Round Robins
Boosting revenue through broadening user engagement
Boosting revenue through broadening user engagement
As the designer of the Round Robins feature, I simplified a traditionally complex bet type to make it accessible to a broader audience. By seamlessly integrating this highly profitable feature into existing user flows, I helped drive a significant increase in both revenue and user engagement across the app.
In a standard sports bet, a person bets on the likelihood of a single event happening, and if they are correct they win and get paid. A parlay is a bet type in which 2 or more events (or "legs") are combined into one bet. To win a parlay, all of the legs must hit. If even one leg loses, the entire bet is counted as a loss. Parlays typically have lower odds at the tradeoff of exponentially higher payouts.
A Round Robin is a special bet type consisting of multiple parlay combinations formed from a set of 3 or more legs. Like putting multiple eggs into different baskets, they provide opportunities to win even if some of the legs don't hit.
Round Robins are typically seen as a more niche bet type, only utilized by more experienced bettors. They are highly profitable from a business perspective due to the low odds they offer that favor the sportsbook. With this feature, we were hoping to boost revenue and engagement by broadening the market to casual bettors.
User surveys and competitive analysis indicated that casual bettors typically avoid Round Robins because of their complexity and low odds. Since adjusting odds was not within the project's constraints, we wanted to focus on the experience for users through education and visual clarity.
These were the goals for the feature that were established:
Since Round Robins were meant to be a secondary bet type, it was important to make sure the feature didn't alter the existing bet placement flow but was still easily discoverable.
It was important for users be able to keep track of all their parlay combinations on the My Bets page. We wanted to maintain the familiar style of how parlays were tracked while incorporating necessary elements unique to the fit the format of Round Robins.
Though the feature hasn’t been released yet, the goal was for Round Robins to make up 1% of the total bets placed. While this number may seem low, it's important to consider how profitable Round Robins compared to its low popularity even among other sportsbooks.
Since this feature iterates on the existing betslip, it opens up a framework to easily include additional bet types down the line.