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Fantasy football rules the NFL regular season, and, for those who are as obsessed with it as much as I am, there’s some pretty dope news that just got released from Yahoo Sports and Verizon. That’s because the app, which is, arguably, the most popular fantasy football platform available, just expanded its partnership with the NFL and will now stream live games during the 2019 regular season on the app itself — for free. Is anyone else as pumped about this news as I am?
That means that, instead of trying to gamecast up-to-the-minute scores for your fantasy football team, you can now just open the Yahoo Fantasy Football app and actually stream NFL games, with Yahoo fantasy football users being able to watch all local and primetime games for free, and unauthenticated, within the Yahoo Fantasy Football app on smartphones and tablets. This is just the latest extension of the five-year, $2 billion deal Verizon and the NFL agreed to in December 2017.
Per SportTechie, here’s what Geoff Reiss, GM of Yahoo Sports, had to say about the recent updates.
“One of the interesting things we saw in year one [of Yahoo’s partnership with the NFL] is a concentration of younger fans watching the NFL on Yahoo Sports.
“Half of our fans were under the age of 40. I think one of the reasons the league was interested in working with us is we would be a means for them to reach younger audiences that are either cord-cutters or cord-nevers.”
For those skeptical fantasy football players out there who think there’s got to be some kind of catch to this, stop being so pessimistic, because there really isn’t. Included in the expanded partnership between Yahoo and the NFL will be Thursday Night Football games, early and late primetime games on Sunday, and Monday Night Football games. Plus, for Saturday night games that happen later in the NFL season, Yahoo’s fantasy app will also stream those, too, along with playoff games and the Super Bowl.
Added Reiss: “The folks we’re looking at are holding their phones six hours a day. “We already feel like we have the best fantasy experience of anybody in the market. This is just another brick in that wall.”
So, yeah, if you’re a diehard fantasy football player, the recent news is probably music to your ears — just don’t plan on talking to anyone during the upcoming NFL season now, because you’ll be way too preoccupied watching games while you check your fantasy team’s score.