Chuck Swan Portfolio

Free to Play -> Sports Betting First

As the Daily Fantasy Sports betting market continues to evolve, it has garnered significant attention from both sports enthusiasts and investors alike. With the ongoing expansion of DFS platforms, a space has opened up to experiment with a more targeted sports betting experience.

Leveraging it’s existing Free to Play game modes and the established golf tournament prediction brand, we were able to introduce a golf centered DFS sports betting platform which gave the product a direct revenue stream which had not existed before.

Initial Free to Play (F2P) Product Challenges

1. Monetization: Without a direct monetization structure, the business relied mainly on partnerships and ad placements to indirectly monetize the experience.
2. Engagement & Retention: Due to the structure of the Free to Play games, early week engagement (Monday – Wednesday) and retention rates were lower than optimal for a live prediction product.
3. Competitive Edge: As the DFS sports betting market has expanded and more states adopt sports betting, competitors in the market within the golf segment aim to supplant the Chirp Golf app and acquire market share.
4. New Golf Partnerships & Support: Gearing the DFS platform strictly to golf sports betting positioned Chirp Golf Daily Fantasy in a unique position to capitalize on up and coming golf leagues and game variant types.

Product Approach

After defining the above problems, validating them via market and user research, and gaining an initial scope the rough engineering lift, the addition of DFS sports betting platform was agreed to be of the highest ROI for the long term business.

Introducing a DFS product into an existing Free to Play (F2P) product poses some interesting considerations.

1. DFS Supported States + Additional “Know Your Customer” Requirements: Certain states support DFS play and some do not, additionally each state has its own regulatory process which can cause delays for going live in those states.
   • Consideration: With the additional need to gate certain users out of the DFS experience while maintaining the existing F2P user base was a primary consideration.
   • Product Direction: An additional user validation checkpoint needed to be put in place, without impacting non-DFS users.
2. Integrating a DFS Platform: Adding a new DFS sports betting platform to an existing F2P app experience, each of which is built on different code bases, with different server components and associated complexities.
   • Consideration: The complexity of this product launch needs to be reduced as a full native integration would significantly increase engineering and QA scope.
   • Product Direction: Segregate the F2P and DFS products so their individual technical processes operate independently from each other.
3. DFS Section Access Points: Giving users a highly visible access point to the new DFS platform was vital to encouraging user engagement and converting users from F2P to DFS users.
   • Consideration: Encouraging users to convert to DFS players and place real money bets was a key consideration for the launch of the product.
   • Product Direction: In order to increase visibility and options for users to access the DFS platform, multiple high visibility access points were added throughout the F2P app experience.
4. Updated Tooling + Golf DFS Support: Creating a DFS platform dedicated to golf poses some significant gameplay and technical challenges which required core systems to be reworked to support golf tournaments.
   • Consideration: Adapting golf tournament types, gameplay, scoring mechanics, question types, and tournament structures as a foundational aspect of the launch made up a significant amount of scope for a viable product.
   • Product Direction: In order to constrain scope, the more complex and time intensive question types and “per round” capabilities were prioritized for v2 iterations.
5. Client Analytics + Reporting: Due to the product structures the analytics systems for each product required additional considerations, mainly surrounding the attribution of “refer a friend” campaigns and analytics tracking.
   • Consideration: Ensuring the systems correctly communicate between these two platforms was a vital launch item.
   • Product Direction: in partnership with technical directors and system architect, we were able to find a solution around the analytics and attribution communication between the platforms.

Product Launch & Results

Estimated Product Development Timeline: 3 1/4 months

Actual Product Development Timeline: 2 3/4 months

As a result of the strong technical planning, product prioritization, and close working relationship between myself and the engineering team, we were able to launch the product ahead of the targeted date. As a result we were able to do more robust integration testing and begin v2 iteration work.

Key Results

• DFS User Conversions: In the first week post launch we were able to convert 60% of the existing user base who lived in DFS states to DFS users.
• User LTV Increase: As a direct result of this launch we were able to increase the average LTV by 150% via direct monetization.
• New User Retention: An increase of 8% for new user D7 retention rate.