Facebook introduces in-app Fantasy Games

Fantasy Games will be an in-app rollout and have a dedicated tab in the Menu section on Facebook app, the prediction-based games will include the genres sports, TV shows and pop culture.

Facebook Fantasy Games are currently only available in the US and Canada, on both mobile operating systems Android & iOS. The Fantasy Leagues can be public or private, and users can compete with friends as well as fans on a public domain, compare scores, share picks, reactions, and comments.

The first fantasy game being launched by Facebook in partnership with Whistle Sports is a daily sports prediction game called Pick & Play Sports. Facebook will also launch new games with TV shows such as Survivor and The Bachelorette, sports leagues like Major League Baseball and LaLiga Santander, and more games with digital publishers like BuzzFeed.

For the unacquainted, a fantasy sport or game, also known as rotisserie or roto, is a type of game wherein participants assemble imaginary or virtual teams (or players) composed of proxies of real players of (predominantly) a professional sport, with wins in the fantasy league based on the real-world performance of their team or players.

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Similarly, on Facebook, users will collect points for accurate predictions of winners in a game, and users can also earn bonus points for building a streak of correct predictions over a series of days.

Facebook has been expanding its efforts in the gaming section. In July 2021, Facebook redesigned the in-app play tab of Facebook and made it easier for users to find and play games, whether they are cloud-streamed or HTML5. The revamped tab has also improved filtering and category sorting options with ranking categories and recommendations from the Facebook Gaming team.

Their slate of cloud playable games has also been expanded, the library now holds 25 cloud-streamed games on the platform, with recent additions that include Roller Coaster Tycoon Touch by Atari, Lego Legacy Heroes Unboxed, and Dragon Mania Legends by Gameloft, and the State of Survival by FunPlus.

With increased efforts in the gaming zone, Facebook also vamped up advertising in these sections with the launch of Cloud Playable Ads -ads that give a demo of the game users have the option to play. Built on the HTML5 playable ads format. The ad format is designed to support interactive demos from a game’s native code, blurring the line between games and ads.