Fantasy Football Comes to TiVo

Fantasy football has added a new wrinkle to football Sundays.

As games unfold around the league, couch potato “general managers” scamper back and forth between the television and their computers, calculating what each player on their fantasy team is doing. When I last lived in Austin, we had two televisions going all day and set up two laptops in the kitchen so we wouldn’t have to go very far to check the latest statistics.

TiVo hopes to change that–or at least make it a little easier for dedicated players to track their team’s progress. The company announced a deal with CBS that would merge the computer-television fantasy football experience.

From the Reuters article:

Instead of having to get on the Internet with a computer, users will be able to manage their football teams, check up-to-the-minute statistics and scores or watch highlights, all with their TiVo remote control. They’ll also have access to team-related breaking news and CBS SportsLine videos, including pre-game analysis, player interviews and special fantasy football content. 

While fantasy football probably isn’t the outlet that technologists envisioned for an interactive television experience–and I use the term in the lightest sense here–it’s these general-interest deals that will be the driver for new technologies.