player-specific discussions were difficult to manage without cluttering group chats.

Design

This project was based on the concept of creating a new application and showcasing your reasoning on why you believe it would have an impact. Although the focus was less on the actual design, we still have a few screens and sample images from our mock marketing campaign below.

Marketing

This project was completed for a course called 'digital lives' and one of the main tasks was to create a mock marketing post for social media consisting of 1-3 images, and then a short plan on how we could market the post though social media platforms. Here is what we came up with.

"Instagram is one of the most popular social media apps in the world with over 1 billion users, and our target audience is also in the demographic that would be using instagram; Around 50% of fantasy players are aged 18-34 according to the FSGA.


For around $70, we can expect to get 10,000 impressions on our advertisement. 

($7 per 1,000 impressions)


We believe that real world advertising is still important, so we would have posters in sports venues and utilise the real world to make sure people who don’t use social media still see our campaign."

Reflection and next steps

FNTSY was an exciting endeavor that tackled a unique gap in the fantasy sports market by focusing on enhancing social interaction within leagues. By integrating features like player conversations, group messaging, and content sharing, we aimed to create a seamless bridge between fantasy sports and social media, fostering a sense of community among users.


If we had more time, we could have expanded the app’s functionality to include advanced personalization features, such as tailored recommendations for discussions or highlights based on user behavior. A structured design process and additional user testing would have provided deeper insights into how players engage with the social features, allowing us to refine the interface and address potential pain points.


Exploring partnerships with existing platforms or leagues could have also added value by providing users with more integrated experiences.

While the project successfully highlighted the potential of combining fantasy sports with social connectivity, additional time would have allowed us to fully realize the app’s vision and enhance its appeal to a broader audience.