Industry
Sports Entertainment
Industry
Sports Entertainment
Company
DraftKings
DraftKings Skill Games: From Seasonal to Daily Play
DraftKings Skill Games: From Seasonal to Daily Play
DraftKings is built around key moments in sports - from games, to seasons, to outcomes.
But moments don’t happen every day.
Outside peak sports cycles, engagement drops. Revenue becomes volatile. And competitors begin to win attention with experiences that don’t depend on real-world events.
This project started with a fundamental question:
Timeline
Q4 2025 - Q2 2026
Role
Senior Product
Designer
Product
iOS, Android, Web
How might we make DraftKings engaging every day - not just on game day?
Opportunity
Skill-based gaming offered a clear path forward:
Legal in 40–45 states (90% of the U.S.)
A $730M+ and growing market
Proven to drive repeat, year-round engagement
At the same time, competitors were moving quickly, while FanDuel’s standalone attempt fragmented their experience.
How might we make DraftKings engaging every day - not just on game day?
Opportunity
Skill-based gaming offered a clear path forward:
Legal in 40–45 states (90% of the U.S.)
A $730M+ and growing market
Proven to drive repeat, year-round engagement
At the same time, competitors were moving quickly, while FanDuel’s standalone attempt fragmented their experience.
Planning to launch skill games within our Fantasy products first
Designing the Experience
Design for Native Integration
The biggest risk wasn’t functionality, it was perception. If skill games felt like a separate product, adoption would suffer. So we embedded them directly into familiar DraftKings navigational touchpoints:
Quick-access entry for repeat play (reusing the OSB Floating Action Button component across DFS and Pick6)
Skill-Games chip within the sport selector
Contextual placements across the home screen
I built 'Skill Game' icon animations using Rive
By integrating into existing navigation and interaction patterns, we streamlined the lobby and entry flow - reducing taps, improving visual hierarchy, and accelerating time-to-play.
Leverage Familiar Patterns
Introducing a new game category typically requires onboarding and education.
We reduced that burden by mapping skill games to familiar DFS patterns: free practice contests, head-to-head cash competitions, and clear entry and payout structures, while supporting first-time users with a lightweight “How to Play” guide.
By reusing familiar patterns, we significantly reduced the learning curve.
Unifying Native & Partner Experiences
To accelerate development without pulling engineering resources away from core DraftKings initiatives, we partnered with a third party vendor to power gameplay via webviews.
This introduced a key challenge: ensuring the experience still felt cohesive and native within DraftKings.
Third-Party: Original In-Game Experience
Redesigned In-Game Experience
For each game, I designed and implemented:
• Custom DraftKings game headers
• Reusable components built with design system tokens and type styles
• Consistent layout, spacing, and visual framing
This approach ensured that even when gameplay was technically external, the experience always felt like DraftKings.
The Bet
Don’t launch a new app. Expand the one users already love. We plan to embed skill games directly into our Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) and Pick6 products, leveraging:
10M+ existing users
Familiar contest patterns
A shared wallet and existing profile
This initiative was part of a broader strategy to expand skill-based gaming across DraftKings’ ecosystem, beginning with Fantasy (Pick6 and DFS). Fantasy provides the ideal entry point: a built-in peer-to-peer audience, low friction to adoption, and a clear regulatory framework.
The Bet
Don’t launch a new app. Expand the one users already love. We plan to embed skill games directly into our Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) and Pick6 products, leveraging:
10M+ existing users
Familiar contest patterns
A shared wallet and existing profile
This initiative was part of a broader strategy to expand skill-based gaming across DraftKings’ ecosystem, beginning with Fantasy (Pick6 and DFS). Fantasy provides the ideal entry point: a built-in peer-to-peer audience, low friction to adoption, and a clear regulatory framework.
Planning to launch skill games within our Fantasy products first
Designing the Experience
Design for Native Integration
The biggest risk wasn’t functionality, it was perception. If skill games felt like a separate product, adoption would suffer. So we embedded them directly into familiar DraftKings navigational touchpoints:
Quick-access entry for repeat play (reusing the OSB Floating Action Button component across DFS and Pick6)
Skill-Games chip within the sport selector
Contextual placements across the home screen
I built 'Skill Game' icon animations using Rive
By integrating into existing navigation and interaction patterns, we streamlined the lobby and entry flow - reducing taps, improving visual hierarchy, and accelerating time-to-play.
Leverage Familiar Patterns
Introducing a new game category typically requires onboarding and education.
We reduced that burden by mapping skill games to familiar DFS patterns: free practice contests, head-to-head cash competitions, and clear entry and payout structures, while supporting first-time users with a lightweight “How to Play” guide.
By reusing familiar patterns, we significantly reduced the learning curve.
Unifying Native & Partner Experiences
To accelerate development without pulling engineering resources away from core DraftKings initiatives, we partnered with a third party vendor to power gameplay via webviews.
This introduced a key challenge: ensuring the experience still felt cohesive and native within DraftKings.
Third-Party: Original In-Game Experience
To solve this, I worked with the team to design a unifying layer that maintained continuity across systems.
Redesigned In-Game Experience
For each game, I designed and implemented:
• Custom DraftKings game headers
• Reusable components built with design system tokens and type styles
• Consistent layout, spacing, and visual framing
This approach ensured that even when gameplay was technically external, the experience always felt like DraftKings.
Referrals were almost a universally known concept
Referral programs are not a new concept. People have a general understanding of what referrals are for, regardless of what the product is.
Most people have participated in some sort of referral program
Every participant has either referred or been referred to some online service or product. Roughly half of the participants specifically participated in referrals for online sportsbooks/casinos
Determining factors for participation
Launch Strategy: Start Focused, Then Scale
Although multiple games were available, we made a deliberate UX decision to launch with just 1–2 games - reducing cognitive load while ensuring a high-quality experience.
Initial Launch
1–2 games, anchored by Blackjack
Pipeline
Blackjack → Blocks → Solitaire
Cadence
1–2 new games every 4–6 weeks
This approach deliberately balanced:
Speed to market - ship fast with a proven, high-confidence format
User clarity - avoid overwhelming users with too many choices at entry
Quality of experience - focus polish where it matters most
Scalability - establish a repeatable content pipeline for ongoing growth
Designing for Change
A month out before launch, our original partner became unviable due to onboarding and InfoSec constraints that couldn’t be resolved within our timeline, which put the entire launch at risk.
So we had to pivot to another third party vendor, which became Low6.
The transition required minimal rework because the system was built for flexibility - leveraging a component-based UI, partner-agnostic architecture, and tokenized visual system.
Constraints That Shaped the Product
Platform and legal constraints shaped how the product was designed and delivered.
API dependencies and webview-based gameplay (Low6) meant interactions weren’t always instantaneous, so we designed for asynchronous states with clear loading and matchmaking patterns. Because gameplay lived in a partner webview, we focused on maintaining continuity through persistent UI and smooth transitions across system boundaries.
Backend dependencies and distributed engineering required strong feedback loops, leading us to prioritize clear signals for critical moments like balance updates and entry confirmation. Legal constraints further influenced how games were structured, reinforcing fairness through head-to-head symmetry and clear, defensible gameplay mechanics.
Designing for Change
A month out before launch, our original partner became unviable due to onboarding and InfoSec constraints that couldn’t be resolved within our timeline, which put the entire launch at risk.
So we had to pivot to another third party vendor, which became Low6.
Constraints That Shaped The Product
Platform and legal constraints shaped how the product was designed and delivered.
API dependencies and webview-based gameplay (Low6) meant interactions weren’t always instantaneous, so we designed for asynchronous states with clear loading and matchmaking patterns. Because gameplay lived in a partner webview, we focused on maintaining continuity through persistent UI and smooth transitions across system boundaries.
Backend dependencies and distributed engineering required strong feedback loops, leading us to prioritize clear signals for critical moments like balance updates and entry confirmation. Legal constraints further influenced how games were structured, reinforcing fairness through head-to-head symmetry and clear, defensible gameplay mechanics.
The transition required minimal rework because the system was built for flexibility - leveraging a component-based UI, partner-agnostic architecture, and tokenized visual system.
Impact & Key Takeaways
This initiative is projected to drive $5M - $26M in year-one revenue, with 1–5% user conversion and reach across approximately 90% of the U.S. market.
More importantly, it shifted DraftKings from an event-driven product defined by seasonal spikes to an "always-on" platform driven by daily engagement.
From a design perspective, this reinforced that the best new experiences feel familiar, that constraints, legal and technical, can sharpen rather than limit solutions, and that building systems (not just screens) is what enables both speed and resilience.
Ultimately, strong product bets mattered just as much as execution.
Impact &
Key Takeaways
This initiative is projected to drive $5M - $26M in year-one revenue, with 1–5% user conversion and reach across approximately 90% of the U.S. market.
More importantly, it shifted DraftKings from an event-driven product defined by seasonal spikes to an "always-on" platform driven by daily engagement.
From a design perspective, this reinforced that the best new experiences feel familiar, that constraints, legal and technical, can sharpen rather than limit solutions, and that building systems (not just screens) is what enables both speed and resilience.
Ultimately, strong product bets mattered just as much as execution.
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As we are currently launching this feature for the end of Q3 2024, we will collect feedback and data from CX and see what we can improve for V2. A special thanks to Ara An (UXM), Tristan Ho (UXR), Gabe Psellas (Lead PM), and everyone on the promotions feature team.
I led the design of the Refer a Friend promotion - a new referral feature offered by theScore Bet and ESPN BET. The promotion aims to leverage the app’s existing users by offering rewards to referring friends and family.
DraftKings is built around key moments in sports - from games, to seasons, to outcomes.
But moments don’t happen every day.
Outside peak sports cycles, engagement drops. Revenue becomes volatile. And competitors begin to win attention with experiences that don’t depend on real-world events.
This project started with a fundamental question:
Product
iOS, Android, Web
Role
Senior Product Designer
Timeline