Haute 100 SF: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Amps Up Yahoo Fantasy Sports

Fantasy sports are a multi-billion dollar industry. With millions of people taking part in the game daily, no wonder Yahoo has decided to capitalize off the game. Most fantasy sports participants already use Yahoo Sports to track their fantasy leagues, and now gamers will have the opportunity to win money on its games.

The Internet site announced it will hold one-day and one-week fantasy contests for cash prizes on its brand new Yahoo Sports Daily Fantasy. As stated in the press release, “Yahoo’s launch of Daily Fantasy provides a new opportunity for our existing partners to reach the highly engaged audience of fantasy sports players, which grew 40 percent in the last year alone, hitting more than 56 million across the U.S. and Canada (according to a recent study by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association).”

As of Wednesday, July 8^th, Yahoo became the first major sports site to offer mobile fantasy gamers daily fantasy, full season fantasy and real-time sports all in one cohesive platform.

“For more than 16 years, we’ve built the best fantasy experience for our fans. Our users spend nearly 30 billion minutes a year playing fantasy sports on Yahoo, and today we’re thrilled to introduce a daily fantasy experience designed for the modern fan,” said Simon Khalaf, SVP Product and Engineering at Yahoo. “The growing popularity of Daily Fantasy games is a fantastic opportunity for us to bolster our leadership by providing our millions of existing fantasy users as well new fans out there with a unique take on this game genre.”

Fantasy sports has been a prime focus for Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer as she works feverishly to not only turn around the company’s culture, but also its overall business.

Mayer became helm of the Internet site in 2012, and since then has been under pressure to revive the site. Thus far, Mayer has banned working from home, made food free, updated Flickr for mobile on iOS, brought users Yahoo Mail on mobile, redesigned the Yahoo homepage, debuted a new Weather app as well as updated Yahoo Fantasy Sports.

(Photo via Shutterstock)