Kim Schwab on How Blockchain is Reshaping Fantasy Sports

Kim Schwab, Head of Player Experience at Sorare, offers a unique perspective on the intersection of fantasy sports and blockchain technology. With a decade of experience in user-centric roles, Schwab explores how NFT-based player cards are revolutionizing player engagement and shaping the industry’s future. She discusses the challenges of blending emerging technologies with traditional sports models, the role of customer advocacy in business growth, and strategies for enhancing user experience in this innovative sector. This conversation provides a clear view of how digital ownership and customer advocacy drive change in fantasy sports, making it a must-read for anyone interested in the future of sports and technology.

Q: Let’s start with an introduction. What has your career trajectory been?

A: My name is Kimberly, and I’m currently the Head of Player Experience at Sorare, a fantasy sports startup. When you create your lineups for our fantasy sports game, the actual players you put in your lineups are NFT player cards. So, we’re at the convergence of fantasy sports and the blockchain. Before Sorare, I’ve been in user-facing roles in San Francisco and New York for about ten (10) years and have worked in B2B and B2C spaces.

I’ve worked in early-stage startups through to series B. So, my specialty is in scaling organizations. I love working with users, supporting them, and trying to figure out why they do the things they do behaviorally and how we can help them surmount some of the challenges they face with different products.

Q: How has your approach to customer advocacy evolved over your 10+ years of experience, particularly in the context of scaling organizations?

A: I firmly believe that advocating for users and customers is the easiest way to retain them. There’s so much we can learn about where they struggle because, typically, it’s not just user error. When you drill in, you often realize that it is a product issue that can be easily solved or that we’ve overlooked something when thinking about the customer road map.

How has my view of customer advocacy changed? We must actively listen to and watch customer behavior and work towards this end goal: they shouldn’t have to reach out to us because the experience is so smooth or intuitive. When I started my career, I viewed customer support and advocacy as reactive. As I’ve grown in my career and knowledge, I’ve grown to understand that this is incredibly proactive.

Q: What are the most significant challenges you’ve encountered while enhancing, expanding, and revitalizing customer-facing functions in scaling organizations?

A: I think it’s important to note that every organization that you work with has a different set of challenges that you have to face. And that’s the exciting part about what I do. It’s never repeatable for the most part, other than putting a support tech stack in place or putting some broad policy and processes in place. But other than that, every product is different, every user base is different, your audience is different, and the maturity of the product or service you’re rendering differs everywhere.

I’ve worked at companies where we had great ideas and took a first pass at our platform to support these efforts, but it wasn’t mature enough to get us where we were going. In that case, it makes sense to dig into the tech to understand what’s working and what needs to be improved for the user. Sometimes, your product is way more mature, and users have a great experience. But how can we get them to use the product more? How can we get them to stay with us long-term, become a real advocate, and bring more business to us? So, the game changes depending on the maturity of the product or platform you’re working with.

Q: With your extensive experience, how do you stay ahead of industry trends to innovate in customer support and success?

A: I’m lucky to have an incredible network of mentors and pioneers who have been doing this far longer than I have. I’m part of some think groups that meet once a month where we pose issues we’re working on and questions we’re grappling with and talk about them together. So, my biggest advice is always to be a continuous learner. Always offer to not only lend your expertise but also participate in the learning as well. That’s my secret sauce: I never say no to an opportunity. If I’m following someone on LinkedIn and realize that I’m tuning into their posts, I’m not afraid to reach out and ask to meet and knowledge-share.

Q: How has the fantasy sports industry evolved with the advent of blockchain technology?

A: Web3 gaming that utilizes the blockchain offers many advantages over Web2 gaming. The most significant benefit is the idea of asset ownership. Distributed ledgers make it possible for players to actually own their digital assets and make money while playing games, and Web3 models enable a framework for this idea of ‘player as owner’ rather than ‘player as consumer’ alone, which is a game changer for fans.

Q: How would you explain Web3 to someone with little technical understanding? What have been the key drivers behind adopting Web3 technologies in gaming?

A: To explain the idea of Web3, we need to go back even further and address this idea of the blockchain, so let’s do that. Blockchain technology is a decentralized and distributed ledger system that allows us to record transactions securely across a network of interconnected computers. Each transaction is stored within a block and is linked to the preceding one, creating a chain of blocks—thus giving us the term blockchain.

This technology is super important because it ensures transparency, security, and the immutability of our data. This is important for Web3 because it’s the first time that we’ve been able to link ownership to digital assets. So you can take a screenshot of me holding this glass and say, “I’ve got a picture of Kim holding this glass. I own this.” But, if we took that picture and turned it into a digital asset—an NFT—that had this ledger system tied to it, and I purchased that NFT with digital currency, then I own it.

So when we talk about why the idea of ownership and Web3 is important, it’s because it’s the first time that we’ve been able to say you’re not just a consumer playing a fantasy sports game where you have these images of digital cards. Now, you’re playing this digital fantasy sports game and owning the cards yourself. So, being able to take that idea of ownership a step further is what makes Web3 gaming so important.

Q: How has this shift impacted player experience? Have we seen more engagement? 

A: Yes! User engagement is entirely different when you start thinking about Web3 gaming because you can take these fans a step closer to their favorite team or player by offering them novel digital assets or novel virtual experiences. You also get super fans who want to have even greater ownership of a player or their favorite team.

Q: What innovative strategies are fantasy sports platforms using to attract new users?

A: That’s a great question. I don’t know if I would call it deep innovation, but with fantasy sports, we’re always trying to figure out how to make the game more interesting or competitive. Currently, we’re trying to make it easier for you to invite a friend and face off person to person with your lineups to make it more personal and more competitive rather than only offering larger pool competitions where you’re playing a hundred great but anonymous players. Bringing in that personalization aspect isn’t something I would call deep innovation, but we’re always trying to figure out how to make the experience more personal.

Q: What role does community building play in the success of a fantasy sports platform, and how is it fostered?

A: A passionate, strong community leads to a more player-centric game. Fostering community trust and long-term engagement is the key to retention when you have such a passionate community of users. They’re loyal (many of them have been with us since the inception of our game.) So, we rely heavily on our broad community for feedback and also work closely with key community members as we build out our product roadmap. Making sure the community is heard is a huge key to retention.

Q: What are the unique challenges of managing player experience within the blockchain fantasy sports sector?

A: One of the challenges is ensuring enough user education about the blockchain, how to keep your assets safe, and how transactions work on the blockchain. Here’s an example: let’s say I have an NFT player card and want to transfer it to you. I push it through, don’t think twice about it, and then realize I didn’t want to do that. But you can’t pull it back once you send a card. It’s done. So, it’s ensuring people understand the ramifications of their transfers.

Also, blockchain and Web3 are industries that have been evolving quite quickly. So, as an industry, we’re always trying to figure out how to make transfers quicker and how to make the blockchain more accessible to the everyday ordinary person. We need to make it easy for someone who’s never even been on the blockchain before to get set up and start playing easily.

Q: What security measures are in place to protect users’ investments in NFTs and cryptocurrencies within fantasy sports platforms?

A: Part of the beauty of the blockchain is that the technology innately serves as an effective tool for significantly decreasing the risks associated with fraud and cheating by having that transparent chain of ownership you can refer back to. That being said, regarding user education, people must understand that their actions typically when buying and selling NFTs are final. And so we can do a few things to ensure that people mean to do what they’re doing. Those are product things. For example, we can have pop-ups. Are you sure you want to send this card? Confirm. After you transfer the card, confirm again. If you have to click twice, it gives you that extra second to ensure you understand what you’re doing.

The other part here is this idea of user education around helping them keep their crypto wallets safe and turning on two-factor authentication (2FA). Those are problems that move past this idea of the blockchain. Those are just good standard practices for security across many different verticals, and we’re always trying to figure out how to appeal to users to get them to turn on security measures that we have in place. No one likes to turn on 2FA, but when someone tries to get into your account, you’re so glad it’s there.

Q: What’s the most salient advice you’ve received in your career?

A: Two things:

1. Never be afraid to hire people who are smarter, have a different skill set, or know more than you in specific areas. Don’t be afraid to ask questions.
2. Whenever possible, create strategy and make decisions that are rooted in data. Whether behavioral from your users or data in terms of metrics your teams are tracking. When you make decisions rooted in data, you’re not making a wrong choice because you’ve got the proof right there.

Q: Do you have any advice for people looking to get started in this industry? And what advice would you give to a forward-looking brand hoping to level up its strategy using some of these technologies?

A: For someone trying to break into the space—whether blockchain or Web3—I recommend that you search out people already working in the space, set up 20 minutes with a couple of people, and ask questions. Ask about the roadblocks they’ve encountered, what feels hard, and what feels exciting about the work. Ask them what their day-to-day looks like.

The next thing I would recommend is trying to work close to the people already working in the space, whether on small or large projects. That way, you can at least put something on your resume. That’s what I did. The summer before I worked at Sorare, I worked on a project in New York City. We worked with artists creating NFTs for their artwork for the first time. It was incredible, and I used that knowledge to do a whole presentation on how to set up a crypto wallet and what the blockchain is.

In terms of other organizations thinking about potentially utilizing the blockchain or tokenizing around digital assets, my advice is to go for it! Why? It allows your user base, your consumers, to take their passion or the thing they love a step further in terms of ownership. Do it, and don’t think twice.