Football, also called soccer, is clearly the most popular sports in the world. It has a huge fan base in almost every country. People love playing and watching soccer and are very enthusiastic about it. Famous soccer players like Messi and Ronaldo are worshipped in many countries. That’s the kind of craze this sport has among people.
While the football craze is constant all the time, but it becomes all the more during big matches and world cups. The football has more than 3.5 billion fans globally, which is really a very big number. The massive popularity of football has also driven the interests of businesses as they see it as an opportunity.
Therefore, we have seen a rise in investment in fantasy soccer app development around the globe. There are several successful fantasy apps that make millions every month in profit. The craze of people for football brings them to predict the performance of their favourite players and teams and make money out of it. So, along with enjoying the sport on television, mobile, or stadium, they also can increase their bank balance with football.
What is Fantasy Soccer App?
A fantasy soccer app is a platform for users to participate in online contests that are hosted for a football match. Users can take part in the match of their choice, create a team of their own by choosing 11 players from both teams, and bet some amount based on the selected contest.
The players in the team are chosen who are highly likely to perform in the actual match. On the basis of the performance of players in a real match, the app gives some points specifically for each player. The users whose team in the app scores higher points earn good money. So, it is all about making the right predictions and choices.
The team in the app can be created till the time match starts. During the match, users can monitor performance and points in app, along with ups and downs in ranking. The final points are the ones shown at the end of the match.
Some fantasy soccer apps also allow users to create multiple teams and participate in different contests at a time. This can increase the chances of winning, as users can make more combinations. Hence, along with the competition among the teams actually playing the sport, there is also a competition among people watching it. People love this experience and the opportunity to earn serious money.
Why Develop Fantasy Soccer App?
In 2019, the value of the fantasy football sports market was $18.6 billion. By 2027, this market is predicted to reach $48.6 billion, growing at a CAGR of 13.9% during the forecast period (2021 to 2027). Moreover, the fantasy football segment is leading the fantasy sports market and is predicted to continue its dominance over the forecast period.
BCC Research reports that there are more than 59 million users interacting with fantasy sports in the US and Canada alone. In India, this number is over 20 million already. By 2022, the number of these users around the globe will cross the 150 million mark.
Another research by Technavio shows that the fantasy sports market will witness a growth of $9.34 billion from 2020 to 2024.
These stats mean that the market is only proliferating, and this growth will undoubtedly increase over the next years.
For businesses looking to invest in fantasy soccer app development, it means that it is the right time for them to create a strategy and take a step.
The reasons for the growth of the fantasy sports market are internet penetration and growing smartphone usage. Brands are finding these apps the right way to promote themselves, which is another option to build a profitable business model.
For instance, the leading soccer fantasy app named Fantasy Premier League (FPL) makes a tremendous amount of money through sponsored ads in the app. Brands use these apps for marketing their products. They get the space for advertisement and get improved visibility and branding among the target audience.
Related Blog: Top 10 Fantasy Football Apps to Make Your League Win
Key Features for Fantasy Sports Soccer App
To stay competitive in the market, onboard more users, and offer a delightful user experience, you have to integrate some great features. Having useful and unique features will also increase the time spent by users on the app, which should be one of your primary goals. Having said that, the following are the key features that your app must have if you want to create the best soccer fantasy app:
User features
- Sign-up/log in: Have a smooth feature to allow new users to register on the app using an email address, phone number, name, and other details. After signing up, they should be able to log in easily.
- Profile: Allow users to edit and make changes to their personal profile, like adding a display picture, add more details, set username, etc.
- Home Screen: Home screen of your app is the first thing users will see after logging into the app. Ensure it is appealing and catchy. On the home screen, you can showcase the ongoing and upcoming football matches in which users can participate.
- Create team: Once they open their desired match, this feature will enable them to choose their preferred 11 players from both the teams and create a team. Additionally, users should be able to create multiple teams for a match.
- Join league or contest: There will be many contests/leagues running for every match with different betting amount. Have a feature that allows users to join a league with the team created by them.
- Create league: People like being creative and finding new ways to enjoy their participation. With a feature using which they can create their own leagues for a match, you can engage more users. Users can create leagues by defining the participation amount, the maximum number of participants, and other rules.
- Leader boards: The role of a leader board will be to show the stats and information about a league or contest. Users can check the performance of other participants, and their ranking and points.
- Real-time analytics: This is a must-have feature that helps users to monitor their ranking, points scored, and other stats as the ongoing match progresses.
- Rewards: To make the app more appealing and keep the users engaged, you should offer them rewards for participating in matches. Not all the users are going to win. If some users lose the contests regularly, they might abandon the app. That is why offering the rewards is a good way to keep them hooked.
- E-wallet: While participating in the contests with their preferred teams, they will need to bet with some money. For this purpose, you should have an in-built e-wallet. Users can add money to the wallet using their debit/credit card, e-banking, or other sources. Moreover, when they win money through contests, the winning amount will be added to the wallet. They can also withdraw the amount from the wallet to a personal bank account.
- Referral: Using the referral feature, the users can share the app with their friends and invite them. You can offer some rewards or bonuses for inviting friends, which will help onboard more users to the app.
Admin panel features
Without some lucrative and essential features at the backend, it becomes difficult for the administrators to manage everything running at the front-end. Integrate the following admin features to your fantasy soccer app:
- Dashboard: A unified dashboard from where the admins can access everything, including active users, ongoing and upcoming matches, leagues, teams, scoreboard, push notifications, etc.
- Payments: Users will add and withdraw money from their respective wallets. They will also put some amount to participate in leagues. The payment management feature will allow admins to keep track of all the payments by users and manage everything.
- Revenue management: One of your primary aim with fantasy soccer app development is to earn revenue and make profits. For this, you must have a revenue management feature at the backend from where admins can see the earning reports and insights by day, week, and month.
- User management: This feature will allow you to manage users and their profiles from a single point. It is a critical feature because there might be instances when you detect some suspicious behaviour from users. Having control over users allows you to prevent such activities from happening. You can block them temporarily or permanently from the app.
- Support channel: You can use a customer relationship management (CRM) platform to manage the emails, reviews, tickets, and queries of users. This is a required feature because users might face issues and will need your support. Without support, you can’t build trust among them.
- Rewards management: Based on the performance, you can distribute the points to some users in the form of rewards.
Read Also: Benefits and Reasons to Invest in a fantasy platforms
Additional features:
- Push notification: Send notifications to the users about upcoming matches, their performance once the ongoing match ends, leaderboard ranking, app updates, etc.
- Match scoreboard: The best fantasy soccer app in the market has this feature to allow users to watch the live score of an actual match right within the app. It helps users to check the progress of live match and how their selected players are performing.
- History: From the history option, the users can see all the matches in which they participated, won or lost, along with their performance in each match.
- Player info: Not everyone knows about all the players in a match. While creating a team, they would like to know about a player, his past and recent performances, etc. It would be great to add the information and details about each player. This makes the player selection process easier for users.
Business Model of Fantasy Soccer Apps
The next question is how to monetize the fantasy football app to earn revenue and make a profit.
Entry fee
The major portion of the money earned from a fantasy sports app development comes from the entry-amount charged by the users to enter a contest or league. Users intend to win more money by participating with a small entry fee and making predictions.
Not all the participants win the contest. So, the app makes a considerable amount every day from the entry fee by the users. Moreover, you don’t have to pay anything from your pocket to the participants. The big amount participants win come from the sum of the amount paid by the users only. There is no additional investment here, but only profits.
Advertisements
The second way to monetize the fantasy soccer application and generate revenue is by showing promotion and sponsored ads to the users. This is an effective way for revenue generation in various kinds of business models.
As more users onboard your app and the user base becomes larger, many businesses will approach you to show their product and service ads to the users. In exchange, you will be paid for the impressions and clicks received on those ads. You can also approach specific businesses based on your app model.
Read Also: Fantasy Ice Hockey App Development – Cost & Key Features
How to Develop a Fantasy Soccer App?
You can get a soccer fantasy app developed easily by considering the following factors and steps:
1. Determine your objective
The first thing is to find and understand your business goal behind the fantasy soccer app development. You have to be clear about your vision, mission, and objective before laying the app foundation. Along with making money, you should also consider the demand of users and fulfil their objectives.
2. Research the market
It is essential for you to do some market research before considering fantasy soccer mobile app development. You have to understand and learn the latest trends, target audience, insights, as well as primary features to have for the audience. For instance, you should know which countries have the highest fanbase for football.
UAE, US, Argentina, France, Netherland, Germany, England, Spain, Brazil, Poland, Russia, etc. are the top countries with popularity in football. India and China are the countries where this sport is gaining high popularity over the last few years. The market research must also include doing a competitor analysis and learning the strategies of top players at the moment.
3. Finalize features
It would be great to integrate the app features mentioned above in this article. By adding appealing user features, you can attract more users to your new app easily and keep them stuck to it. The admin panel features will make things easier for your team, who manage the app from the backend. Moreover, additional features like match scorecard, push notifications, and support can make the app competitive in the market. So, finalize the features for your mobile app carefully.
4. Create a list of main football leagues
Once you have finalized the features, move on to the leagues to be added to the app. These will be the leagues and contests users can participate in and make predictions. All the popular leagues must be part of the app so that you can gain, keep it trending when famous matches are ongoing.
The best soccer leagues worldwide include NHL, NBA, NFL, PGA, UEFA, Canadian Football League, FIFA World Cup, XFL, and more.
5. Decide the operating systems
Android and iOS are the top operating systems for app availability. You have to decide whether to develop the app for Android, iOS, or both platforms. This decision will also depend on the targeted country, region, and audience. Some countries have high users of Android, while others have high iOS adoption rates. Based on this, you can finalize the OS.
6. Choose the right app development company
Doing market research, adding main features, and integrating popular leagues is great, but if your app is not robust, it will become a challenge for you to keep users engaged and compete with other similar apps.
That is the reason you must choose the best fantasy sports app development company that has expertise in creating such apps. The right company knows exactly what approach to take for development, using top-notch technologies and codebase, and develop the best fantasy app for you. In addition, if you want to have a website as well for the same purpose, the reliable company can do the fantasy soccer website development too.
Read Also: Fantasy Football Application Development Cost and Key Features
7. App testing
Before launching the app and starting its marketing, the app must go through a testing phase. In the testing phase, the QA teams will test your app to find and fix the potential bugs and critical flaws that remained during the development process. It is an essential step because launching the app with bugs can frustrate the users and result in poor rating and user experience.
Fantasy Soccer App Development Cost
The final question is: ‘how much does it cost to develop a fantasy soccer app?’
The total cost of fantasy soccer app development depends on a number of factors. These factors include integrated features, number of leagues added, development platforms (Android, iOS, web), technologies used, expertise and location of the app development company, app complexity, etc.
On average, the final app development cost will be somewhere between $35k to $50k.
Wrapping up
Football is a sport that is played the most in the world. Since there are football fans globally and in a large number, considering a fantasy football app development can prove to be a profitable business model. Moreover, the market is growing rapidly. This is the right time for you to invest in such an app.
For any queries related to mobile app development, feel free to contact our experts or reach us out using the comments section below.
