Back to articlesBuilding DSFL: Scaling a Fantasy Sports Platform to 600+ Users
Personal BlogApr 10, 20266 min read
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Building DSFL: Scaling a Fantasy Sports Platform to 600+ Users

A deep dive into how I built and deployed DSFL, an inter-house fantasy sports app that maintained 200+ daily active users across six months of active competition.

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Taking Inter-House Sports Digital

Inter-house sports competitions carry immense tradition at school, but tracking player stats, match points, and leaderboards was historically done manually on paper noticeboards. I wanted to build a modern fantasy league web application to make tracking scores dynamic and engaging.

I designed and engineered DSFL as a full-stack web application. The platform had to support draft mechanics, dynamic team management, live point calculation based on real match outcomes, and secure user accounts.

Engineering Challenges and Solutions

  1. State and Database Integrity: Handling concurrent updates during live matches required explicit database transactions and strict data modeling to ensure scores updated accurately without race conditions.
  2. User Retention and Performance: Serving 200+ daily active users meant keeping server response times minimal. I implemented server-side rendering with Next.js and optimized database queries to keep page loads fast on mobile connections across campus.
  3. Authentication: Setting up secure authentication allowed over 600 users to sign up without risking account spoofing or unauthorized team alterations.

Building software for a live user base turns bug fixes from theoretical exercises into immediate operational requirements.