Genius Sports: Building a Real-Time Fan Engagement Platform

Led the design and architecture of a real-time sports content platform—enabling leagues, partners, and media teams to create, manage, and distribute short-form video experiences at scale.

Platform: Web / Media Platforms / Social Distribution

Date: 2025

The Challenge

Enabling real-time content creation and distribution at scale

At Genius Sports, fan engagement depended on the ability to capture and distribute moments instantly—but existing workflows for content creation and publishing were fragmented, manual, and not built for real-time velocity.

Key challenges:

Fragmented vendor workflows: Content creation, editing, and publishing lacked a unified system—slowing down real-time distribution
Limited content velocity: Partners struggled to quickly turn live sports moments into shareable, short-form content
No scalable Reels infrastructure: There was no centralized system to support creation and distribution of short-form video across platforms
Lack of direct user insight: Product decisions were not consistently informed by real user behavior or feedback loops

My Role & Ownership

Defined and owned product direction for real-time fan engagement—leading the design and architecture of a sports Reels platform for content creation and distribution
Built scalable vendor workflows enabling partners to create, manage, and publish short-form sports content across social and media platforms

Stakeholder Alignment & Strategy

My First Goal: My First Goal: Build a Real Customer Feedback Loop

Early on, I realized we weren’t just building a product—we were making assumptions about how leagues, vendors, and partners would use it.

Instead of waiting until launch to validate, I created a Customer Lean Design Partner Program to bring real users into the product development process from day one.

This allowed us to move fast without guessing—testing ideas in the real world while still shipping.

Turning Assumptions Into Insight

I designed a lightweight, iterative framework that enabled us to:
- Partner directly with vendors to co-design and validate workflows
- Test early concepts before full engineering investment
- Capture both qualitative and quantitative feedback in real time
- Align product, design, and business decisions around real user behavior
Instead of building in isolation, we built with the customer.

The Lean Framework (How It Worked)

Using a simple but effective loop, we moved from idea → validation → iteration:

Define & Plan → Pilot & Test → Synthesize & Decide → Iterate & Ship

This framework allowed us to:
- Validate assumptions quickly
- Reduce risk before scaling
- Continuously refine the product based on real usage

What This Enabled

From the program (based on your page 2 breakdown):
Validated personas, workflows, and vendor needs early
Reduced product risk before full-scale rollout
Built stronger relationships with partners and stakeholders
Accelerated alignment across Product, Design, Sales, and Marketing
Created a feedback-driven roadmap instead of assumption-driven

From Framework → Real Product Impact

This wasn’t just research—it directly influenced the product:

Informed the design of the Reels + Widget marketplace workflows
Shaped how vendors onboard, configure, and publish content
Enabled faster iteration cycles through rapid prototyping
Helped define what should ship in V1 vs. V2

Connecting to the Bigger System (Fan Engagement)

The insights from this program fed directly into a broader Game Day Engagement Framework:
Pre-game → build anticipation
Live → real-time interaction
Post-game → retention and continued engagement