Speed Fantasy Football

Brief: To build a pilot of a Speed Fantasy Football game for a public event run by the Manchester United Foundation and the BBC.

BBC Learning initially asked us to do some research in to what resources exist that encourage either adults or children to use their basic maths skills with football as the hook. This was for a public event being held at Manchester United training grounds – The Cliff.

As part of our research we identified a gap for an easy to use and quick fantasy football style game that would appeal to both children and adults. BBC commissioned us to build a pilot of the game to demonstrate at the event with a very tight deadline – just 3 weeks. We delivered a fully functional pilot in time to demonstrate at the event.

The game uses last season’s premiership football data. People can play on their own or against each other and have to make their choices against the clock. They select a team, watch the matches being played (in 30 secs) and then have a further 30 seconds to substitute one of their players. Each round, the team scores points for goals, assists and saves and lose points for red cards and yellow cards.

Enabling real-time interaction between players on different computers was a challenge. Using cutting edge technologies such as Node.js and HTML 5 WebSockets we were able to cut the delay down to a fraction of a second.

The event lasted for 2 days and 2000 people came through the doors. We received a great reaction to the game from children, adults and maths teachers and next steps are currently being discussed with the BBC.