Introduction
One of the world’s most ambitious sports commerce and betting platforms
Fanatics is one of the most recognisable names in the global sports industry. Originally built as the world’s leading licensed sports merchandise retailer, Fanatics has grown into a multi-vertical platform spanning commerce, trading cards, and sports betting, with its FanaticsBet app competing for market share in the increasingly crowded US sportsbook space.
With access to one of the largest databases of sports fans in the world and a growing suite of products, Fanatics’ ambition is clear: to become the single destination for everything a sports fan needs. Free-to-play gaming sits at the heart of that strategy – a mechanism to engage casual fans, build platform habits, and create natural pathways into betting and commerce.
The Challenge
Standing out in a crowded free-to-play market
The free-to-play games market is well-established. Survivor pools, in particular, are a format with a long history in American sports culture - most NFL fans are familiar with the concept, and many competitors already offer versions of the game. For Fanatics, simply launching a survivor pool wasn’t enough. The challenge was to differentiate.
FanaticsBet needed a product that could do several things simultaneously: attract mainstream NFL fans who had never engaged with the sportsbook; give existing betting customers a compelling new reason to open the app each week; and create measurable pathways from free engagement into commerce and betting revenue. The game also needed to be strategically complex enough to retain serious players across an 18-week regular season without alienating casual fans looking for a simple, accessible experience.
Equally important was speed. NFL season windows are fixed and unforgiving. A delayed launch means a missed season. Fanatics needed a partner who could build and ship a polished, scalable product quickly - and who had the infrastructure to handle significant user volumes from day one.
Selecting a Partner
A platform built for sports engagement at scale
Fanatics turned to Monterosa / Interaction Cloud to power the Survivor Pool. The decision was grounded in Monterosa’s track record delivering high-stakes, high-volume interactive experiences for some of the world’s most demanding sports and media organisations.
Crucially, Monterosa’s platform offered more than a technical foundation. Its existing suite of free-to-play game components – the game card framework, user authentication, CMS, and prizing infrastructure – meant that Fanatics could build on proven, stable systems rather than starting from scratch. This hybrid approach, repurposing battle-tested infrastructure while building new functionality specific to survivor pool mechanics, enabled rapid development without sacrificing quality or reliability.
The platform’s modularity also gave Fanatics confidence in the long term. A solution that could be iterated, extended, and scaled across additional sports and game formats was far more valuable than a bespoke one-off build. From the outset, the partnership was conceived as the foundation for a broader free-to-play ecosystem within the Fanatics app.
Solution
Fanatics Survivor: a high-stakes, season-long game with a growing prize pool
Fanatics Survivor launched as a free-to-play, season-long competition built around the simplest of premises: pick one NFL team to win outright each week, and survive. No point spreads. No complicated scoring. Each team can only be selected once across the entire 18-week regular season, which means every pick carries strategic weight and every week demands a new decision.
The prize structure was designed from the ground up to drive participation and virality. Starting with a guaranteed base of $1 million, the pool grows by $1 for every player who enters – with potential to reach $10 million. As user numbers climb, so does the prize, creating a live incentive for existing players to recruit friends. An integrated referral system with tiered rewards (including $25 FanCash for five referrals) adds a further layer of organic acquisition, with measurable referral trees tracking user chains and attribution across the platform.
The in-game experience was built to sustain engagement across the full season, not just the opening weeks. Forward-picking capabilities allow players to schedule picks for future weeks, adding strategic depth for serious participants. Push notifications are targeted specifically at users still active in the contest, ensuring relevance without noise. A horizontal week scroller gives players a clear visual record of their pick history throughout the season. And critically, the eliminated user experience was designed to retain players even after they exit the competition – allowing them to continue viewing standings and picks, maintaining platform stickiness when it would otherwise be lost.
The game card itself features a dynamic prize counter showing real-time pool growth during the pre-season period, creating visible urgency and driving sign-ups ahead of Week 1. Participants can join right up until the final game of the opening week, maximising the acquisition window.
One of the most commercially significant elements of the solution is its cross-platform integration within the Fanatics ecosystem. After making their weekly picks, users in regulated betting states see direct betslip upsells to wager on their chosen team – turning a free engagement moment into a revenue opportunity. Users in non-betting states are served carousels promoting other free-to-play games, also powered by Monterosa, keeping them active within the platform and building habits that support future conversion. Both pathways increase user lifetime value and demonstrate how free-to-play, when built thoughtfully, can function as an acquisition and monetisation engine in its own right.
Private pool functionality allows groups of friends and colleagues to compete within their own walled contest, while the public pool runs alongside at scale. Together, they cater to both the social, word-of-mouth dynamics of casual fan engagement and the competitive intensity of dedicated players.
“The new LFC Match Centre has been fantastic in enabling our global fanbase to celebrate the climax to an amazing season in the club's history. Having the flexibility and speed to manage content in real-time has delivered another level of matchday experience, both for our in-house teams and, most importantly, for the fans. The new Match Centre has quickly become an important driver in the club's long-term fan registration strategy.”
Andy Fletcher
VP Product
