Yahoo has made another acquisition through Bignoggins, a one-man startup behind fantasy games such as Fantasy Monster and Draft Monster.
Bignoggins was founded by Jerry Shen, a software engineer turned game developer in 2010. He is considered a one-man team because he never hired anyone to help him develop the games under Bignoggins which became the top sports app in iTunes with over a million downloads. Its popularity in iTunes may have caught the attention of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer to make a bold acquisition choice.
Shen did not disclose the amount that he received from Yahoo but it is definitely lower than what Yahoo paid on their earlier acquisitions. However, he shared that he is officially joining the Yahoo Fantasy team and will help develop games for the search engine company.
Shen wrote on his blog. “After many years as a free agent, I’d like to officially announce that Yahoo has picked me up off waivers. I’m excited to join a team of all-stars to take fantasy sports to the next level. I’ve been playing Yahoo Fantasy since high school and have wanted to work here since college, so this is really a dream come true for me.”
Yahoo Fantasy Sports have over 35 million fantasy players across the U.S and Canada and earns about $5 billion per year. Yahoo makes a lot of money from this service as well as its partner providers ESPN and CBS Sports.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer purchased Bignoggins as part of the company’s plan to develop games designed for mobile phones. Some fantasy games will have its own mobile versions soon through the help of Shen. She also announced plans of shutting down 80 percent of the current mobile games which are not that successful to fund the creation of mobile versions of the fantasy games.
