Penn Entertainment
Parlay Lounge - a Pre-built Parlay Experience
Identified a competitive gap, pitched the concept internally, and built Parlay Lounge from scratch — a curated pre-built parlay experience that became one of the most-used features on ESPN BET and theScore BET, driving meaningful parlay handle and an extraordinary add-to-bet conversion rate.
Making Parlay Betting Obvious
Parlays are the most profitable bet type in a sportsbook. They were also buried. I built Parlay Lounge to fix that — and it became one of the highest-converting features on the product.
Context
Parlays drive outsized GGR relative to their handle. Every sportsbook knows this. But in 2023, ESPN BET and theScore BET had no dedicated surface to merchandise them. Users who wanted to parlay had to build from scratch — finding individual legs, combining them manually, hoping they knew what they were doing. Casual bettors rarely got there.
Competitors had already solved this. Pre-built parlay cards were becoming a standard engagement feature across the category. We didn't have it, and the absence was costing us on two fronts: parlay attach rate and casual bettor retention.
I identified the gap, built the business case, and pitched it to leadership as a priority. The argument was straightforward — show users what's possible, make it one tap to add, and parlay volume will follow.
The Build: Launch → Redesign → Personalization
2024: Launch
Parlay Lounge launched as part of the first major redesign of ESPN BET and theScore BET ahead of the 2024 NFL season — the highest-volume betting period of the year and the right moment to introduce a feature designed to drive engagement on marquee matchups.
I owned it end-to-end: concept, scope, content strategy in partnership with risk and trading, design, and launch across both U.S. and Canadian markets simultaneously.
The core experience: curated pre-built parlays surfaced on the homepage, built by the risk and trading team, one tap to add to bet slip.
2025: Redesign & Personalization
In 2025 I returned with a full redesign — new visual treatment, team colors, league logos, and a significantly upgraded content experience. The goal was to make Parlay Lounge feel like a destination, not a widget.
I also introduced DSML-driven personalization — serving users parlays based on their betting history rather than purely risk and trading curation.
It didn't work.
Users engaged meaningfully less with algorithmically generated parlays than with hand-curated ones. The model was too complex, the outputs too unfamiliar, and the trust signal of a "built by our traders" parlay was stronger than we'd anticipated. Personalization in this context backfired because it optimized for relevance at the cost of credibility.
Testing and iteration on the personalization layer has continued into 2026.
What It Drove
All data reflects full-year 2025 across U.S. and Canadian markets combined, post-redesign.
Scale
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Share of all bets placed | ~4.5% |
| Share of all parlay bets placed | ~8% |
| Share of all handle | ~1% |
| Share of all parlay handle | ~3% |
| Share of all GGR | ~3% |
| Share of all parlay GGR | ~2.7% |
| Users who placed a bet in period who used feature | ~37% |
Conversion
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Add-to-slip → bet placement rate | 73% |
73% of users who added a Parlay Lounge selection to their bet slip went on to place that bet. For context, a user adding a pre-built parlay to their slip has already done the hardest part — they've committed to the legs. The 73% figure confirms the feature is capturing genuine intent, not just curiosity clicks.
What I Learned
Curation beats personalization at the trust layer. The intuition behind DSML personalization was sound — show users parlays relevant to their history and they'll engage more. What we didn't account for was that pre-built parlays carry an implicit credibility signal. Users trust that a parlay built by traders has been thought through. An algorithmically generated parlay carries no such signal, and engagement dropped accordingly. Relevance alone isn't enough if the user doesn't trust the source.
Showing users what's possible changes behavior. Before Parlay Lounge, casual bettors who wanted to parlay had to know how to build one. After, they just had to tap. The 37% user penetration — more than one in three bettors touched this feature — is evidence that the barrier to parlay betting was never desire, it was discoverability and ease.
Homepage real estate is a monetization decision. Putting Parlay Lounge on the homepage wasn't a UX call, it was a revenue call. Treating it that way from the start — measuring handle and GGR share, not just engagement — kept the right success metrics in frame throughout.
The sports calendar shapes the product. Parlay Lounge's performance is deeply tied to what's in season — NFL weeks drive outsized engagement, off-peak periods drop sharply. That dependency turned Parlay Lounge into something beyond a feature: a lens for thinking about homepage curation strategy. When to surface it prominently, when to pull back, and what to lead with instead became a scheduling and prioritization exercise tied directly to the sports calendar. Managing that well is as much a product decision as any design choice.