What was Peak Fantasy UI?

For a new project, I've been studying the UI of every current fantasy platform (web and mobile app). Thanks to the Internet Archive, I can also study the UIs of what has come before.

Yahoo has been fairly well-preserved in the Internet Archive, thanks to their leaderboards with scrapable-links to their public leagues.

They started off with a serif font for the roster table, but it's been sans-serif everywhere for a long time. (Ottoneu, with a monospaced font, is the exception.)
I miss the little yellow sticky note icon for player news. But I guess the yellow became a bit much when there was news for every player every day.
Notice how the layout keeps expanding so that less and less is visible above the fold.
That 2014 dark theme was truly ahead of its time. I'm pretty sure they added the light theme back when people threw a fit.

Yahoo, circa 2003

Yahoo, circa 2004

Yahoo, circa 2007

Yahoo, circa 2008

Yahoo, circa 2014

Yahoo, circa 2022

Yahoo, circa 2025

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Hi,

I'm Mays. I've been playing fantasy since I was in high school (over two decades ago).

My speciality has always been player valuation—converting player stats into rankings and salary values. VBD for fantasy football? Rotisserie z-scores? We go way back. In 2009, I started Last Player Picked, a site that generated fantasy values customized for your league.

You can find me on Twitter at @MaysCopeland or email me at [email protected].