Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball ’11 & the Impact of Mobile on Fantasy Sports

With another Opening Day upon us, baseball fans around the world are given a clean slate and renewed optimism that this will be the year their team brings home the pennant. Same is true in the fantasy sports world, where the difference between celebrating a championship and finishing at the bottom of the barrel could be the result of an ill-advised draft pick or, even worse, a missed waiver wire pickup.

At Yahoo!, we understand the importance of getting timely updates on the latest news, statistics and injuries for your fantasy players. With today’s release of the Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball ‘11 iPhone app – you will soon be able to add and drop players, claim waived players, and accept or decline trade offers – directly from your mobile phone.

Over the last few years, the exponential growth of mobile apps and shift of computing to the mobile device has greatly impacted the way we participate in fantasy sports. Today’s fantasy gamers are more active and engaged than ever before – consider these 2010 Yahoo! Fantasy Football Statistics:

• Yahoo! Fantasy Football mobile use tripled in 2010 with over 30% of fantasy players engaging on their mobile device (vs. 10% in 2009)
• Mobile users consumed over 45% of the total Yahoo! Fantasy Football page views – nearly 4x the page views in 2010 vs. 2009
• In 2011, Yahoo! expects Fantasy Football mobile user share to be close to 50%

Gone are the days of scouring box scores in the Sports section on Monday mornings to check your player stats. With Yahoo! Fantasy Sports mobile apps you have fast access to your leagues, teams, matchups, player stats and real-time scores – right at your fingertips, anytime, anywhere.

The Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball ’11 app is now available for free from the App Store on iPhone at: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/yahoo-fantasy-baseball-11/id355995557

Let’s play ball!

Ron Belmarch

Product Manager, Yahoo! Fantasy Sports