Score! Yahoo Acquires Fantasy Sports App Startup Bignoggins
July 2, 2013
Yahoo has just acquired the fantasy sports app startup Bignoggins.
Bignoggins is the developer behind a number of fantasy sports apps, including the popular Fantasy Monster app. Fantasy Monster lets you manage all of your Yahoo, ESPN, and NFL.com fantasy baseball, basketball, football, and hockey teams in one place.
Or perhaps I should have written that last sentence in the past tense, seeing as Fantasy Monster and its fellow Bignoggins apps are no longer available in the App Store. Which, in turn, is hardly surprising, given Yahoo's penchant for shuttering the services it acquires.
But the technology behind Bignoggins' apps will be integrated into Yahoo's own fantasy sports apps, including Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball, Yahoo! Fantasy Basketball, Yahoo! Fantasy Football, and Yahoo! Fantasy Hockey. Maybe it will also find its way into the official Yahoo! Sports app, which was updated to version 4.0 just a couple of weeks ago.
The acquisition was announced by Bignoggins founder Jerry Shen in a blog post:
After many years as a free agent, I’d like to officially announce that Yahoo! has picked me up off waivers. I’m excited to join a team of all-stars to take fantasy sports to the next level. I’ve been playing Yahoo! Fantasy since high school, and have wanted to work here since college, so this is really a dream come true for me.Shen also posted the amusing announcement video below: If you can't see the video embedded above, please click here. Bignoggins is the latest company to be ticked off by Yahoo in its shopping list, which already has checkmarks for Summly, Astrid, KitCam, and, of course, Tumblr.