UPDATE: Yahoo Sports has officially launched its Daily Fantasy Sports app. [DailyFantasyTalk]
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Yahoo has decided to join the Daily Fantasy party.
On an earnings call Monday, CEO Marissa Mayer announced that the company, which has operated season-long fantasy games since 1999, will launch a DFS product sometime this summer.
While Yahoo is unlikely to overtake industry leaders FanDuel or DraftKings overnight, it should be well positioned to grab a sizable piece of the market share—using its still-powerful search engine and its large fantasy user base to draw traffic.
“We believe this is an area where Yahoo can and should compete,” Mayer said. “Over the past year, we have been working hard to create our daily fantasy offering, a unique take on this game genre to bolster our leadership in fantasy sports. Normally we do not announce products before launch but this has been such an area of interest for our fantasy players and our investors that we wanted to announce that we have a new daily fantasy offering in the works that will launch this summer.”
It remains to be seen if other mainstream fantasy sites, such as CBS Sports, will decide to take the plunge into Daily Fantasy. But with ESPN’s recent partnership with DraftKings—combined with professional sports franchises embracing DFS’s potential—it appears the only thing capable of slowing Daily Fantasy’s growth is Congress.
DFS is currently legal in 45 of 50 US states, but has become a topic of conversation for many states across the country.
Last month, Amaya, Inc., parent company of Poker Stars, announced it was entering the DFS market.