Cailyn Burkhardt

A New Way to Approach Fantasy Football Statistics

It’s no secret that football is the most popular sport in the United States. The thrill of the Hail Mary, the thunder of massive linemen colliding and the shock of a last-minute comeback win all make football an undeniable dream for sports fanatics. That’s why more than 32 million Americans played Fantasy Football in 2016 alone.

Since the dawn of Fantasy Football, players have been forced to sort through mountains of raw data and tedious text that can be overwhelming for even the most experienced Fantasy Football players. The resulting demand for modernized data on specific NFL players gave birth to the industry of Fantasy sports analysis websites — all of which need to present information in an easy-to-digest manner.

This is where Aardvark Brigade’s revamped web components come into play.

What is Player Profiler?

Player Profiler, a popular Fantasy Football analysis website, asked Aardvark Brigade to create a number of embeddable, customizable widgets that paid partners could use to supply data to their audiences in an interactive manner.

Widgets are a great way to spice up raw data, and that’s exactly why Player Profiler approached Aardvark Brigade’s dedicated development team. In an age where online readers are accustomed to infographics, pictures and interactive elements to aid their understanding, widgets are the perfect addition to a statistic-heavy website like Player Profiler.

Aardvark Brigade’s Process

Frank Lakatos, Aardvark Brigade’s point man on the project, explained how new the idea of interactive widgets functioned for Player Profiler before the renovation project.

“Player Profiler wanted a way to offer widgets and data on its website to other websites that are also in the Fantasy Football space. [These sites] didn’t have the stats that Player Profiler has — and we wanted to create an easy way that they can integrate and embed those widgets onto their sites.”

Aardvark Brigade concocted a plan to compile the information, upload the data onto a stand-alone web application and populate it onto the Player Profiler website (and the websites of its partners) in the blink of an eye. It was a big task, but they were up for the challenge.

This notion of lightning fast load times and seamless use is something more and more clients demand, and Lakatos explained that doing so was a hurdle his development team proudly overcame.

“The data doesn’t really live on [the client’s] website. It lives in a completely separate API (application program interface) that’s Player Profiler’s store. But that API didn’t have this type of information…

We had to develop systems from the ground up to ensure all of the data was easily queryable while, at the same time, it had to be fast!”

Aardvark Brigade’s custom-made web components process user’s request and put out data in real time. This means readers can select any quarterback, wide receiver, tight end or running back on any NFL team and receive interactive, simplified data that makes selecting the right player so much easier.

“This furthers Player Profiler’s overall reach and paid partnership programs, all while keeping the integrity of the data intact.”

Hard Work Come to Life

After weeks of systematically enhancing the project, the Aardvark Brigade development team was able to create a stable platform that supports the ever-growing number of data points following each game. In addition to impressive widget load times, these elements were also created to be completely sharable, customizable and responsive.

Not only was it a priority to make the widgets easy for website managers to stylize, the team was determined to make them seamless to embed in the first place. Lakatos shared how vital the idea of an “easy embed” was to the overall project.

“We modeled internally sites like Twitter and YouTube, how easy they make the embed process. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, just copy this chunk [of code] and put it here. That’s what we were trying to set the mark for.”

Now, Player Profiler’s paid partners can embed these widgets on their own pages with the click of a button and make sure they match site-specific style and size requirements. This furthers Player Profiler’s overall reach and paid partnership programs, all while keeping the integrity of the data intact.

It’s clear to see Aardvark Brigade’s state-of-the-art widget system hurled Player Profiler into the end zone. Now that mountain of text and overwhelming number of individual data points are compiled neatly and easy for devoted Fantasy Football players to access.

Aardvark Brigade smashed every deliverable like a linebacker overcomes a quarterback when the offensive line fails. But on a larger scale, Lakatos said the most impressive part of the project was conquering a brand new type of technology and delivering on Aardvark Brigade’s promise to the client.

“We’re now opening up the infrastructure for [the Player Profiler] website to everyone… Now, the resources of the server are dependent on everyone who uses it — because anyone who puts this web component on their site is hitting the Player Profiler API and grabbing assets.

We didn’t want to cripple their site because someone else is using it… One of our biggest internal successes was that we really put in a lot of performance-tuning and caching to make it fast. I think that was the ‘we’ve got something’ kind of moment.

For Aardvark, we were proud because we built a fast, competent system that also delivered on this really elegantly integrated platform.

It’s complicated in terms of how it was put together on the back-end, but on the front-end, it’s simple to use it.”

However, from Lakatos’ perspective, it was the little things his team was able to accomplish that really stood out. When asked what he was most proud of, he replied, “For me, personally, it’s the ease of use.”

Now the Aardvark Brigade team is excited and ready to use the same type of standalone, interactive web elements to improve projects in the future.

Utilizing this technology can help an audience feel engaged with the material they’re consuming and can maximize overall reach. The concept of making a consumer feel valued and being able to keep them hooked is becoming increasingly important at a time where new, competing websites are published every day.

These interactive widgets aren’t just for the Fantasy Football arena. They have the chance to enhance a variety of websites — from introducing a new line of cosmetics, to demonstrating voter trends, even showing the benefits of different product subscription packages — the possibilities are limitless and Aardvark Brigade is ready to tackle anything.