Last night concluded one of the most thrilling and hard fought fantasy football seasons in GIPS history. In a stunning turn of events, my 5th seeded Ligers defeated GIPS Strategic Account Manager Tom Malek’s vaunted Maulers by less than 1 point to claim the league championship. It was a satisfying victory and a great way to end an entertaining 4 months. As fun as it was, I couldn’t help but think that it would have been even more enjoyable if our Yahoo! league included a PC based voice and video feature.

Fantasy sports have grown from a past time for hard core, nerdy sports enthusiasts to a major sports entertainment industry. The Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA) estimates that close to 27 million Americans participate in fantasy sports, and that the industry brings in almost $1 billion in annual revenue. Through technological advances and clever marketing, many Internet portals and sports related websites have made fantasy sports a major part of their offerings.

As in any competitive activity, one of the most enjoyable elements of fantasy sports is the ability to communicate with other players; whether it is to taunt them in victory, or to commiserate with fellow losers.  Many fantasy leagues offer a ”smack talk” feature, which allows players to post comments to each other on a league message board. Similarly, many player drafts at the beginning of the season have an instant messaging feature. As nice as these are, I always think to myself, “Wouldn’t it be great if this included VoIP?”  For instance, last night, Tom and I were each watching the Monday night game at our respective homes, monitoring Yahoo! as it updated our fantasy scores in real time. Instead of sending Tom text messages and receiving a congratulatory phone call when the game was over, it would have been great to talk smack live through our PCs. Keeping up a continuous voice call, or being able to see your opponent’s face when a play does not go his or her way would add an extra dimension to the fantasy experience. 

As with many seemingly cool ideas, the openness of the Internet makes it difficult to monetize additional features such as voice and video (just check out how many VoIP apps there are for Facebook). However, I would like to believe that a $1 billion industry would be able to figure out a way to include such a popular feature, and give fantasy players everywhere something to cheer about.

Football fans are used to headsets

Tags: fantasy football, VoIP, Yahoo!

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