FanCash Draws
(Rewards · Loyalty · Engagement · Business Impact)
Role
Role
Senior Product Designer · Sole designer
Team
Product · Engineering · Commercial · Marketing · Legal
Timeline
March – July 2025
2 weeks from brief to executive review
Weekly Impact
41K active users in a record week
262K entries
$116K FanCash redeemed
Overview
Turning FanCash into a chance to win
Fanatics was looking for new ways to get customers to use their FanCash while giving them more value from our rewards program.
FanCash could already be used across the Fanatics ecosystem for things like free bets, casino free spins, and discounted merchandise. Draws added something different: customers could use their FanCash for chances to win prizes and experiences, from signed memorabilia and cars to F1 paddock passes and trips to the Super Bowl.
It was good for both sides. Customers got another fun and exciting way to use their FanCash, including access to experiences they couldn’t normally buy. For the business, every FanCash dollar spent on Draws meant getting some of that loyalty currency back and reducing the cost of the program.
I was the sole designer on the project and worked closely with Product to figure out the experience as we designed it. We started with a loose brief and had just two weeks to get from the initial idea to a polished prototype for executive review.
01. From idea to prototype in two weeks
The ask came down quickly. We knew what we wanted Draws to accomplish for the business, but there wasn’t a fully defined product or a long list of requirements for how it should work.
My PM and I figured out a lot of those details together as I designed.
We reviewed the work often, made decisions quickly, and kept moving. By the end of the second week, I had a polished prototype of the full experience, from discovering a Draw and entering it to confirmation and what happened if you won.
After the executive review, we brought in Engineering and started working through what it would take to build.
[VISUAL: Brief → 2 weeks of design → Executive review → Engineering → Launch]
Then Legal raised concerns about whether we could launch it at all.
We spent the next few weeks working through the mechanics, including the legally required free method of entry and making sure every entry had the same chance of winning.
Ultimately, the mechanics were cleared, but we couldn’t legally call the product Sweepstakes.
Sweepstakes became FanCash Draws, and we kept moving toward launch.
02. Making the prizes feel as exciting as they were
For Draws to work, customers had to actually want to spend their FanCash. That meant the prizes and how we presented them mattered just as much as the entry flow.
To move quickly, we built on the promo experience we already had instead of creating an entirely new part of the app. Customers already understood how promotions worked, and Engineering already knew how to build them.
The problem was that our existing promo cards were pretty small.
That was fine for something like a bonus bet. It was a lot less exciting when we were giving away Super Bowl tickets, F1 paddock passes, a car, signed memorabilia, or tickets to any NFL game.
I designed a larger hero carousel that gave our Marketing, Commercial, and Partnerships teams much more room to play with creative and make the bigger prizes actually feel big.
[VISUAL: Existing promo cards → new Draws hero]
The hero could work across completely different prizes and partners while the experience stayed consistent for customers. It could also collapse when there wasn’t anything worth featuring.
[VISUAL: F1 / Colts / NFL Sunday Ticket / NFL ticket examples]
I worked closely with Partnerships on a lot of promotions during my time on Core Product, so this was something I was especially excited about. Fanatics had access to some really cool things through our teams, leagues, athletes, merchandise, and partners, and Draws gave us another way to bring those things directly into the product.
It also tied into something I had been pushing for more broadly. Fanatics called itself “The Most Rewarding Sportsbook,” but a lot of those rewards were scattered throughout the app. I wanted us to do a better job of actually showing customers how much they could get from being with Fanatics.
03. Keeping the entry flow simple
The biggest thing customers had to understand was how FanCash translated into entries.
If one entry cost $5 FanCash and you wanted five entries, you were spending $25 FanCash.
Simple math, but it was still a new way to use FanCash. I wanted customers to always know how many entries they were getting and how much they were spending.
The flow showed the cost per entry, number of entries selected, available FanCash, maximum number of entries allowed, and total cost before confirming.
[VISUAL: Entry flow]
There were also a few things that became more complicated once Engineering got involved.
I originally designed the entry selector using the same custom number pad we used for placing bets. I thought we could just reuse it, but it turned out to be built very specifically for betting and wasn’t nearly as plug and play as I thought.
It wasn’t important enough to hold up the launch, so we simplified it for V1. Engineering later made the component more flexible so it could be used in other parts of the app.
We made a similar call with Draw History.
We all agreed it would probably be useful for customers to see everything they had entered, but every entry already came with an email confirmation. We also knew a larger transaction history project was coming that could eventually include Draws.
It was useful, but it wasn’t necessary to launch, so we cut it from V1.
Designing past the entry
I also designed what happened after someone entered, including confirmation, max entry and closed Draw states, and the winner experience.
Winning was intentionally impossible to miss.
If someone won, the promo card changed to let them know. Opening it brought up a celebration with confetti, information about what they won, and what happened next. Depending on the prize, we could also follow up through email, push notification, or direct outreach.
[VISUAL: Entry → confirmation → winner]
Behind the scenes, Engineering also built a randomizer that could combine FanCash entries with the legally required free entries and give every entry the same chance of being selected.
04. When everyone wins
FanCash Draws launched in July 2025, and customers started using it pretty quickly.
Shortly after launch, 8.3% of active customers had already entered a Draw.
As we introduced more prizes and experiences, Draws became something we could run regularly. We got to a point where new Draws were happening weekly, and sometimes even daily.
During a later record week:
41K
active Draws users
262K
entries
$116K
FanCash redeemed
10.4%
of all active FBG customers engaged with Draws
That week, 23.9K customers were new to Draws, and 90% of participants were cash-active.
[VISUAL: Large metrics treatment]
Draws worked because what was good for the customer was also good for the business.
The better the prizes were, the more customers wanted to enter. The more they entered, the more FanCash came back into the business.
For Fanatics, that created a repeatable way to reduce the cost of the loyalty program and save the business money. For customers, it meant more ways to use FanCash and a steady stream of new prizes and experiences to get excited about.
We weren’t saving money by giving customers less. We were saving money by giving them something they were more excited to spend their rewards on.
