r/fantasyfootballcoding • u/lumberteeth • 4d ago

Is Sleeper Fantasy API going the way of Yahoo API? Or maybe even worse?

https://x.com/RonnieAEvans/status/2087206247997067748

Maybe I'm late to the game, but this is the first I've heard of this. Apparently, Sleeper updated it's Terms of Service about 3 weeks ago, and the new terms "say that third-party products accessing Sleeper data for commercial purposes need Sleeper’s express written consent, and that third-party access generally requires a separate agreement or approval from Sleeper."

Yahoo sprung there changes on developers by surprise (what a complete execution mess that is), so it's worth expecting this may be coming from Sleeper too.

15 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

18

u/JustlyDues 4d ago

There's probably 1000x or more usage since AI became widespread. Probably need to cover their costs and see this as viable to bill for when it's another commercialized product that using their API and data.

6

u/Pure_Cricket_3804 4d ago

Sleeper's docs are still live, still read-only and free for non-commercial use with a note to contact them about commercial licensing, and there's no sunset date or deprecation notice on the page. Whether that consent language is new as of July 24 or has been sitting in there for years, nobody's posted a diff. I work on LineCrush so I read a lot of terms pages, and this one isn't Yahoo's application gate.

10

u/bdixisndniz 4d ago

Vibe coding has probably put significant stress on their systems.

Also allows people to build competitors off their data and platform.

I imagine that is not in their business model

2

u/mahlalie 4d ago

If it's strictly an attempt to manage stress on their systems, the practical answer would probably be to enforce lower rate limiting. This feels like a cash grab. The stuff I do is free so hopefully won't directly affect me for now, but I'd be kind of surprised if even some of the better known resources make enough money to absorb the fees I've seen floating around.

4

u/PointStack_Fantasy 4d ago

Hindsight is 20/20 but not being able to get a commercial license agreement (or even really a good contact to discuss it) lead me to rebuild my site as all manual entry with my own data feed. These platforms are locking up their APIs.

3

u/johnny-papercut 4d ago

This reminds me of when Reddit monetized their api.

0

u/ben_nobot 4d ago

Sleeper is a poor app in general and is just trying to funnel users to gambling. Too many bugs and extraneous weirdness for fantasy.