Fantasy Henley 2025: A Reflection
Running Fantasy Henley has been such a delight this year.
It was the very definition of a plan coming together.
Loyal fans of Fantasy Rowing will remember the pain of the v1.0 apps. When that first version of it went out into the wild, it was riddled with bugs - pages that wouldn’t scroll, totals that wouldn’t update and all kinds of things that added up to a terrible user experience at times.
I’d bitten off much more than I could chew.
Thankfully this is familiar territory for my ADHD and I, and in many ways it’s my happy place. With resilience on tap and a large dose of hyper-focus I spent hours and hours fixing that first version to get the whole thing to a point that by the end of the 2023 regatta, everything (sort of) worked.
Leaping forward to 2024, I’d just started a new job and didn’t have the capacity to make any material changes, and so it launched in 2024 with only minor tweaks, fewer bugs but still a clunky prototype!
But despite the roughness around the edges, the post event survey showed that users had enjoyed it once again, the number of players had even grown by about 200, to around 950. 🙌🏻
The masterplan
The overarching plan this year was growth, more specifically organic growth using network effect.
Network effect is when your product is designed to be better with friends #fwends, organic means you’re not paying for it #thrifty and growth is increasing your number of users #duh
Growth is something I’ve thought and read about quite a lot, and have an obsession with a really simple concept; triage; splitting the audience into three - people who will definitely use your product, people who definitely won’t, and then people who might.
You need to OBSESS about the last segment, the people who might.
You won’t achieve any growth from the other two segments, you need to understand who the people who might use it are, figure out what they want and then deliver it.
Often it’ll be something that makes your hardcore audience frown - why are they doing that?
But don’t worry, they’re going to use your product no matter what anyway, growth strategies aren’t for them - they’re for the mights!
Just make the damn thing…
Now it’s not my job to spend time thinking about rowing and how to cure it’s ills, but unfortunately there are certain things that live rent free in my head.
And as anyone that’s been around rowing for 20 years will know, I’m also quite prepared to thrust my ideas out into the world regardless of whether anyone’s asked for them or not.
It’s fun for me - even if they don’t take off (although it’s obviously better when they do - competitive much?).
Fantasy Rowing is one, but there’s TargetSplits, a wee app for calculating rowing splits and pacing and then Winter Rowing League, a project that I quietly piloted this year where I rank clubs according to their results at certain events in a fun, mid 90s internet kind of way.
As I already mentioned, ‘fixing’ rowing is not my job. But whose responsibility is it? And do they even think it needs fixing? And even if they do think it needs fixing, what is it that they think needs fixed? Is it the same thing that you or I think needs fixing?
Let’s make a pact, right now - let’s not wait to find out.
Hope is not a plan.
Everyone can innovate, we all have some influence whether we realise it or not, and if we want to change things we just need to push on.
Trying to convince people of your idea can be so draining and difficult, it can put you off. Ideas, especially new ones that break the mould, can be really difficult to explain to people who are used to the norm, and even harder to convince them that the value is there when they’re struggling to imagine the same thing that you do.
But if you just make the damn thing and put it in their hands, they can get it straight away.
Fantasy Henley 2025
I should have made more of it being ten years since the first iteration of Fantasy Henley, but I was so deep into making the app work that it didn’t really occur to me. The original (2015) version was nothing more than a really basic wordpress site - but it worked and commanded a decent following - many of whom are still playing today - many of whom are actually commentators/pundits!
But the current version is a different beast altogether. Spawned out of a necessity to be able to demonstrate my product chops after redundancy in 2022, it builds on my natural strengths as someone who loves data, product building, marketing, rowing and creative/divergent thinking.
I’m not the best person at any of them, not by a long way, but there is a sweet-spot where they all overlap that’s driven me to be able to produce the v2.0 of the app, and although there’s some real ‘facepalm’ feedback, I’m very proud of it.
From the outset I hoped to break 1,000 players and beat last year by employing the growth tactics that I discussed earlier, but I didn’t expect it to explode to just shy of 3,000 players - if I’m honest I didn’t know there’d be that many people who would even be interested in this kind of thing.
But now we know!
The post regatta survey is still in progress but the net promoter core is currently sitting above 80 and 100% of players say they’d be disappointed if it didn’t exist in 2026, over 70% ‘very disappointed’. (IYKYK)
The app store reviews also fill my heart with joy as well as the comments on my buymeacoffee page.
But more exciting than these nerdy metrics have been some of the stories that people have shared about how it’s brought their family together to follow the racing as part of a private league, or that it’s helped them to be interested in categories beyond their usual focus - or that it’s simply helped them to find a way to enjoy the sport at all, when before they’d simply not been able to find a hook into it. (you can find a few below)
This project has been driven by a desire for personal growth, challenging myself to turn my ideas into reality, develop my product taste and stretch my technical skills. It’s the icing on the cake for it to have gone so well this year and what’s more I’ve 150+ feedback questionnaire rosponses overflowing with constructive criticism that I can’t wait to channel back into the app - the next iteration is going to be so much better again.
The cherry on top is that, in it’s own small way, it’s achieving growth in the sport and helping people to engage with the rowing that we, the core audience, know and love.
Am very proud and feeling very grateful for the generous support.
I’m going to spend a few days/weeks reflecting on next steps but I’m happy to connect with anyone interested in learning more.
My email is at the bottom of the page, or find me on linkedin.
Thanks for still being here,
Iain
“Awesome job, thanks so much - this is an AMAZING game and I greatly enjoyed playing this week!”
“Made the whole Henley experience more fun and gave me an interest in events that I might not otherwise have been so bothered about.”
“I really really love fantasy rowing and thank you so much for all your time and effort - it’s appreciated enormously!”
“It got me engaged in a way that I’ve never been before. A friend in a rowing group suggested we had a group fantasy league and I was sceptical. I’ve never been into fantasy leagues before, but I get the appeal now!
I have to commend you on the emails you sent, these were brilliant! I loved the brief summary of the data and the recommendations of races to look out for or catch up on.”
“Great game. Absolutely loved it and took the family Henley “betting” competition to a whole new level - has the potential to rival Fantasy F1 and fantasy football etc. It allows the serious rowing and non-rowing members of the family to have a bit of fun throughout the whole regatta. 10/10. ”
“Good fun and provoked lots of chat by the riverside”
“Love the app (even though I am terrible at predictions!) THANK YOU ”
“Thank you so much for all your hard work. This has been the best Henley ever!”
