AI-UX Fantasy Premier League overhaul leaves some fans disenchanted

Each year, football fans around the world rush to build and rebuild their fantasy football team, ahead of another action-packed season in the English Premier League. But this season, the organiser has fallen foul of fans, with an AI-heavy UX overhaul, which some users suggest is geared to prevent their use of privacy protection measures.

The world is built around great migratory events. In Africa, there is the movement of the herds across the Serengeti. In Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North America, there are the gigantic salmon runs. And in offices across the UK, there is the pre-season scramble to renew Fantasy Premier League accounts for the new campaign.

But many of those delegated to revive the workplace FPL for the 2025/26 season will find the process significantly more arduous this year. A plethora of sign-in issues mean that less than a week before the big kick-off – Liverpool taking on Bournemouth at Anfield on Friday the 15th of August – some accounts remain frustratingly dormant.

New features

Ahead of the new season, news outlets have gorged themselves on content around the massively popular game – highlighting updated rules, designed to make it more competitive than previous years. That includes an increased transfer war-chest, a new bonus-points system for defensive actions (moving the game away from largely ignoring the defensive exploits of midfielders), and new ‘chips’ to give players different one-off advantages.

But one of the changes not mentioned on BBC Sport’s write-up is FPL’s new user-interface. As the new design launched in late-July, the Official Fantasy Premier League social media accounts declared “We are so back”, adding that Fantasy Premier League returned as “A game for everyone”.

With Official Creative Partner Adobe Express and Official Cloud and AI Partner Microsoft CoPilot now featuring prominently on the website, the site now offers new options, including an AI-generated club badge for fantasy teams, and chatbot companion, which currently warns that it is “always evolving, with new features on the way”, and that users should therefore “please check for errors”.

FPL’s post on X was swiftly supported by a number of accounts with NFT-related names and profile pictures, who happily echoed the phrase “We are so back”. But not all fans have been so enamoured with the changes.

Tracking back

While the new defensive points system will see users hoping their players commit to tracking back on the pitch, they seem less happy with the idea FPL might insist on tracking their activities when using its platform. And a number of previously fervent FPL regulars are questioning whether that is behind their current inability to access FPL services.

Currently it seems that users trying to renew their clubs and leagues with Android devices, or a computer web browser which has anti-tracking, privacy protection or adblockers installed will struggle to use the website. On the previously mentioned X thread, commenters swiftly took FPL to task for its sloppy interface, with responses including “We are back with one of the worst UI/IX I’ve ever seen”, “Less than 3 weeks from first match and draft mode isn’t open, get it together” and “The game’s never been more gone” suggesting all is not well among the usership.

While some have chalked this up to the app simply being rushed out, others have greater concerns. A host of FPL-lovers flocked to Reddit to discuss their issues with the platform – and many settled on the idea that it was now at odds with their privacy settings.

Explaining what they believed was behind the inaccessibility of FPL, one Reddit user argued, “This is because they insist on tracking being enabled. If you want it to work, you have to dismiss your principles. No sarcasm, this is a bad situation.”

While another suggested the problems might stem from the possibility “[FPL] made the whole thing with Official Creativity Partner Adobe Express, and it doesn’t work on Opera”, privacy was still a recurring theme. Others added that they faced endless loading screens and crashes until they “turned off certain privacy related extensions on Firefox”, or “turned off some tracker blockers” – leading them to conclude that the issues were “definitely something with adblock and trackers.”

Privacy concerns

Tracking users through mechanisms such as third-party cookies has traditionally been seen by businesses as useful, because it can yield user analytics, which can help website owners understand how users are interacting with their site, and help tailor its performance accordingly. This includes offering up personalised advertising, with targeted ads delivered according to a user’s browsing history, interests, and demographics.

From the perspective of users of the internet, however, these ‘pros’ are largely seen as ‘cons’. As well as privacy concerns, with third-party cookies collecting significant amounts of personal information about a user, such as their browsing habits – something which most users would not consciously consent to – this information can also be leveraged for malicious purposes beyond advertising. Privacy-advocates also warn that tracking users can also be a method of delivering their information to malware – even while many users are unaware they are being tracked due to a lack of transparency also associated with the technology.

Browsers including Apple’s Safari have stopped third-party cookies that track people across the web amid concerns about privacy – and many other browsers have also installed settings to disrupt or prevent tracking of this kind. Whether this is the root of the problem in FPL’s case is yet to be determined.

The organising company has been contacted for comment, along with a consulting firm which has previously worked on website redesigns for it – but at time of publication, no response has been received. In the meantime, workplace FPL bosses will need to consciously weigh up the privacy risks they and their colleagues may be willing to take, before they re-engage for another season.