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Ask HN: anyone doing an interesting fantasy football startup?

2 points by dhess ↗ HN
I'd be willing to pay for a fantasy football service with an emphasis on analytics, especially if it has an API. I know about myfantasyleague.com and their API, and it's a start, but it appears to be focused mainly on managing leagues hosted on their service (drops, adds, standings, etc.). I don't need real-time feeds; I'm mainly interested in using historical player data to create a draft strategy, and to make my own weekly player projections.

Basically, what I'd like is a service that gives me an API to access the player data that ESPN, Yahoo, CBS, etc. use to make their predictions, so that I can make my own.

Is STATS the only source for this kind of information?

3 comments

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wrath
I'd love the same thing. An API would be sweet! I think the problem with offering the data is the licensing fees. If I'm nit mistaken the nfl/pa has ownership of the data and any distribution has to be licensed by them? Anyone know if that's actual true?
dhess
Recent U.S. court rulings against the MLB say that MLB statistics, at least, are public domain and can't be copyrighted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Baseball_Advanced_...

Note that soon after the MLB's ultimate appeal to the Supreme Court was not taken up by the Court, effectively ending that case, ESPN opted out of their multi-year deal with the MLB for the rights. Presumably ESPN still pays STATS for the compilation services, rather than compiling their own.

zoudini
I'm actually working on something to address what I think are the major weaknesses of fantasy football as it's currently played. In the process of setting up a good scraper with an API. E-mail me if interested.