Fantasy football has become a wind tunnel of money that seemingly blows around more and more cash every year at astounding rates around this time, heading into each NFL season.
Nowadays, there's a plethora of fantasy football hosting websites where fans can enjoy a season-long experience, which could include the playoffs ... if you're any good.
But before Tech Times rattles off our favorite fantasy football platforms, it's important to understand and fully digest just how big the industry has gotten. The Fantasy Sports Trade Association estimated to Forbes in August 2013 that 32 million Americans each spend $467 on fantasy sports for a total of $15 billion annually.
About $11 billion of that amount is on fantasy football and, within that amount, $1.6 billion is generated via the mobile fantasy football space alone. Altogether, when Forbes tallied up all the expenditures and ad revenue, it estimated fantasy football to be a $70-billion market annually.
So many Americans play that it affects their jobs, because they're managing their teams when they're supposed to be working. Employees scouring waivers for players to add to their rosters, offering/evaluating trades, and constantly tinkering with their lineups during job hours could cost employers a mind-blowing $13.4 billion in drained productivity over a typical 15-week fantasy football season, an August 2014 study by the Chicago-based outplacement firm, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, estimated.
While Tech Times doesn't encourage fantasy football players to let their production slide at their nine-to-five gigs, there's no downplaying the joyful experience of playing a fantasy football season with family, friends and co-workers. And the first step in doing so is picking the right hosting website. With the market booming, there are several fantasy football platforms to choose from, but the following five are the ones Tech Times enjoys the most. The 2015 NFL season kicks off Thursday, Sept. 10 ... better get your fantasy rosters ready. Touchdown!
Yahoo Sports
Old-school fantasy owners should crack a smile when Yahoo Sports' fantasy football is brought up because it's the oldest platform available out of the majors. Yahoo bombards users with heavy analyzation tools, created to help pinpoint the best lineup for that particular week. The oldest dog in the yard also does a solid job with its Roto Arcade blog, which rounds up any sports writers' articles that touch on players on your team or those that you're going up against for that week. When it comes to drafting, Yahoo's platform does make it rather simple with access via computer, tablet or smartphone, and real-time stat updates during games are pretty sharp as well. Yahoo is still a viable option.
ESPN
The Worldwide Leader in Sports continues to try to push the envelope in the fantasy market and it's getting good results because of it. Its FantasyCast, which provides fantasy owners with a live play-by-play for every player in every game, is simply unrivaled. Nearly every hosting fantasy football website has real-time play-by-play, but none come off as smoothly as ESPN's FantasyCast, which updates automatically without having to refresh. (Just make sure your smartphones are charged up when you have it open).
In addition, although every one of its competitors has their own respective fantasy experts, the sheer clout of ESPN pushed Matt Berry with his senior fantasy analyst title to become the go-to fantasy football guru on the scene. ESPN's fantasy football rollout does a solid job, whether via mobile, computer or tablet, of making Berry's expert advice readily available within its fantasy dashboard. Fantasy football with ESPN is a thoroughly enjoyable experience. It's also by far the most pleasing to the eyes.
An initial mock draft—just to get one under my belt—looked like this.
CBS Sportsline
Navigating CBS Sportsline's fantasy football program can be choppy at times, but overall the experience is pretty seamless. While CBS' platform doesn't deliver any over-the-top features, the features it does offer all perform pretty well. Its live Game Tracker isn't on par with ESPN's FantasyCast, but it gets the job done. That and CBS' head-to-head matchup screen manages to be thoroughly entertaining with a basic, plain look to it. On a daily basis, its fantasy experts also do a thorough job of detailing everything owners should know, from injuries to who to roll the dice on and players to sit.
NFL.com
Fantasy owners really can't go wrong choosing to play their 2015 season via NFL.com. The league's flagship fantasy football platform improves every season, with this season being no exception. The NFL.com new mobile app allows users to track live scoring, set their lineups fluidly, propose and accept trades and receive fantasy alerts about their key players.
The NFL.com fantasy football home page sports a clean, sleek look that's easy on the eyes with a more practical and better Game Center live-scoring experience and streamlined design, which allows access to all your teams across games.
NFL.com's fantasy home also touts an improved research section with beefed-up stats, including combined last-two week player numbers and bundled last-month figures. There's also an interactive Fantasy Genius community, which let's your fantasy questions get seen and answered by numerous fellow owners, a feature that comes in handy when you're facing a tough game-day decision.
For example, do you trust Eli Manning to light up a poor secondary over a better quarterback going up against a stronger defense or do you fear that Eli will be inconsistent and turn the ball over? Well, that's the perfect dilemma to throw at the Fantasy Genius community and see what they say in real-time. A nice little wrinkle of the Genius community is that it includes a leader board, which owners can ascend by asking and answering fantasy questions. The open-question feature also allows for fully customizable advice that shouldn't leave much to be desired.
Fleaflicker
No-nonsense, raw and straight-to-the-point fantasy football. Fleaflicker is a stripped down, bare-bones fantasy football website that lacks all the high-powered tools and attractions that the other sites have, but what it offers is a chance to come play fantasy football, leave and come back and play again. Its user-friendly options really cater to fantasy owners, enabling them to draft via email and allow last-minute lineup adjustments. Another atypical quirk is there's no automated-draft option, meaning every owner must be present for the draft, making for a more competitive league. That, and draft picks are allowed during the season.
Which fantasy football hosting website will you be signing up with?
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