Being the fantasy football addict I am, you can imagine my distress when a family weekend event came about this past Saturday and Sunday. While I am able to stay fairly up to date with what’s happening via ESPN mobile and constant texting, I did not have time to take the few hours I usually do to research my weekly matchups for my 3 fantasy teams.
Having both Yahoo and ESPN leagues, I struggle to manage both from my phone, especially because I do not want to pay $5 for the ESPN fantasy football manager. Luckily, I had just recently been researching a new local fantasy sports startup HuddleHub, had downloaded their application, and added all of my teams.
This was lucky for me because minutes before the Cowboys vs Texans game, I got a tip from a friend that Roy Williams was due for a big game. I quickly hopped onto HuddleHub to change my ESPN roster, adding Williams who had two touchdowns on Sunday, which helped me squeak out a 8 point victory. That kind of instant access to multiple teams is invaluable in the crunch time before a game.
HuddleHub, a Wellesley Mass – based startup was recently a side dish at this months Web Innovators group.
Since the weekend I have been taking a closer look not just at the mobile application, but the HuddleHub site as well. The site is impressive and much like Yahoo or ESPN’s pages allows the ability to perform roster moves and basic tasks.
As of right now, besides aggregating ESPN and Yahoo teams into one place on the Web, the benefit isn’t huge, but talking to co-founder Patrick Hereford showed me why that should be changing soon.
Hereford told me, “Our non-management services (which are currently in development) will be the main reason why you will choose HuddleHub.”
Non-management services? That could mean many different things, but as Hereford continued to explain, “non management services are real time alerts pertaining to performance of free agents compared to your roster and real time injury updates.”
Along with the non-management services, Hereford told me that they soon plan to offer plugins from $.99 to $1.99 with real time data that current host services do not offer.
In an $800 million dollar a year industry, fantasy sports fans like myself will be happy to pay a few dollars to give ourselves a competitive edge in an area where most people in every league work from the same insider information from the Web.
While these plugins are not available yet, Hereford told me they should be by week 6 or 7, so make sure to sign up soon to find out about these plugins and how they will be able to give you a competitive edge.
When asked how Hereford came up with the idea, he told me, “I was all of a sudden spread across three websites with no hope in sight. I thought it was ridiculous that I had to bounce from website to website.” He then did some research and found that 16 million other fantasy players had this same problem.
Boston was an easy choice for him, because as he told me, “You absolutely can not find a sports market this awesome anywhere in the US.”
In this, I can say for myself that he is completely right.
Find more about HuddleHub by following them on Twitter and check out their Facebook page.
