Did you know that the number of people playing a fantasy sports app in the USA & Canada rose from 15.2 million to 56.8 million between 2003 to 2015? Based on a survey (Statista) in 2019, 85% of the respondents in India played fantasy sports through the app.
The popular Dream11 and My11 Circle are expected to touch $2.5 billion in 2022. Additionally, the growing fantasy games industry is expected to reach worth $3.7 billion at a CAGR of 32% by 2024.
The aforementioned statistics explain how popular fantasy sports application development is in the market. Despite the pandemic, sports enthusiasts continue to show their interest in fantasy apps integrated with intuitive and easy navigation features. Product engineering solutions providers, certainly, have a big opportunity to captivate the huge market of sports enthusiasts and dwell them in never-ending tournaments and leagues offered in the app.
This article will throw light on the trending technologies and the most suitable technology stack that can help you build a sophisticated and feature-rich fantasy sports app for android and iOS devices. To begin with, let’s briefly understand what a fantasy sports app is!
Overview of a Fantasy Sports App
A fantasy sports app is an online software where sports enthusiasts can create their own team by selecting their favorite players virtually.
Whether cricket or football or baseball, enthusiasts can be the mastermind in developing a winning strategy. The user or the sports enthusiasts can also join any contest or tournament or a league to play and win cash rewards while inviting their friends and family to play together.
Some of the famous fantasy sports applications are – Players Pot, My team 11, Balle Baazi, UEFA Champions League, Underdog Fantasy, Dream11, My11 Circle, ESPN fantasy sports, and Hashtag basketball, and many more.
One of the biggest questions that come to mind when developing a fantasy sports game is why should one opt for mobile app development instead of web development?
Mobile being handier is the most preferred mode for entertainment these days. Smartphones offer a global reach of nearly 65% and 85% of Indians in 2019 played fantasy sports apps on their mobile devices. Hence opting for a mobile app solution is always a better & revenue generating choice.
The next question you might ask is the functionality of the application. Let’s understand how a fantasy sports app, such as a cricket fantasy app works.
Operation of a Fantasy Sports App
To offer a complete feature-rich fantasy sports application, you must integrate these mechanisms into your fantasy sport of choice – be it football, kabaddi, hockey, or cricket.
Team Development – One of the most important characteristics of a fantasy sports app is allowing the users to create the team of their choice.
Game Selection – The user must be provided with multiple sports options, such as football or cricket. The sport must be absolutely to play hence a secure mode must be provided to enter the ongoing or upcoming matches.
Team Management – The user must be leveraged to add, remove, and modify the game members while tracking each one’s performance for making better decisions.
Team Division – The sports enthusiasts or a user must be allowed to create multiple teams, like any other renowned fantasy sports app.
Team Captaincy – When the user is an authority above creating a team, it enhances engagement. A considerable sports application must let users choose a preferred captain and vice-captain as a part of their winning strategy.
Reward Distribution – For continuous encouragement and engagement, reward distribution plays an important role in the app. Any virtual player showcasing exceptional performance assisting in team win must be awarded.
Before jumping to the features in a fantasy sports app, it is important to know the right technology stack needed for cricket fantasy platform development.
Picking the Best Technology Stack for Fantasy Sports App
One of the crucial yet difficult selections to make is the right technology stack for basketball or baseball or cricket fantasy app development. However, not all developers prefer the same programming language for the mobile app development of fantasy sports. Regardless of choice, today’s technology stack is powerful, secure, and flexible, allowing developers to develop a future-proof solution, which makes it even more difficult to choose.
Fantasy App Development for Android
For entrepreneurs or developers looking to develop a flexible, substantial, and rich with customized features fantasy sports app for android a few preferred languages are –
Kotlin
A newer yet versatile language that has become popular among developers quickly for native mobile app development. The language has been officially crafted & declared by Google for developers to learn and implement. Kotlin supports Android Studio, IntelliJ IDEA, and some of the requisite IDEs for simplified development.
Java
One of the most popular programming languages lets many developers rely on JAVA for creating robust mobile applications. Java is a powerful open-source server-side programming language for developers to use and develop robust projects.
The language is popular among android app developers to create a native yet flexible application offering multiple development tools to assist.
Fantasy App Development for iOS
Out of 56% of mobile users, 27% of the users use iOS devices. However, the market size of iOS is lesser than Android but surely is the strongest. Developing a comprehensive iOS app with a smooth and interactive interface meeting user expectations is critical. Hence below is the dedicated technology stack for fantasy app developers to design and build fantasy sports apps for iOS devices.
Swift
A robust and stringent programming language for application development dedicated to macOS, iOS, iPadOS, WatchOS, and tvOS solutions was created in 2014 by Apple. Swift can seamlessly work alongside Cocoa Touch, Cocoa, and the extensive codebase written by Objective-C. Swift is the 17th most popular programming language globally and is used by 5.9% of developers worldwide.
Objective-C
An extension of programming language C, Objective-C was developed in the 1980s with the capabilities of object-oriented programming. Objective-C is primarily used for iOS, OS X, and APIs, such as Cocoa and Cocoa Touch. Objective-C is also ranked 20th among the most popular programming languages and is used by 4.1% of developers worldwide.
Fantasy App Development for Cross-platform
The best and the most preferred method by entrepreneurs is cross-platform development. This method offers less development time as well as development for both the platform – Android & iOS. Other benefits of cross-platform development are mentioned in the image.
PHP
PHP is one of the perfect programming languages for a beginner developer. The quick and effective coding techniques help in developing the right programming line, thereby aiding in building simple yet dynamic web applications. PHP is a flexible platform that integrates easily with diverse protocols, such as HTTP, IMAP, POP3, LDAP & more.
PHP is an open-source assist in rapid development at an affordable cost. Entrepreneurs can develop long-sized projects, such as Facebook, Wikipedia, WordPress & similar other projects as well as on-demand projects, such as fantasy app and taxi app development.
.NET
Released by Microsoft, .NET is an open-source & server-side framework designed to create dynamic web pages. With time the language evolved, offering unique web development tools and compiled code structures for developing services and applications as well.
.NET offers a comprehensive software infrastructure and programming models that are highly flexible. The rich pool of tools and features helps developers to add videos and links. The programming language offers speed, is light in weight, and gets easily compatible with other languages, such as VB.NET, JS.NET, and C#.
HTML5
The hypertext Markup language 5 is the latest major version of HTML technology for creating dynamic and functional websites. HTML 5 defines the content’s meaning and structure. Any fantasy sports app development company would amalgamate HTML with CSS and JavaScript to help them in crafting a robust frontend. HTML5 can be combined with Visual Studio for Mac to develop iOS applications or Apache Cordova to also create Android applications.
C#
The next-level programming language was created by Microsoft. C# is strongly associated with the .NET framework and was expected to surpass Java. C# is a robust software development platform that is most commonly used to write iOS applications. However, .NET was crafted for Linux and Mac systems which can also be used to develop android apps by combining with the Xamarin platform. For app development, it also uses Mono, which is an open-source implementation of the .NET platform.
Flutter
A new and improved app development process that can transform the way app developers test, build, and deploy interactive and captivating mobile, web, desktop, and embedded apps. Flutter is an open-source framework crafted by Google that helps in developing natively compiled, multi-platform, fast, productive, & flexible apps through a single codebase. Flutter is also powered by Dart which helps in building fast and production-quality apps that can run on multiple platforms.
JavaScript
A lightweight, JIT-compiled programming language that is mostly known as a scripting language to develop web pages. JavaScript is also a multi-paradigm, dynamic language that supports object-oriented, declarative, and imperative styles.
In order to create native applications for Android as well as iOS, JavaScript can be combined with React Native. The combination will also assist you in faster and more secure development that saves time and money.
Core Features for Fantasy Sports App Development
A robust and effective fantasy sports app development should contain features for –
Player Modules
- Real-time Notifications
- Easy Signup
- Create and Join Contests
- Earning Opportunities
- Create Custom Fantasy Teams
- Home Screen
- Live Scores
Admin Modules
- User Management Admin Log In or Sign In
- Bonus and Referral
- Manage Players and Contests
- Transactions and Reporting
- Manage Notifications and Requests
Advance Modules
- Analyze & Support Customer Engagement
- Contact Users
- Player Records
- Nurture Loyalty
- Location Tracking or GPS
- Real-time Analytics
- Social Media Sharing
- Payment System
Designing & Development Of A Fantasy Sports App
Conclusion –
Fantasy sports is a leading, pragmatic, & scopeful business to invest in. However, with the right knowledge of the technology stack, can you only build a desired fantasy sports application for your business.
Before choosing a technology stack, it is essential to understand the user requirement, such as which audience (geographical, age group, etc.) they want to target? Are they looking to develop for Android users or iOS users or both? Are they looking for a flexible hybrid solution or a Native solution? Do they have a specific design and features in mind?
These are just a few questions that can help you in choosing the right tech stack and building a robust & future-proof fantasy sports app.
