How Stake's $100K Daily Races Changed User Attention Overnight
In late Q2, Stake rolled out a daily race with a top prize of $100,000 every 24 hours. For regular users the promise of a large, repeatable prize was like a flashing billboard in a quiet town. Overnight, engagement patterns split into two camps: people who chased the daily race and people who ignored both the race and the older weekly giveaway. For marketers who had relied on the weekly giveaway to drive signup funnels and occasional high-value deposits, that split was not subtle.
We analyzed a representative slice of the platform - 250,000 weekly active users (WAU) across markets where the daily race was launched simultaneously. This case study uses that dataset to Stake vs Eddie promo show what changed, why it mattered, and what the team did next. Numbers and timelines below are drawn from the A/B tests and cohort tracking run by the product and growth teams during the first 90 days after launch.
The Giveaway Engagement Problem: Why Weekly Entries Started Falling
Before the daily race, the weekly giveaway was the marquee retention engine. Baseline metrics in the 8 weeks prior showed:
- Weekly active users (WAU): 250,000 Weekly giveaway entrants: 45,000 (18% of WAU) Average weekly handle (total wager volume attributable to users engaging with the giveaway): $4,500,000 New depositors attributed to weekly giveaway: 1,200 per week
Within two weeks of the daily race going live, the team observed the following changes:
- Daily race participants: 75,000 per day (30% WAU) Weekly giveaway entrants: dropped from 45,000 to 9,000 (-80%) New depositors attributed to weekly giveaways: down to 720 per week (-40%)
Why the collapse? Three factors combined:
Temporal preference shift - users preferred a repeatable daily opportunity to a single weekly event. Attention crowding - the large, frequent prize shifted in-app real estate and notification attention away from weekly promos. Behavioral math - daily races provided more frequent reinforcement, increasing short-term engagement but disrupting the cadence that had driven weekly signups.Think of user attention as water. The weekly giveaway was once a steady stream feeding a mill. The daily race rerouted the water into a new channel; the mill sputtered.
Tactical Shift: Prioritizing Daily Race Funnels Over Weekly Promos
Facing a rapid fall in weekly entries, the growth team had three clear options:
- Double down on weekly giveaways with bigger incentives and louder creative. Try to resurrect weekly mechanics inside the new daily race ecosystem. Accept the shift and adjust funnels, attribution, and acquisition to the daily race as the new center of gravity.
The team chose option three. The rationale was simple: the daily race generated more total handle, higher short-term session frequency, and attracted a cohort with a higher immediate deposit rate. That didn’t mean the weekly giveaway was dead - it still had brand value for certain segments - but it could no longer be the primary acquisition lever.
Key strategic moves
- Rework attribution windows to track daily race-driven deposits and retention with a 7-, 14-, and 30-day lookback. Create a dual-funnel experience so users who prefer weekly play could still be engaged without interrupting the daily race flow. Segment creatives and notifications so users weren’t overwhelmed by competing promos at the same time.
Implementing the New Entry Flow: A 60-Day Timeline
The rollout had to balance speed and measurement. The team used a 60-day phased plan, split into discovery, controlled experiments, optimization, and scale. Below are the steps and the key artifacts for each phase.
Days 1-14: Rapid discovery and guardrails
- Set primary KPIs: daily active participants in the race, weekly giveaway entrants, new depositors, handle, and 7-day retention. Deploy analytics tags to isolate traffic sources and creative variants. Add server-side flags to route 10% of users to control flows for clean A/B comparisons. Run a quick user survey pop-up to capture qualitative reasons for choosing daily vs weekly events (n = 4,200 responses).
Days 15-30: A/B experiments and attribution updates
- Experiment A: Show the weekly giveaway as an “extra chance” within the daily race dashboard for 50% of users in test bucket. Experiment B: Push weekly giveaway via email only during weekends, avoid in-app placement that competes with daily race. Update attribution model from last-touch to an additive multi-touch window with weighted credit - daily race interactions got higher short-term weight, weekly giveaways got lower short-term weight but higher long-term retention weight.
Days 31-45: Optimization and micro-segmentation
- Use uplift modeling to identify users more likely to convert from weekly giveaways versus daily races. Create a 2x2 segmentation: high-value repeaters, occasional chasers, new deposit prospects, and dormant users. For high-value repeaters, reintroduce the weekly giveaway with exclusive perks that do not conflict with daily race mechanics - e.g., VIP access, multiplier tickets. For new deposit prospects, create an onboarding path that ties a first deposit bonus to a small stacking advantage in the next few daily races.
Days 46-60: Scale with guardrails
- Roll out the optimized flows to 100% of users after confirming statistical significance on primary KPIs. Use a pre-registered stopping rule to avoid false positives. Set automated throttles on notification frequency so users do not receive both daily race and weekly giveaway push at the same moment. Institutionalize reporting: weekly summary dashboard, monthly cohort LTV update, and a playbook for future prize launches.
From a 12% Weekly Entry Drop to a 37% Rise in Daily Race Participation: Measurable Results in 6 Weeks
After the 60-day program, the measurable outcomes were clear. Here is a condensed before/after snapshot for the representative WAU pool:
Metric Baseline (Weeks -8 to -1) Post-Implementation (Weeks +5 to +8) Delta Weekly giveaway entrants 45,000 (18% WAU) 12,000 (4.8% WAU) -33,000 (-73%) Daily race participants (avg/day) n/a (not offered) 102,750 (41% WAU) +102,750 Weekly handle $4,500,000 $5,175,000 +$675,000 (+15%) New depositors attributed to promos (weekly) 1,200 1,080 -120 (-10%) Average RPU (weekly) $18.00 $20.70 +$2.70 (+15%)Two important insights here:
- Even though the weekly giveaway entrants collapsed, total betting volume rose because daily race participation created higher frequency betting and longer sessions - small actions multiplied over many repeat days. The weekly giveaway still brought a modest chunk of new depositors, but the daily race produced depositors with a faster initial deposit velocity and higher short-term RPU, offsetting the slight fall in giveaway-driven new users.
5 Hard Lessons from Betting on Daily Races Instead of Weekly Giveaways
These are the lessons the data forced the team to accept - the sort of blunt truths you only understand after a campaign scrapes away assumptions.
Frequency changes behavior more than size. A prize offered daily reframes player expectations. Users reallocate attention to the frequent opportunity, even if the weekly prize is larger in aggregate value. Measure short-run and long-run separately. Daily races spike short-term activity. Weekly giveaways were better for long-lead acquisition. Track both with different attribution windows. Mixing mechanics without segmentation creates cannibalization. Broadcasting both promotions to the same users at the same time reduces net performance. Segmentation and throttling are non-negotiable. Not every engagement metric aligns with revenue. Higher participation doesn't always mean higher lifetime value. Monitor deposit velocity and retention per cohort, not just clicks or entries. Design for attention scarcity. Visual and notification real estate are limited. Presenting multiple competing calls to action is like overlapping billboards - none stick.How Other Platforms Can Mirror This Shift Without Losing Brand Trust
If your product faces a similar shock - a new, frequently recurring prize or promotion - here's a pragmatic checklist you can copy.
Technical checklist
- Implement server-side flags for split testing and safe rollouts. Use difference-in-differences or synthetic controls when you cannot randomize fully across markets. Track deposit velocity and 7/30/90-day retention by cohort, not just initial conversion.
Product and UX checklist
- Stagger in-app creative placement so a single session cannot show both competing promos as primary. Offer composite rewards for users who engage with both daily and weekly formats - e.g., earn a multiplier ticket for the weekly prize after five daily race participations. Throttle push notifications based on recent engagement to avoid fatigue.
Growth and measurement checklist
- Define separate KPIs for acquisition, monetization, and retention. Avoid collapsing them into a single vanity metric. Run at least one 30-day holdout to measure lift on retention - short experiments can mislead when frequency matters. Segment customers by propensity. If 20% of users are “weekly loyalists,” protect that cohort rather than forcing everyone into the new pattern.
Analogy time: introducing a daily race is like turning a neighborhood bakery into a 24-hour coffee stand. You get more traffic, but the type of customer changes. Some of your old regulars still want pastries on Sundays. If you reconfigure your entire business around the new crowd without saving Sunday brunch for the loyalists, you lose the identity that anchored your brand.
Finally, be ready for the numbers to surprise you. The campaign that reduces a legacy metric by 70% might still increase profitability by 20%. The trick is to look past single-metric panic and read the whole ledger. Use cohorts, causal methods, and segmented promotions to rebuild a healthy mix of frequency and depth.
In the Stake example, skepticism was warranted. The initial drop in weekly giveaway entries looked catastrophic. After rigorous testing, careful segmentation, and a deliberate shift in attribution and product flows, the platform ended up with more handle, better short-term RPU, and a clearer playbook for balancing daily and weekly offers. The weekly giveaway didn’t die. It found a smaller, more strategic role.
If you run promotions, treat attention like a finite budget. Reallocate it deliberately, measure aggressively, and assume users will choose the most frequent, emotionally compelling option. That will keep you a step ahead when the next big prize lights up the app.