Nope, it’s not just you — ESPN’s fantasy football app and website are down.
On the first Sunday of the 2016-17 NFL season, ESPN suffered “technical difficulties” with both its fantasy football app and website. The issues started just as Sunday’s games kicked off at 10 a.m. PT. As of 12:50 p.m. PT, the problems persisted. Users couldn’t access their team rosters or see updated scores.
Here’s a tweet from ESPN at 11 a.m. PT:
https://twitter.com/ESPNFantasy/status/775031484335915008
And at 1 p.m. PT, just before the afternoon games kicked off:
https://twitter.com/ESPNFantasy/status/775061234278342656
We’ve reached out to ESPN to find out more details about the problems, and will update this post when we hear back.
https://twitter.com/espn/status/775058726319513611
Update, 3:30 p.m. PT: The app and website are back for me, and it seems others are now able to access their rosters/scores.
Update, 3:40 p.m. PT: ESPN confirmed that the service is restored. Here’s a statement from the company:
“ESPN Fantasy is restored and we will continue to monitor. We identified a backend data access issue and resolved as quickly as possible. The issue did not impact data for teams, leagues or rosters. We sincerely apologize to all ESPN fantasy users.”
https://twitter.com/ESPNFantasy/status/775100980354510851
Users aren’t happy — including a U.S. senator and an NBA player.
https://twitter.com/clairecmc/status/775026475586039811
https://twitter.com/Jared_Sully0/status/775032980439830528
https://twitter.com/cring520/status/775062928160620548
https://twitter.com/edtechHughesT/status/775059232970375168
https://twitter.com/Joker8506/status/775059485572395008
https://twitter.com/hjfd424/status/775031709595267072
https://twitter.com/PardonMyTake/status/775033623728779264
https://twitter.com/Joe_P_Kaiser/status/775024719091433472
ESPN calls its fantasy football product “the industry’s No. 1 fantasy football game.” The sports media giant this year updated its ESPN Fantasy app for iOS and Android with new design, visuals, animations, home screen, and more.
Yahoo, ESPN’s main competitor in the fantasy football world, didn’t have many issues with its own fantasy football apps and website on Sunday.
The Fantasy Sports Trade Association estimated that nearly 58 million people in the U.S. and Canada played fantasy sports in 2015 — that number has likely grown for 2016. An American Express study last year found that 74.7 million Americans planned to play fantasy football. FSTA also estimates that the average player spends $556 per year on fantasy sports.
It’s unclear exactly how many total ESPN Fantasy Football users there are this year, but ESPN counted more than 1.75 million teams drafted during a 28-hour fantasy football marathon in August.