PrizePicks Closes Record Year with 300,000 New Members Added to the Platform, Begins 2022 with the Announcements of Three Key Strategic Hires
PrizePicks, the pioneering operator of Single Player Fantasy (SPF) in North America, today announced three strategic additions to its leadership team in the areas of product development, fraud prevention and government affairs and to build on its explosive 2021 growth.
Chris Stango is the new Vice President of Product, Josh Kirschner is Vice President, Legal & Government Affairs, and Josh Slaff is Vice President of Compliance & Fraud. All three joined PrizePicks at various points in late-2021 and collectively represent the expansion and evolution of the PrizePicks leadership team as the company’s business continues to grow and diversify.
“Infusing our organization with top talent, both from within our industry and also in adjacent business lines, is a top priority for an emerging operator,” PrizePicks CEO Adam Wexler said. “Our needs are changing every day as our business, and our industry, becomes larger and more complex. We’ll lean on all three of these individuals to tackle new challenges and opportunities.”
The appointments will help PrizePicks build on a transformative 2021, a year in which the company:
- Onboarded more than 300,000 new members to the platform, all while maintaining industry-leading lifetime value/customer acquisition cost ratios
- Grew its gaming handle nearly ten-fold compared to 2020, while efficiently managing costs and operating the business at near break-even levels throughout the year
- Curated 40-plus different markets for customer play, ranging from core markets such as NFL, NBA, & MLB to more niche offerings such as esports, college sports and the 2021 Summer Olympics
- Paid out more than $130 million in winnings on over eight million entries made
- Set both week over week and month over month records for member engagement and retention rates to end the year
PrizePicks is now available to play in 29 U.S. states – including Top 10 markets Georgia, Florida, Texas and California – representing more than two-thirds of the adult population. The company’s employee base has more than doubled in the last year to more than 100 people, positioning it to be one of the fastest growing companies in the sector.
“Our sustained growth is being driven by innovation both in terms of technology and the product that we’re offering our members,” said Dylan Cooper, vice president of revenue, PrizePicks. “Our retention and organic buzz have grown significantly stronger with the creation of our Discord community and our referral engine has become our number one customer acquisition source, helping drive down acquisition costs to fractions of the industry averages.”
The new additions to the PrizePicks executive team bring diverse backgrounds to the company:
- Stango joins the company following his tenure in the same role at Barstool Sports, not long before that group entered into its partnership with Penn National Gaming. At PrizePicks, Stango is primarily responsible for establishing the product roadmap, executing the product vision, and ensuring that product enhancements and technology updates are completed in a timely fashion, while improving business performance across all departments. Prior to Barstool Sports, Stango worked on the Digital Products team at WWE and on the Optimization team at DailyBurn.
- Slaff comes to PrizePicks from Morgan Stanley, where he served as a vice president in the Firm’s Global Financial Crimes Group, responsible for advising his business colleagues on BSA/AML, sanctions and other financial crime-related issues. As the organization continues to grow and scale, Slaff will help safeguard PrizePicks and its users and ensure that its best in-class DFS offering is conducted in compliance with legal and regulatory requirements.
- Kirschner was previously at Morris, Manning, & Martin, LLP, an AmLaw 200 Atlanta-based law firm, where he focused his white-collar practice on providing comprehensive legal guidance to companies in the vice and hospitality spaces and specialized in advising gaming and cannabis enterprises. Early in his career, Kirschner worked in the Sands Rewards Club Strategy & Promotion Division for Sands China in Macao where he gained an affinity for the gaming industry. At PrizePicks, Kirschner serves as the company’s lead in-house counsel and also leads all regulatory, licensure and government affairs efforts, with particular emphasis on expansion into new states.
“I’ve been lucky to work with smart, hungry, entrepreneurial people who genuinely want to build great products, and that’s what I’ve found with the team at PrizePicks,” Stango said. “I was impressed by the tech and the buy-in from the entire organization to let data drive our decisions, which will allow for the scalability necessary for the incredible growth opportunities in front of us.”
About PrizePicks
PrizePicks is the largest independently-owned daily fantasy sports (DFS) operator in North America, offering a fun, fast and simple version of DFS and covering a wide variety of sports leagues from the NFL & NBA to League of Legends & Counter-Strike. Centered around over/under predictions of single statistic projections, PrizePicks allows sports fans to play against the numbers rather than each other. PrizePicks is currently the closest legal alternative to legal mobile sports betting in the majority of the United States including Top 10 markets like Georgia, Florida, Texas & California. With an existing digital footprint covering more than two-thirds of the U.S. adult population, PrizePicks is the most accessible type of game for the masses. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, and PrizePicks is the third product from Performance Predictions, a suite of fan engagement solutions including SidePrize, the 2016 Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association’s ‘Rookie of the Year’ award recipient. PrizePicks is available in the App Store and Google Play or at prizepicks.com.
