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Draft — One week Fantasy Football drafts
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Fantasy sports are a huge market and the daily/weekly games are definitely intriguing with people's busy schedules and commitments.
I'm curious as to how this will compete with other new fantasy sites like FanDuel and DraftKings who are both adding a little twist to the traditional fantasy sports market?
@_ryangilbert Hey Ryan - our last site, StarStreet.com, was directly competitive with those two (and, to be quite honest, they kicked our ass even though many thought we had the better product). That said, I don't think Draft is at all competitive with them (and from my convos with them, they seem to agree). Salary cap daily fantasy (like Fanduel and Draftkings offer) is a very hardcore game. There's over 40 million people who play fantasy and only around 1 million playing between those two sites. And though they both have mobile apps, they're certainly not quick, mobile games (building a good team takes a lot of work). Draft is meant to be a quicker, simpler game. Really like Words with Friends but instead of making a word you're picking a player. If we get this right it will be the most casual, lowest barrier fantasy game out there, and it will not only get a lot of new player playing daily fantasy, but to all of fantasy.
@jerlevine @_ryangilbert I get the above, and having used FanDuel and not loving it, agree. That said, how do you ultimately plan to monetize? Adding that "betting" feature, freemium, advertising?
EDIT: See you are doing for money games. Didn't realize that.... wasn't clear from the landing page.
@JeremyZ123 Should definitely add that to the landing page. Thanks for calling it out.
I'm definitely a fan and have been using the beta amongst a few friends...reminds me of @fiftyapp in that it's not a super power user / niche audience but something that can be really fun and entertaining for a casual fan. Care to chime in @jerlevine? :)
Significantly better experience compared to DraftKings. The time limit for picks adds a scary sense of urgency.
As a data point, I have never gotten into fantasy because of the time commitment.
Also, I don't like the idea of only being able to draft my team once a year. Especially because it can complicate how I root for my Patriots.
The Draft app works how I wish fantasy football overall worked, but especially for mobile. Each week, I'll nab a couple players (Gronk and Brady are my favorites) and go head-to-head with a buddy. It's a blast. It's easy.
I can compete in fantasy football with a couple swipes, and winning is pretty awesome haha.
I think it's a strong product, and I believe they've built a great working version of what I imagined 'fantasy football, reinvented for mobile' would look like.
I definitely like the turn based aspect of the app. I'm curious about the decision to make the games 1 v 1, which makes the payments 5.50 to win 10. To me, the expected return would be a coin flip since anyone can go off any week. @jerlevine is the expectation that users will be confident enough in their team to look past that?
@guzapalooza From the early data I've actually been really surprised at how many people are wanting to play for money right away. Over 15% of the first set of drafts were for money.
Thanks for posting @ryandawidjan! Draft has been a long time coming for us. We recently sold StarStreet to DraftKings so that we could go all in on it. It was crazy to us that no one had really built a mobile first game for fantasy game. In thinking about what that game would look like, I kept coming back to my favorite part of fantasy, and really one of my favorite things to do since I was a little kid - draft. In thinking about it, a Draft is really a turn based game, and turn based games have seemed to work pretty well on mobile. The goal here is to make a game so quick and easy that anyone who likes sports can enjoy, but with real money and the daily/weekly format, something the hardcore players will love as well. Excited to see the reaction and hear the feedback. And of course let me know if you have any questions!
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