Site
Overview
Yahoo! Fantasy Sports was launched in 1998 and has provided fantasy sports league management services since that time. Access to creating or joining a league is available to anyone who has a Yahoo! account ID. They support many sports including fantasy football, fantasy baseball, and fantasy basketball.
Update: Yahoo now offers paid leagues where you can win money!
Features/Benefits
- Live Scoring and Stat Tracking
- Custom League and Draft Settings
- Custom League URL
- Winners Only Leagues
- Keeper League Option
- Salary Cap Leagues
- Access to Transaction Trends, Scouting Reports, Draft Kits, and Player Research Tools
- League Dues Tracking
- Free Agent Acquisition Budgets
- Yahoo! Trade Review
Annual Price
League setup and management is provided free of charge. Yahoo! previously offered a paid league management service with advanced features but these fees were removed starting with the 2010 season. Yahoo! does maintain a fee structure for select premium add-ons:
- $9.99 – Scouting Reports
- $14.99 – Yahoo! Trade Review
Yahoo continues to improve its interface, has multiple ways for league managers to communicate (i.e., talk smack), and this year has a excellent (and free!) StatTracker feature that provides real-time scores. The only knock on the system is that the scoring categories are limited, and the layout is not configurable. For those commissioners that don’t want to spend a summer perfecting the design for a MyFantasyLeague service (the other service I recommend), Yahoo is the best site available. And did I mention that it’s mostly FREE?
I think convenience is the best part about yahoo’s league setup. I don’t think it’s easy to keep up with the rest of the league. Information is not disseminated as clearly through yahoo about your players. For novice fantasy players, it probably is the best setup though, in which case it would get 5 stars.
Yahoo Fantasy Football is the site that most of my friends use. Why? It’s super convenient for most guys to join since just about everyone has a Yahoo account.
I agree with Tom. I’ve used Yahoo for years, and it’s very convenient. Plus we like the fact that Yahoo upgrades the draft features every year, but they don’t add anything too crazy or difficult to use.