ESPN Announces 2009 Fantasy Football Season With New Features

August 4, 2009

ESPN has announced the start of the 2009 Fantasy Football season with the return of free ESPN Fantasy Football presented by GEICO and GMC on ESPN.com. ESPN Fantasy Football will feature a variety of free features including live scoring, multiple draft options, mobile alerts and team management, fully customizable rules and scoring, and the broadest collection of expert analysis, news and statistical information.

Once the fans finished drafting, ESPN will integrate the draft on ESPN.com and on other ESPN platforms.

ESPN will kick-off the 2009 season by organizing 1,000 house parties nationwide during the week of August 24 for the draft. On August 29, ESPNChicago.com and ESPN Radio 1000 will host 400 players from 40 leagues for a draft event featuring Chicago-specific leagues and prizes. The event will feature a Q&A with ESPN Fantasy Sports guru Matthew Berry and NFL analysts John Clayton and Mike Ditka. Similar draft events will be hosted in Washington D.C. on August 21, Philadelphia on August 22 and New York on August 24, 25 & 31.

2009 ESPN Fantasy Football will be presented by GEICO and GMC with all of the free features from last season, plus added features including:

Newly Redesigned FantasyCast – a online companion during fantasy football Sundays, the new ESPN FantasyCast features more interaction – including live chat with ESPN experts, free live player-by-player scoring, live updating box scores and results, integrated Gamecast and a comparison to the players on the opposing roster.

Fantasy Football Now - The Emmy Award-winning Sunday live program will start every Sunday at 12:00 p.m. ET and going right up to kickoff.

Mock Draft Lobby – The ESPN Mock Draft Lobby lets players drop in at any time to run through a draft, try out a new draft strategy or just see who and how other ESPN players are drafting.

Champions and Insider’s Leagues – New this year, ESPN.com will host Champions Leagues for previous winners to challenge their knowledge against others in a winners-only league. ESPN Insider subscribers can also face off against other members in ESPN Insider-only Leagues, with priority preference in picking their draft time.

Multiple Draft Options – Teams and leagues can draft in multiple ways.

Online Auction Draft – ESPN.com is bringing back the option to conduct their draft auction style – bidding against other competitors for top players, and managing a total budget for drafting their team of players.

Live Online Draft – Live online drafts can be public or private. Set a time and invite friends, or drop by the ESPN Live Draft lobby to find a league, join, and draft — anytime day or night.

Automated Online Drafts - Have your league set their personal player rankings, set the draft order and date, and let ESPN.com’s draft engine do the rest.

Fantasy Football Draft Kit – ESPN.com’s free Fantasy Football Draft Kit will give every player complete breakdowns of sleepers, busts and top keepers; Top 250 players; position-by-position rankings; off-season changes and updated depth charts; projected stats; expert mock drafts and more.

Fantasy Focus – The originally produced daily video program, exclusively on ESPN.com, ESPN Mobile TV and available on ESPN.com Podcenter and Apple’s iTunes Store.

Smack Boards – Talk smack to your friends and opponents throughout the week and on game day using the dynamic chat windows integrated right into league and scoring pages.

Draft Pick Trading – players have the option to trade draft picks in leagues with a fixed draft order.

Player Cards 2.0 – Embedded player information cards allow players to see weekly projections, recent news from ESPN.com, game-by-game stats, graph views and more without leaving their own roster.

Keeper Options – ESPN provides League Managers of existing keeper leagues the ability to transfer keeper settings by entering keepers prior to their draft.

Customizable Rules and Scoring – Players can set up their league and scoring as they want…and can even includes punters, if they want.

League Message Boards, Chat and Polls – Players can discuss news, create their own polls and even chat online – all from right within their ESPN.com league.

Jason Waram, vice president of fantasy games for ESPN said “We’re kicking off fantasy football this year by celebrating it the way it began – in people’s homes and social circles. The strength of this game is rooted in its communities and the sports passions they share, and that is why we’ve seen ESPN Fantasy Football grow nearly exponentially since it began on ESPN.com, including over 33 times the participation since 2005 alone.”

ESPN Announces 2009 Fantasy Football Season With New Features

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