Get In on the Fantasy Sports Action Now!

Fantasy sports is looking like the new American pastime – whether baseball, American football, rest-of-the-world football, hockey, NASCAR or golf and others, there is a fantasy sport for everyone. Fantasy sports software lets you play these fantasy games in a fun and exciting interface.

In fantasy sports, a player “drafts” the names of professional athletes and accumulates points per player and per statistic in a number of contrasting or similar scoring models. You can play for free, pay for premium software packages, organize your own league, or play online against your friends. There are a lot of options when it comes to fantasy sports software.

Timing is also an element of this sport-within-a-sport: fantasy games play in real-time with the actual games. Major League Baseball is 162 games long for each team, running from the last week of April and into October. This means you can’t sign up for a fantasy baseball league in December – it’s not in season. (Baseball is notoriously difficult to keep up with in fantasy since games are played every day of the week and sometimes twice a day.)

The National Football League presents a much less hectic schedule, though every bit as exhilarating. There are only 17 games per NFL team in a season that runs from August into January for playoffs. When signing up for any fantasy game, you must pay close attention to what season your chosen sport is in and when to get in on the action. Read more in our article, Fantasy Sports Seasons, for exact information about when to form a team that corresponds with each sport’s season.

Fantasy sports offers a mixed experience of participatory and spectator sport that continues to grow in popularity. According to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association in 2007 19.4 million people aged 12 and above were actively playing fantasy sports in the U.S. and Canada. More than 24 million North Americans report having played fantasy sports. These numbers have increased as well.

People play fantasy sports for all kinds of reasons. Game interest, love for the sport, prizes, competition, bonding with friends and family, social interaction, gambling, fun, escape, and substitute for a losing team are just a few of the reasons found on the forums of these fantasy sports sites.

What to Look for in Fantasy Sports Software

Sports
This category will have a huge impact on the kind of software you buy or the game for which you sign up. If football’s the only offering and you also fancy yourself the commissioner of a soccer (football) league for World Cup 2010, you’re going to need something with more options. Look closely at our side-by-side comparisons of each service and what they provide. Some have all sports with a mixture of free and paid programs. Others are slim and focused, offering just baseball or just football. But overall we tried to examine services that offer more than one sport, more than one type of league and several price options.

Products
Here you can see the different products offered by each service. For instance, some provide ongoing subscription to player and injury news, which could prove a real boon when trying to predict which players might net the most points in any given week. Others offer draft prediction and simulation programs, which could also amount to a leg-up in the league for the serious and devoted fantasy sports players.

Features
Features for every fantasy sports software program will vary in depth and functionality, but the most highly regarded ones reviewed here all contain variations on the same basic set of features: league rules, drafts, prizes, forums, fantasy profile, player news and analysis, weather reports, rankings, site designs, customizable scoring, depth charts, fantasy game betting lines and more. Paid software will have more options than free games.

Support/Help
The level of support offered by any software developer is a standard by which to measure their program’s usefulness and functionality and fantasy sports software is no exception. You will see there are a variety of support structures offered by each, though only one, ESPN, offers live phone customer and software support service.

A major reason to buy your own software is customization and specialization. Some services and fantasy sports software allow you to completely customize your league and even sport type – for example if you and your friends are fanatic about college baseball, you can form your own league. College baseball is something not normally covered by the large and free programs offered by ESPN, for example.

The most fun and attractive thing about fantasy sports software is that it can be as easy to sign up as having an email address and having good timing (don’t try to sign up for NBA fantasy games in August – there are none as the game is out of season). However, paying for the upgraded versions will offer a much higher level of features and support and if you are serious about your fantasy sports, this is the only way to go. For an even more expanded selection of more traditional fantasy games and and fantasy sports, check out our top-ranked products ESPN Fantasy and Games, Yahoo! Fantasy Sports and CBS Sports Fantasy Sports.

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