In a bid to encourage innovation and create a next-generation fantasy sports experience, CBSSports has launched an open platform that it hopes will encourage third party developers and companies to create apps for their products and services. CBSSports is billing the move to an open Fantasy Platform as "the first of its kind in the fantasy sports industry."
Six companies, including MLB.com and Bloomberg Sports, have signed on as initial Fantasy Platform partners. They have promised to deliver free or premium apps for CBSSports.com's Fantasy Baseball product, which featuring the new "CBSSports.com App Central," when it launches on Jan. 31.
Jason Kint, senior VP and general manager of CBSSports.com announced that they were opening up the platform at the 2012 Fantasy Sports Trade Association (FSTA) Winter Business Conference in Las Vegas.
"The way people play fantasy sports has dramatically changed over the last ten years with players using a ton more tools and products produced by a growing number of businesses," said Kint. "Providing outside developers access to our proprietary service will benefit the entire fantasy industry ecosystem, creating additional value for companies, developers and advertisers while consolidating and enhancing the experience for fantasy players."
As part of the effort, CBSSports.com has created an online Fantasy Platform Development Center and is offering developers a comprehensive set of APIs. These APIs provide access to nearly all the data within CBSSports.com Fantasy Games and everything needed by outside developers to build a customized fantasy app.
The Fantasy Platform Development Center is located at: developer.cbssports.com
One of the initial Fantasy Platform launch partners is Advanced Sports Media, which is planning to create two applications, the Draft Analyzer App and the Auction Analyzer App.
Bloomberg Sports will be developing apps around their consumer products, "Front Office" (baseball) and "Decision Maker" (football).
For the Fantasy Platform, MLB.com will be building an app that allows MLB.TV subscribers to watch a live game that has the most relevance for their fantasy teams.
Another initial partner, RotoWire, will develop a content application around its real-time player news and in-depth player profiles.
In addition, StatSheet will be launching a "StatSmack" app, which is it is billing as a "fantasy trash talking application" and Ziguana will be releasing a "Forecaster" app.
