[Love sports and technology? Sign up for our sports tech newsletter to receive this rundown from GeekWire’s Taylor Soper via email every week.] TAYLOR’S TAKE ON THE WEEK IN SPORTS TECH: Each Sunday for the past four months, millions of fantasy football users fired up their Yahoo apps and browsers, setting lineups and checking their team scores. It takes a ton of technology to ensure that Yahoo’s tech platforms can withstand huge spikes in traffic and provide constant live scoring updates. For this week’s sports tech newsletter, GeekWire caught up with EJ Campbell, a senior director of engineering for Yahoo Fantasy Sports, to learn more… Read More
Mike Harms hopes you can learn from his two decades of disastrous fantasy football performance. Harms, who led digital media initiatives at Microsoft and Red Bull for 15 years before taking a sabbatical last year, just published a new book called “Fantasy Football: The 24-Year Losing Streak.” It’s a fun look that recaps Harms’ past 24 years in the same fantasy football league. He’s managed to finish in first place just once — and that inspired him to dig deep into the fantasy football world and share his lessons with the 60 million other players in North America. Harms went… Read More
OLYMPIA, Wash. — Skill or chance: Which is it when you play fantasy football? State Sen. Doug Ericksen, R- Ferndale, says fantasy football is a game of skill, and he wants the law to say so, as well. If fantasy football is a game of chance, it is illegal under Washington’s gambling laws. If legislation declares fantasy football a game of skill, it becomes legal under the state’s gambling laws. Small informal leagues among friends have flown beneath the radar on this issue. Rob McKenna, former state attorney general and a lobbyist for DraftKings and FanDuel, testified that fantasy football… Read More
ATLANTA, GA. — Deion Sanders was probably the last celebrity guest expected to show up at Microsoft’s Ignite technology conference, where thousands of IT geeks are in Atlanta this week learning about everything from Azure cloud infrastructure to containerized apps. But it was “Prime Time” who walked on stage during the keynote presentation on Monday afternoon to help Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella show off an unreleased fantasy football advice bot. During his hour-long keynote that described Microsoft’s vision for how artificial intelligence can shape the future of computing, Nadella brought Sanders on stage in Atlanta, the city where the two-sport freak athlete not only starred… Read More
Nope, it’s not just you — ESPN’s fantasy football app and website are down. On the first Sunday of the 2016-17 NFL season, ESPN suffered “technical difficulties” with both its fantasy football app and website. The issues started just as Sunday’s games kicked off at 10 a.m. PT. As of 12:50 p.m. PT, the problems persisted. Users couldn’t access their team rosters or see updated scores. Here’s a tweet from ESPN at 11 a.m. PT: We are aware of the current technical difficulties. We apologize for the inconvenience & are working to resolve the issue ASAP. — ESPN Fantasy Sports (@ESPNFantasy) September… Read More
