Caesars Sportsbook CMS
Project Overview
The goal of this project was to replace the restrictive and outdated third-party Content Management System (CMS) with a newer platform. This upgrade would give Caesars full control over creating the layouts needed for the Sportsbook, allowing it to compete more effectively in the highly competitive sports gaming and iCasino space.
Similar to the Player Account Management (PAM) platform, dependence on a third-party SaaS product hindered Caesars' ability to compete effectively against industry giants who offer superior products. A new platform fully owned by Caesars would provide significant advantages, especially in the promotional area, which is highly important in gaming.
My Role / Team
The project team operated within the framework of Agile methodology, common in digital product development. Reporting to the Product Owner and Product Lead, along with input from key stakeholder our team was structured around Agile principles. Guided by a Product Manager, our multidisciplinary team included front-end and back-end developers, a QA Engineer, a Scrum Master, and myself as the UX Designer.
My role as an end-to-end product designer encompassed diverse responsibilities, conducting user research, mapping user flows and presenting a range of design options for the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Throughout the design phase, I crafted numerous prototypes, spanning from wireframes to fully realized conceptual designs. Additionally, I conducted internal usability testing and provided guidance to the development team leading up to the release.
The Work / Discovery
During the discovery phase, I spoke with operators who used the third-party SAAS product prior to the release of the new CMS. My goal was to understand their pain points, which would later inform a variety of design solutions to alleviate their problems. Additionally, I aimed to make the platform more efficient to support the business’s objective of scaling to many more states. The Sportsbook and iCasino digital businesses must operate on a per-state basis due to individual state legal requirements.
It also became apparent during the discovery phase that the new CMS would not fully control all the content on the Sportsbook and iCasino apps; it would only manage a portion of the content. In fact, there were several CMSs feeding APIs into both Sportsbook and iCasino, alongside other content sources like a Trading Platform, a Bonusing Engine, and a Player Account Management (PAM) platform.
The Work / Design
The major pain point for both operators and the business that the design needed to address was how to scale content publishing to the increasing number of states in the US legalizing sports betting. Previously, with the third-party SaaS product, operators had to build content from scratch for each state instance. This process was not scalable for a larger number of states, as it would be very expensive for the business to support and would require many man-hours to accomplish. Legally, Sportsbook content needed to exist separately in each state on a server located within that jurisdiction, meaning Sportsbooks are not allowed to host sports betting content on one server in a single state and populate other state instances from a single location.
I initially proposed an approach for publishing that would allow operators to publish content to multiple states with one click. However, while working with the back-end technical lead, we discovered that this approach could occasionally run into technical errors, making it less user-friendly, especially as the number of states approached fifty. Given the potential for technical issues during state-specific publishing, the Developers, Stakeholders, Product Manager, and I agreed on a different approach. Operators would still have to handle each Sportsbook instance's state content separately, but they would be able to copy content from previously created state instances. This solution addressed the scaling issues that concerned both operators and the business.
Result
The introduction of the new CMS brought substantial time-saving benefits for our operators, reducing their workload by 15 hours of work per operator per week. This efficiency gain enabled Caesars to scale its operations effectively, expanding into more states each year.
Additionally, the enhanced control over Sportsbook content and layout empowered our operators to offer customers more attractive bonusing offers, a more dynamic Sportsbook homepage, and overall greater product versatility.