Yahoo Sports Looks To Gamify Video Content With Launch of ‘Yahoo Fantasy Slate’

Prediction-based game is accompanied by digital-video experiences

One of the first media companies to enter what is now called “digital sports media,” Yahoo Sports has weathered the storm of new and oncoming competitors largely through its award-winning reporting and wildly popular fantasy-sports platform.

As the company — now under the Oath and Verizon umbrellas — continues to grow, its team of product developers is looking for new ways to reach fans in a rapidly changing consumer-tech world. Set to debut this week, its latest offering is “Yahoo Fantasy Slate,” a weekly prediction-based question contest built in a mobile-first model for the Yahoo Sports mobile app.

Questions and predictions could include anything from ‘How many touchdown passes will the Packers’ Aaron Rodgers throw this week?” to “O/U 0.5 fumbles for the Cowboys’ Ezekiel Elliot in his game against the Giants.” Each of the questions are generated by the Yahoo Fantasy Sports editorial team with each question in the app featuring a video complement showcasing Yahoo Sports talent debating that very question.

“This underlies our effort to gamify Yahoo Sports,” says Sarah Crennan, head of content, Yahoo Sports. “This has been a mandate across the company to figure out ways to gamify our experiences in a lower barrier of entry environment. If you think about the mentality of a sports fan, if you are passionate about following a team, you take your fanhood with you and organize your weekend based on these events.”

Naturally, fans will be rewarded with various prizes for success throughout the year. Crennan sees Yahoo Sports’ continuing to move in a direction where content is built with the purpose of placing it in an interactive environment. It’s a differentiator for the brand and its mobile app.

“We are really proud of the experience that we’ve built,” says Crennan, who was elevated to her new role in July. “We are proud of what we’ve put around the game. That extends into the features that we give you around team information, setting alerts, all the way to the original content that we’ve invested in and our partnership with the NFL as a whole.”