Fantasy sports sites have definitely used the digital explosion to their benefit, but there are not that many fantasy sports apps out there yet. DraftKings does have an app for both Apple and Android. FanDuel, as of right now, only has an app for Apple products. These are easy and free to download, and once they are on your phone, you can create and monitor your fantasy lineup from anywhere. If you have an iPhone, all apps can be obtained from the iTunes store. Otherwise, you might need to download the app directly from your favorite site’s page.
Advantages of Fantasy Sports Apps
The biggest advantage of daily fantasy apps is the fact that they are convenient. How many times have you been out on the road wondering what time the game is going to start, or what the score was, or so on? You can find the answer with your phone with today’s tech, and that’s a really easy thing to do. This is a frequent occurrence with most sports fans, and now that fantasy sports apps exist, you can add “create fantasy roster” to that list of things you can do that are sports related from your phone.
Other advantages include updating as you go. If you’re like me, you like to look at stats and create your roster first thing in the morning. That’s great, but once you start your day, life goes on and lineups might need to be changed. It’s never been a big enough priority for me to drive home and get on my computer to check if anything has changed, but now that apps exist, it’s really easy to check the latest news and make any necessary changes without driving home every 30 minutes. This is huge because drafting a player that gets pulled from a lineup before a game is going to hurt your chances of winning. If you can make those changes with ease, you are giving yourself a far better chance of winning money. And yes, everyone else does have this ability too, but not everyone will take it, which again gives you the advantage. You might not need to use this often, but it is nice to have when you do. It can make the difference between a profitable day and losing one.
Disadvantages of Fantasy Sports Apps
One day leagues are new, and the apps behind them are even newer. There will be issues that need to be worked through, and many already have been. For example, one of the early issues with DraftKings’ Android app was the fact that it didn’t sort through available players only. If you wanted to draft a team, you would be given choices of players that weren’t going to be playing that day. This mostly affected MLB players when choosing their pitchers, but the problem was everywhere. This has been fixed as far as we can tell. App developers tend to focus on Apple first, so if you do want to avoid these types of bugs, using an iPhone gives you your best chance of doing so.
Other issues pertaining to both Apple and Android involve banking. This will improve over time, but it can be difficult to make a deposit or a withdrawal to or from your player account. Mobile finances have become much more secure over the last couple years, and as app developers embrace new security precautions, these will become easier for you to do. It’s mostly a safety thing, and it’s good that sites are being cautious, but it isn’t always to our immediate convenience. Be patient, and this will improve. For now, just make sure that all of your banking is done directly from your home computer.
Other Considerations
Other daily fantasy sports apps do exist, too. Yahoo, who has recently become involved in the daily fantasy rush, launched an app a few weeks ago. There are also apps like SideLeague and Swoopt which are geared toward a slightly different experience. SideLeague, for example, will allow you to create small leagues with just you and your friends. Their leagues do not have salary cap structures, which mean that they will have a very different path to success with their games. They are beatable, but it’s a more social and less competitive atmosphere. Swoopt also has that same social atmosphere if you want it, or you can join more competitive leagues. Entries start at $1 on both. The interesting thing with these two apps is that they allow you to create leagues that last for more than a day if you want. There is potential from these apps to grow in popularity, but they are still pretty new and do not even come close to rivalling FanDuel or DraftKings yet.
You can still access your favorite daily fantasy sports site’s website from a smartphone and play from there if you do not want to download an app. The site may be a bit more difficult to use because of the smaller screen, but it is still possible. For those that do not like using apps or do not want to switch to a new format, yet still want to play on their phone, this is always an option.
Head Over to DraftKings and Download the Latest iPhone or Android App
