As the 2018 NASCAR season approaches, tens of thousands are realizing Yahoo! has closed its game down. If you’re like me, you’d anxiously await that day in January when the message changed from “The Yahoo Sports Fantasy Auto Racing season has concluded” to the page announcing my favorite fantasy NASCAR game was open for the new NASCAR race season! I could begin to re-connect with my online friends and start creating my groups and building my driver teams!
Not long into the transition from the 2017 to the 2018 Monster Energy Cup season these lines were added: “Thank you for your participation this year and congratulations to all the winners. We will not be offering Fantasy Auto Racing in 2018. We thank you very much for playing our game over the years and hope you will continue to play our other fantasy games.”
WHAT THE HECK Yahoo!?!?
It’s like waking up Christmas morning to find the Grinch has stolen all the presents!
18 years ago Yahoo! added Fantasy NASCAR Auto Racing to their repertoire of fantasy sports games.
Yahoo hosted games for their millions of subscribers that ranged from mainstream sports like football, baseball and basketball to niche sports like golf, hockey and college football and even oddball fantasy games for the Oscar’s, the Stock Market and even CBS’s Survivor!
During it’s heyday, I remember calculating that about 250,000 entries were entered each week in the Yahoo fantasy NASCAR game. It’s dwindled to around 40,000 entries now, but that is still a lot of people enjoying the game.
FANTASY NASCAR PLAYERS STILL WANT TO PLAY THIS GAME!
Currently, the 2nd ranked post on Yahoo’s User Voice forum is Where is NASCAR on your Daily Games? . Read through the comments and you’ll realize it was way more then the game itself, it was the relationships that went along with the game. Sure, we all want to be the Season Champion of our group. We all want to be in the coveted 99% percentile of all players. But, we also want to have the fun that is enjoyed by having others we can enjoy the great sport of NASCAR with.
YES, NASCAR IS GRAPPLING WITH A DIMINISHING FAN BASE
Numbers are down in many sports when you measure the attendance and the television market share. No doubt, NASCAR is in a critical phase of filling their fan base with new, younger fans. Fantasy NASCAR is an venue that lets old and young fans alike share in the excitement that only NASCAR brings. It is a glue that lets us stick to the sport. It fuels enthusiasm and interest through the week and especially on race day.
It’s a sad situation that the economics of hosting a fantasy NASCAR game is not worth it to Yahoo! and Fox. Pay-to-Play games like the weekly Draft Kings games are taking over the space.
DISCOURAGED. SCARED. FILLED WITH ANXIETY.
That’s how I really felt deep down when I saw Yahoo! fantasy auto racing was not coming back in 2018.
Why? I’ve spent the last 12 years building Fantasy Racing Cheat Sheet. From day one the primary goal has been to be the best NASCAR statistical tools web site useful for all types of fantasy NASCAR games. But, my strongest focus has always been to help players of the Yahoo fantasy auto racing game!
OUR YAHOO-CENTERED FEATURES
- Jeff Gutowski has written hundreds of his NASCAR Fantasy Preview articles here that put a prime focus on the Yahoo game.
- Our Experts Picks page, that lets you play along with the experts and contribute to the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ picks, features not only the top-5 and dark-horse drivers, but our weekly Yahoo A, B and C driver groups experts picks.
- My Custom Driver Groups feature was born out of a desire to group the full statistical table of drivers into their Yahoo A, B, C driver groups. Subscribers can create their own groups, but the Yahoo group was built in each year by default.
PRAYERFULLY CONSIDERED MY OPTIONS
Thankfully, I quickly came to realize that this is a great opportunity!
I rallied (am still rallying) together with a few guys that have been a great help to me through the years and we hashed (still hashing) through the small tweaks we felt that could make the A, B, C driver group concept game that Yahoo pioneered even better.
I’m coding the game now and anticipate a beta test with a small group of die-hard fans of the game. The game is FREE TO PLAY. A paid subscription to Fantasy Racing Cheat Sheet is not required!
Just create an account with the $0 forever plan and you are in.
INTRODUCING THE DRIVER GROUP GAME
Currently, I’m referring to our version of the game as the Driver Group Game. It’s more functional than anything else, but it will stick until someone comes up with something better. You can read the Driver Group Game rules and see the drivers in each group here.
22 replies on “What Happened To Yahoo Fantasy NASCAR?”
It’s actually pretty cool that you tailored your site around the game that you end up taking over and by the sounds of it will be making some minor changes to make it better!
From NASCAR nation I would sincerely like to say thank you!!! I would definitely miss that game!
I thank you so much for keeping the yahoo game alive. The fantasy game get me up for the season.
I find it interesting the wording they use:
“We will not be offering Fantasy Auto Racing in 2018”
Are they leaving the door open to bring it back? They could’ve said, “we will no longer be offering Fantasy Auto Racing.” Maybe I’m reading too much into it.
In any event, thanks so much for stepping in, you’ve really saved the day (and season) for me!
I noted that wording as well and thought the same. My guess is Corporate America never shuts the door on big money and will definitely revisit if the demand is there. Thus I agree with you but we all know NASCAR, like NFL is losing their fan-base and viewer-ship in recent years. I think the message intends to leave us hanging that it may return. That said, I am fed up with Yahoo’s treatment of their loyal following and how they completely dumped us all with very little to zero notice. I won’t be returning to anything that they offer if there is a reasonably competitive competitors site offering the same after these recent actions of theirs.
I am hopeful and will support this venture at Fantasy Cheat Sheet with our base as much as possible.
ICE
Awesome. Thanks! My friends and I had been playing the yahoo game for 17 years. Now we can continue
Thanks Darren. This is what happens after Verizon bought Yahoo. Looking forward to continuing on your site.
I run a very loyal group of Fantasy Sports managers and have for almost 2 decades. We have all taken our league over to NASCAR.com for now but prefer the format that Yahoo offered. We are all happy you’ve taken on re-formatting a new platform similar to Yahoo’s format to accommodate the lost Yahoo NASCAR Gamers and potential new fans. Obviously a very wise move on picking up that fan base and creating interest for the future of your site. Congrats and hope you succeed for all of our sake.
My question is this? It’s not clear whether you are going to be allowing the feature of ‘Creating a private League’ as part of your plan for the FREE membership or if you are going to ask for a paid sub in order to start up our former leagues again? If it has been written about please direct me too that script. If not what is your plan?
Cheers,
ICE
PS- Anyone interested in joining our group of NASCAR and all Sports fans can use this link. We have moved our GOLF League as well given Yahoo dropped the ball on that venture to boot. https://groups.yahoo.com/ICES_ELITE
No cost to play or commish leagues. Free account gets you in the same as a paid account.
That is good news then because chances are we’d be out, otherwise. I assume the first available date to register a private league will be the same day as opening? Feb 1st?
Thanks again for your efforts and if I can help test any beta count me in.
ICE
Thank you Darren was sad when saw we lost Yahoo but you bring it back stronger and better is refreshing!! Its going to be alot of fun. Thank you again
Thank you to all the ‘Thank You’s’! I’ve been running this site for a long time and I haven’t been this excited about a new season in quite a while.
The amount of time to code all this is short…and I’m such a perfectionist that my development time is usually double what I think it will be. I love to continue to work and polish on things and certainly anticipate that the slickness, ease and functionality of the game will improve as the season progresses.
Thanks again for all the positive support!
Will you update the driver listings? A Group has Carl Edwards and Dale Jr, B Group has Danica. How will we show who is starting and who is on the bench?
By the way… if you’re coding for this game is anything like this message page you’ve got my vote.
So many annoying blog pages out there where the view and UI just suck.
This page is clear and concise, great font, spacing and size etc…Just a freakin treat to view. Nice work!
ICE
PS- Are you for hire by the way? Lol
Yahoo,
Thank a LOT! Shut out fantasy nascar!! What reason for shut down!
I play this for over 17 years and I love it!!
Yahoo is dumb FK!!!
Yahoo,
Thank a LOT! Shut down fantasy nascar!! What reason for shut down!
I play this for over 17 years and I love it!!
Yahoo is dumb FK!!!
Darren
Thank you for stepping up and setting up the game. I, like many others, was shocked to see Yahoo dump the fantasy racing. After all of Yahoo’s fumbles with security last year, thus angering their base users. Yahoo thought it wise to alienate some more of its core members by shutting off their fantasy race game.
I was very bummed out. I have managed a National Guard fantasy race league since 2003. Our league started with just Air National Guard players & ended up having military members from all branches, active, Reserve, Guard and retirees competing. It was a key factor keeping my interest up in NASCAR. To be truthful, NASCAR in my opinion has gone downhill since Brian took over. The fantasy game keeps me interested.
I am very grateful that you and your team are putting this game together. I also complement you on how you are taking in feedback.
I look forward to 1 February with anticipation.
Thank you for putting this together. I believe I am moving my league here. Yahoo definitely dropped the ball on this one. If there is anything I can do to help let me know.
My group has been playing YAHOO NASCAR fantasy racing for sometime and we all pretty much agreed Yahoo’s format was old and tired and not much fun anymore. I was still going to play this year until I saw this.
Anyway I have came up with what I think would be a lot more fun to enjoy fantasy racing. It’s completely different from what’s currently out there just don’t know how to proceed with it.
Darren,
Thank You so much for creating this!..Nice job-You are awesome! Like everyone else, after playing Yahoo Fantasy for 12 years-My heart dropped when I got the email from Yahoo. I have lots of NASCAR fans and will be sharing your site.
Again-Thank You!
[…] What Happened To Yahoo Fantasy NASCAR? […]
How do I set up a new league, invite only. We had played the yahoo leagues for many years, and we’re disappointed when it stopped. We tried nascar league last year. I’m looking for something better. I think this is it!
Thanks for your help, and for creating this.
Mary
Hi Mary…the game is now at https://drivergroupgame.com
One of the coolest things is that you can customize your league to use the races that you want. So, you can start one with race 3, 4…whatever to give you time to get it set up an people joining.
If you have any questions use the contact form on that site and it will come to me.