by Lee Dussinger
Founded in 2015, Atlanta-based PrizePicks is the fastest-growing independent daily fantasy sports company. PrizePicks has paid out hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars in winnings to users – and has an electric social media presence! The PrizePicks marketing team works tirelessly to bring compelling content to their audience, while growing their user base.
Industry: Daily Fantasy Sports
By the Numbers
The Challenge: No Source of Truth for Marketing Content
When Director of Social, Judah Huffman, started at PrizePicks in 2023, his mission was clear: dramatically turn up the volume of social media content!
They were using Asana to coordinate general plans, but the platform didn’t allow them to see content or have any type of formal review or approval process for that content. Given the volume of ambitious work the team was producing, this was a serious problem.
“Our goal is not to regurgitate sports highlights – we want to create original content that our audience loves to engage with. Having checks and balances around content is key for that,” Huffman said.
This created several problems:
- There was no clarity on what specific content was going out and when it was going out
- Inefficient processes were slowing down the fast-moving PrizePicks team
- Due to less-than-ideal content review practices, content needed to be corrected or retracted after being posted
To solve all of these issues, PrizePicks required a central space to organize content and provide reviews and feedback on that content.
“We knew we needed a central source of truth,” Huffman said.
Enter Opal.
The Solution: Flexible & Powerful Content Planning in Boards
PrizePicks employs two content teams: The Day Team and The Game Time Team. The Day Team works 9-to-5 planning ideas and creating the foundation of their content. Reacting to real time events, The Game Time Team then makes changes and posts the content.
Opal’s free-form planning space Boards gave PrizePicks their source of truth for BOTH of these teams. Since everyone is able to see the real content, the publishing platform, and the status of the content in one place – it is where both teams spend the majority of their time.
The way this happens is that The Day Team builds out content and writes a first draft of the copy. They then use custom columns in Boards to set the status of how The Game Time Team can use the content.
As big moments happen live during the games, The Game Time Team references Boards and sees the prepared content. They then tailor the work to be relevant to what has been happening in real-time – and get final approval on the true-to-life content preview in Opal.
“Good planning is the key to being able to have responsive and accurate content,” Huffman said. “Plus, seeing true-to-life content helps you envision what’s going to be posted.”
Since Boards is fully customizable, it can be tailored to show the exact information needed to convey the status of every unique piece of content. Before Opal, the teams had no central space to store real content, show the status of that content, and enable it to be reviewed before going live.
“Because we move so quickly at PrizePicks, we need functionality that moves at the speed of culture,” Huffman said.
The Added Bonus: Leveraging Opal AI
One of the ways PrizePicks sets itself apart from competitors is by offering betting opportunities on an enormous variety of different sports and events.
This variety of topics, coupled with the demand for a high volume of output, means the social team always needs fresh ideas for content.
Opal AI delivers here by providing relevant content ideas for an unlimited range of topics. Even better, since the AI Brainstorming function is embedded in Boards, approved ideas are ready to be built in the source of truth.
When it comes to writing and editing copy, Opal’s AI Rewrite does a great job of using the young and edgy PrizePicks brand voice. The team uses the AI editor to edit copy – and even re-write effective content to use it again.
“This is a great way for our team to maximize copy and work we’ve already done,” Huffman said.
The Result: A Rapidly-Growing Social Media Juggernaut
Since centralizing their content in Opal, the impact has been clear. On average the team went from creating around 200 pieces of content a month to creating around 1,000 per month – for a 400% increase! That all comes from having a central source of truth to plan, create, and review content!
On top of that, the quality assurance around the content has never been better – as mistakes dramatically dropped. Huffman estimates that PrizePicks cut the number of emergency edits or retractions by 95%!
All of this compelling content has helped elevate PrizePicks in a massive way. In 2023, PrizePicks social media content had a total of 9.8 million engagements – this is more than any individual team in the NFL (with the Eagles at number one with 6.4 million).