The Underdog Best Ball Mania 5 tournament ended Monday night, and the winner is…
The FanDuel NFL live final was Sunday, and the winner is…
DraftKings ran the biggest non-live final NFL tournament ever on Sunday, and the winner is…
Well, truth is, I don’t know the answers to any of those questions.
The Easiest Engagement Fix Fantasy Sports Sites Won’t Make
To find out, I’d have to rumble through Twitter/X, find people who either linked to the contests (in the case of DraftKings and FanDuel) or, in the case of Underdog, find a link that told me who’s in the running.
Let’s sweat the BBMV finals together 👀
LGREWE50 is currently in 1st Place with 191.78 points 🏆
▪️ George Kittle, Brock Purdy, Ricky Pearsall left to play
▪️ Kittle needs > 9.6, Purdy needs > 36.98, Pearsall needs > 20.4 for scores to count— Underdog Drafts (@UnderdogDrafts) December 30, 2024
Here’s a question: Why not make it easy to follow along? Why not have live leaderboards on the sites? Why not engage us?
It’s a fair question, and one asked by Alex Hardin, a longtime fantasy analyst and currently co-running the college football and college basketball operations at ETR.
why doesnt every dfs/best ball operator have a sweat landing page that has functional leaderboards for all of their big contests? operators continue to dismiss/underestimate the engagement that could come through this and seems super fkn simple to do.
— Alex Hardin (@fearmyturtleDFS) December 30, 2024
“Really this has always been an issue for me since the start of DFS that they really don’t do a great job promoting their ‘promotional’ contests, like live finals,” Hardin told me. “DraftKings does have the ability to view live public guaranteed contests in the lobby, but this does not extend to the live finals. The Underdog best ball stuff is some of the most frustrating because it’s nearly impossible to know what is going on in those contests.”
And this is more than just a vicarious thrill, although that certainly plays a large role in it.
“It’s more that I want to see how something I put so much time into plays out,” Hardin said. “Also, I know a lot of the people in the industry, and there are plenty of people you want to root for – and maybe a select few to root against.”
Simple fix.
The word “engagement” is always thrown around the internet space, with websites and apps always looking for ways to keep eyeballs glued to their sites.
Well, here is some scraping-the-ground low-hanging fruit. And yet … bupkis.
“I think a landing page with a selection of the featured contests for the week would suffice for a typical week,” Hardin said. “But for weeks like the DraftKings live final and events like the $3,333 maybe put a little more effort into it with maybe a live blog or integrated sweat show near the end. Look, I get it — these are things that the company cannot directly tie revenue to, so at this stage of DK/FD, I don’t think this is where they are looking to innovate. But it is sad, because there is an audience that would like to engage more with the product directly but the bridge is not being built.”
Hardin has high hopes for the best ball world, however.
“DFS has plateaued but best ball is still growing — hopefully operators in that space realize that they are falling short in some of these areas and give the people what they want,” Hardin said. “Whether it’s just transparency of results, the ability to sweat out a friend’s chance for glory, or just the vicarious interest of a casual player, just give us a simple, functional leaderboard accessible to the public. It’s really not a big ask.”
I mean, he’s not wrong.
Seems like a simple fix to a simple issue.
So all together now: Let us sweat! Let us sweat! Let us sweat!
Granted, that chant doesn’t feel like it’s going to move the needle, but we gotta start somewhere.
