YouTube TV rolling out integration with NFL Fantasy Football

Ben Schoon | Oct 15 2020 - 8:15 am PT

While some important sports channels may have disappeared, YouTube TV is adding a neat feature for football fans. Starting this week, YouTube TV can integrate with NFL.com’s Fantasy Football.

A new in-app experience for YouTube TV allows users to sign in with their NFL.com account and keep an eye on their Fantasy Football stats and other players all without leaving the game itself. The read-only experience allows users to better keep tabs on their league during the game they’re watching without requiring a second device. The feature even supports multiple fantasy accounts!

As Variety explains:

While watching the game, you can tap on the Fantasy tab and pull up your players’ scores, while the video window shrinks to a take up a small portion at the top of the screen.
The data presentation is bare-bones—a simple list of player names and scores that’s pretty typical of fantasy apps—designed to be clear but not too distracting from the actual media you’re watching. You cannot trade or sell players; the information is read-only. But you can toggle multiple fantasy accounts. Furthermore, the fantasy players that you have in the game you’re currently watching will be pushed to the top of the list, highlighted when they score. And when you switch channels to another game, that list will adjust accordingly.

For the time being, this feature only works on YouTube TV’s mobile apps for Android and iOS. To set it up, simply launch the app on those devices and go to Settings > Sports > Connect NFL.com Fantasy Football. As long as you have a team set up, the app will automatically pull in that information. You’ll still need to use NFL.com’s apps and website to set up teams, make trades, and handle other crucial details. This new YouTube TV experience just makes it easier to monitor your players during a game.

Interestingly, YouTube TV plans to bring other “apps” like this to the service in the future, but it’s unclear what those might be.