ABOUT THIS ENTRY

Draft Together allows fantasy players the chance to use video chat when drafting. With virtual communication becoming the new norm, using Draft Together is a way to bring the spirit of in-person drafting. League mates can chat and interact (and trash each other's draft choices, of course!) while picking their players ahead of another great fantasy season! 

How does this represent “Excellence in Engagement”?

Through the launch of Draft Together, we were able to launch the first of its kind embedded video chat experience within Fantasy drafts. Beyond the global pandemic, fantasy managers can now join the rest of their league virtually, if they aren’t able to make draft day in-person. This means that managers can stay connected with their league, from wherever they are.

Draft Together is the first step towards creating more virtual experiences that allow sports fans to connect with each other from anywhere. Virtual and deeply connected experiences are here to stay, empowering sports fans to transcend borders and boundaries alike, while staying connected.

Objective: At the height of the global pandemic during the summer of 2020, given the uncertainty of Sports resuming due to the impending health risks for athletes caused by covid-19, we saw a dip in registrations and engagement for our Yahoo Fantasy Sports product. With everyone stuck at home, and with video having become increasingly important as a means to connect with friends and family, we sought out to build a video experience, to re-engage sports fans once sports re-opened.

For Fantasy, draft day is the single most important day for any league, which dictates the players each manager will have on their team, ready to take on the fantasy season in a bid to win. This means that drafting the best possible players for your team puts you in the best possible position to win your league.

Thus, our goal was to leverage a fun and engaging video chat experience, to bring fantasy managers together during draft day to complete their draft, while creating a fun draft atmosphere. This led to the creation of the first embedded video chat experience within Fantasy drafts, called Draft Together.

Strategy & Execution: The sports fan experience as we know it, drastically changed in the year 2020. Sports fans around the world found themselves still having to experience games and sporting events virtually in 2021, while having to find new ways of engaging with one another, and embracing the sports they love.

We built Draft Together with our sports fans. By constantly listening to their challenges, and learning about their ever-changing needs caused by a shift in how they were left to experience sports during a global pandemic, we built a platform-agnostic video chat experience, seamlessly integrated with their drafts. This meant that sports fans could sit at their desk at home, or walk around their home, while enjoying a video draft experience with their leaguemates.

As part of our global Yahoo Build It Forward virtual event in March 2021, we launched Draft Together for Baseball Drafts (desktop only), within the US-only. We made it easier for Fantasy Baseball managers to stay connected and trash talk during draft day, while drafting the best players for their team. We followed up with the launch of Draft Together for Football drafts (mobile & desktop) in the fall of 2021, partnering with the Pittsburgh Steelers’ wide receiver, Juju Smith-Schuster for the launch. We later launched the feature for Hockey and Basketball drafts. The feature was limited to private leagues with up to 12 fantasy managers in the league.  

Results: With the launch of Draft Together, we saw fantasy managers joining their drafts and drafting with their league mates. We were able to engage over 400k unique fantasy managers drafting with their video on, along with their leaguemates.

Production

Fantasy Product, Fantasy Product Design, Fantasy engineering, Yahoo User Research, Sports Marketing, Yahoo Brand Creative, Yahoo Video team, Yahoo Legal team

Credits

Kwame Odame
Senior Product Manager
Yahoo Fantasy Sports

Ben Schlitter
Principal Product Designer
Yahoo Fantasy Sports

Wayne Greenwood
Sr Dir, Product Management
Yahoo Streaming Video Products

Dipesh Raichura
Head of Yahoo Fantasy Product
Yahoo Fantasy Sports

Kat O’Neill
User Experience & Consumer Insights Researcher

Sam Jaroszewski
User Experience Researcher
Yahoo Fantasy Sports

Dhara Bavishi
Software Apps Engineering
Yahoo Fantasy Sports

Brian Coe
Princ Software Dev Engineer
Yahoo

Joe Francis
Sr Mgr, Software Dev Engineering
Yahoo Fantasy Sports

Erica Loh Jones
Director of Product Design
Yahoo Fantasy Sports

Deepak Somashekhara
Sr Mgr, Software Dev Engineering
Connected TV

Ramagopal Reddy Ambati
Sr Software QA Engineer
Yahoo Fantasy Sports

Cary Stanley
Princ Software Dev Engineer
Yahoo Fantasy Sports

Bruce Ng
Sr Mgr, Software Dev Engineering
Yahoo Fantasy Sports

Arjun Govindaraju
Princ Technical Security EngineerCyber Resilience

Roger Urrabazo
Sr Dir, Software Dev Engineering
Connected TV

David Chou
Sr Software Apps Engineer
Yahoo Fantasy Sports

Bart Broad
Princ Software Apps Engineer
Yahoo Fantasy Sports

James Wong
Princ Software Apps Engineer
Yahoo

Erin Chuang
Sr Software Apps Engineer
Yahoo

Gagan Basandra
Software Apps Engineer II
Yahoo

Jarrett Freeman
Software Dev Engineer
Fantasy Sports

Jinhyun Kim
Sr Software Apps Engineer
Yahoo

Lakshmi Thamizhmani
Director, Technical Program Mgmt
Yahoo

Lingyan Zhu
Distinguished Architect
Yahoo

Mikul Bhatt
Dir, Software Apps Engineering
Connected TV

Neha Dike
Mgr, Software Apps Engineering
Connected TV

Rishika Dewan
Software Dev Engineer II
Yahoo

Shivani Dave
Sr Software QA Engineer
Yahoo Fantasy Sports

Edmund Lou
Sr Software Apps Engineer
Yahoo Fantasy Sports