by Liam Togher
MANCHESTER United are not the only success story of the English Premier League season – two brothers from Castletroy are responsible for a hugely successful fantasy football website based on the league.
Simon and Robert Hunter set up Ultra Fantasy Football (UFF) in November 2012 and the website offers a blog which gives advice for players of the popular fantasy football game on the official Premier League web page.
The UFF Twitter page had more than 1,000 followers within one month of setting up and their following now exceeds 5,000.
There is no shortage of bloggers offering advice to fantasy football players, but Simon believes that the quality of the content on UFF and the extensive research that is invested by the brothers is what sets their website apart from the rest.
He says: “There’s a lot of blogs out there – I can name five or six that would be on Twitter – but on Twitter itself ours is the third most recognised fantasy football account and we only set up in November.
“We put a lot of research into our stats. We don’t ramble on ‘oh I think this player will do well’; we actually research the stats and we’re looking for differentials as well instead of the obvious choice.
“I think that’s what gives us the difference and a head start over the other competitors out there at the moment.”
The success of UFF has now carried over to the smartphone sector, with Apple recently accepting their proposed app, which is due to be launched in July ahead of the 2013-14 Premier League season.
Robert says that, like with the website, there was a gap in the market for a fantasy football app that would offer more than what was previously available to the public.
“There’s a few apps for fantasy football there but developers don’t have a lot to offer. The pickings are quite slim so we decided that we would develop a fantasy football app for iOS that will have lots of features and everything you want.
“For example you might have the entire player database saved offline on your phone so if you’re out and about and you don’t have a data connection you can browse all the players.”
For Simon and Robert, the 2012-13 Premier League season has been a resounding success, with the promise of even better things to come.
