Back at the end of May, we reported that Yahoo! is developing an iPhone fantasy sports application later this year. Those who play Yahoo! fantasy sports don’t have to wait for that, though.

The Y! Fan app is already available for users of the iPhone, iPod Touch and BlackBerry.

“I kept forgetting to set my hockey fantasy roster and couldn’t do it easily from my iPhone,” co-creator Marco Palermo tells FSB.com, in explaining why they developed the product.

The app comes in free and pay ($3.99) versions. The former allows you to manage no more than one team per sport and offers very basic league viewing and management capabilities. A user can check on his or her players and standings, for instance, and make lineup changes, but waiver moves and trades cannot be carried out.

In the pay version, you can control as many teams as you want, and add/drop and trade capabilities are available. It also allows users access to league message boards.

Overall, the draw to using the application rather than the main site would seem to be a cleaner interface. The Yahoo! pages tend to be quite busy, and navigating through any necessary moves often seems to take more focus than the single-tap zooms that you can employ on other sites through your iPhone.

I don’t own an iPhone but did try both versions of the app on my iPod. The presentation is certainly much cleaner and more ready to use than when I visit the Yahoo! fantasy pages. One thing I miss, however, is easier navigation between teams in the same league, so that I can check out potential trade targets without starting the process of actually proposing something. The offer to upgrade to the pro version that I have to turn down every time I start up the free app is also a bit annoying.

The other thing to point out is that if you don’t do your fantasy team maintenance on the go, then you probably have no use for an application like this. New toys are always cool, but you’ll obviously have more control over your teams via the main site.

If you find yourself having to make lineup changes from the backseat of a cab or talk some trash to leaguemates while your stuck in a meeting, then the Y! Fan app makes it easier to work one-handed.

The download site is currently unavailable, but Palermo says that updated editions are in the approval stages right now and should be released sometime next week.

Tags: fantasy baseball, fantasy sports, fantasy sports business, fantasy sports industry, marco palermo, y! fan, yahoo

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Lead Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.