ABOUT THIS ENTRY

Focusing on Gen Z from a Playmaker voice Playmaker Betting was launched to celebrate the community of sports betting while sticking to our ethos of infotainment, education, and storytelling. We think Gen Z wants to be entertained and talked to in an intelligent way, not pushed to place bad bets or be hoodwinked into thinking sports betting is a way to get rich quickly

How does this represent “Excellence in Engagement”?

Playmaker Betting focused on entertaining betting content for a Gen Z audience without resorting to ‘talking heads’ making picks, thus we were able to see very strong results and engagement immediately, with 100,000+ organic views on the majority of videos and tens of thousands of likes on a variety of content. Sportsbooks have mimicked this approach somewhat and are now seeing the value in creating content that celebrates the sports betting experience and community rather than just posting about promos and picks.

Objective: We felt Sports Betting content online and elsewhere was falling under and increasingly falling under two buckets:
Advising bettors/followers to place highly disadvantageous bets for the bettors and/or boring content featuring dry content of talent simply telling bettors who they should bet on, with no real advantage. We know Gen Z bettors want to be entertained and spoken to truthfully, along with learning how to bet responsibly while celebrating the community and ups and downs of sports betting. We wanted to reach these bettors where they consume content: Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter, and Facebook, featuring short-form engaging video content, real-time updates news, analysis, and memes, multiple unique free to play games, an ever-growing video content series lineup featuring in house talent and some of the most well-known creators and sports bettors around the world and a creator unit who activate at the biggest sporting events nationwide.

Strategy & Execution: Simply put we created content that Gen Z wants to see and went out and spoke to them where they consume content.

Results: We grew the channel to 500,000 organic followers in less than 6 months and saw comparable engagement metrics: views, likes, shares, and comments to that of our more established audiences and channels within the playmaker family.

Our first free-to-play game: The Impossible Contest quickly gained 30,000 players and we now have 50,000+ players across our half dozen free-to-play games, this has also led to several partnerships and collaborations with sportsbooks, DFS companies, and more.

This quickly led to several partnerships with Sportsbooks to help curate their content and have them sponsor our content, as well as many other endemic betting companies such as analytics, stats, apps, community-driven, and more.

Production

Playmaker
Playmaker Betting

Credits

James Caricato
Head of Betting
Playmaker

Nico Luisi
Content Creator & Social Betting Lead
Playmaker

Charles Stewart III
Playmaker Betting Talent & Content Creator
Playmaker

Phil Hellmuth
Content Creator/Poker Goat
Playmaker

Preston Adelman
Producer/Social
Playmaker

Landon Barimo 
VP, Marketing & Activation
Playmaker

Brandon Harris
CEO
Playmaker

David Woodley   
President/Chief Revenue Officer
Playmaker