“Dallas Cowboys rookie running back Ezekiel Elliott will be a top 10 fantasy player this season!” Do you think that might generate interest among fantasy football players and drive traffic to your website?
Predictive analytics provide a different context to sports, one that is completely data-driven without bias and can be extremely valuable to both fantasy sports players and the media.
Fantasy columns have long been popular in the U.S., with few topics matching the appeal of who to draft in the first round or who to pick off waivers this week. ESPN revealed that seven of its top 10 stories in September 2015 were related to fantasy NFL. For fantasy players, there is never enough content for them to consume. News can be found on TV and radio, in newspapers and magazines, and all over the internet and social media. Each article and post can have a slightly different take, as content can be unique to every website as players search for a competitive edge. Player projections can fuel these articles and discussions, providing experts with a tool to back up their advice to their audience.
Predictive analytics has value to fantasy players, but not every player can build their own projection model to help their team, creating an opportunity for the media to capitalize on the demand. Of course, content driven by predictive analytics requires projections with a consistently strong level of accuracy otherwise the level of interest in regular pieces of content will soon decrease. However, as Sean Koerner, Director of Predictive Analytics for STATS, explains, you generally need more than a predictive model for the general fan:
“Just taking the projections at face value isn’t as valuable as when you can have an expert to break things down,” says Koerner. “The expert can see the different angles needed to figure out which players are ideal for certain game types or even certain sites since all sites use different scoring systems, roster configurations, pricing and salary caps.”
Creative content based on predictive analytics can provide huge value as players search for the optimal line-up for any given contest. With more than 56 million people in North America alone playing fantasy sports in 2015, it’s no wonder that content can be a huge traffic driver for media. Engagement continues to increase as more people flock to daily fantasy games. As interest in fantasy sports globalizes to match the North American fanaticism, the demand for content and products will only continue to increase.
You can learn more about STATS’ fantasy football player projections in our latest publication “Under the Hood: An In-Depth Look at the STATS NFL Projections”, which can be downloaded here.
