A popular daily fantasy sports operator that prides itself on experimentation and taking chances on innovation has added a social media element to making picks.
Key Takeaways
- PrizePicks is giving users a simple and easy way to use their friends' or favorite influencers' lineups.
- The Feed is the next step in a broader plan to bring entertainment to the DFS app.
- The new community will undergo many changes over the next several months and years.
PrizePicks unveiled “The Feed” on Thursday. The new app feature adds a community that allows customers to quickly and easily add peer-to-peer contest lineups from other users.
Customers can copy and use a lineup, set the amount for the contest they want to enter, and have it locked in seconds.
“If you’ve got that smart friend, smart person on Twitter that you know, follow them, and as soon as they make a lineup, you’ll get notified, and it’s two clicks for you to make that entry,” Dylan Cooper, SVP of product at PrizePicks, recently told Covers. “That makes the experience so much easier than having to go browse the whole board and search.”
The next phase
PrizePicks rolled out the social community before Thursday’s marketing campaign and has already seen thousands of profile follows and lineups shared. The timing is perfect for PrizePicks, which has launched its new feature to capture the time when the NFL, MLB, and NBA all converge later this month.
The Feed features an algorithm that gives users lineups from athletes, influencers, and other popular personalities. The machine-learning model prioritizes start times and popularity for games and is personalized to the sports users play and the types of picks they make.
Users can like, dislike, or tail lineups on PrizePicks, and Cooper said they can build a “Spotify” type follower list. The idea came from all of the thousands of group chats, Discord conversations, and other social media lineup sharing. PrizePicks wants to bring all of that together in one place.
“We’re advancing the daily fantasy sports world forward into its next phase, blending how fans socialize online with how they root for their favorite players on gameday,” Cooper said. “These social features create an interactive experience that allows players to build lineups, ride with their favorite celebrities, and flex their knowledge with their friends, all within the PrizePicks app.”
Commitment to innovation
Now, users can click on another profile and view how that person is doing with lineups, but this is just the beginning. Cooper said PrizePicks plans to add numerous more features to The Feed, like avatars, achievement badges, and hot streaks to make it even simpler to tail lineups.
“This is a big moment. This is a building block for PrizePicks to add that social aspect to the app, but (The Feed) is going to look night and day a year from now,” Cooper said. “We’re going to keep improving on it.”
Cooper said there are some smaller operators doing something similar to PrizePicks’ new feature, but no other big DFS brand is offering this kind of community and social element.
“We’re going to innovate. We’re going to take some risks,” Cooper said. “I don’t know if the big dogs, the public companies, are going to be willing to take all of those risks. We’re gonna really look to innovate for our customers, make the best product, but will win not just in the next year, but in the next five to 10 years. That’s how we’re looking at this.”
Building for the future
The Feed is also the next step in a broad plan to separate the Atlanta-based operator from other DFS sites. The company has rapidly expanded since being founded by Adam Wexler and Jay Deuskar in 2015, currently operating in 45 U.S. jurisdictions.
Global lottery gaming company Allwyn recently purchased a majority stake in PrizePicks, which the operator sees as a way to push innovation and build a future that takes the app beyond sports.
Adding a community feature is just the start.
“PrizePicks has had the concept to be more than just a sports picks app for two, three, four-plus years,” Cooper said. “How do we become a social entertainment platform, not just a picks platform? And this is probably the first real step we’ve taken towards it.”
