One billion picks and counting: ESPN’s Streak For The Cash game passes major milestone
ESPN’s highly-popular fantasy pick ’em game Streak for the Cash celebrated a major milestone recently, marking 1 billion picks made by sports fans since the game was introduced in August 2008.
“Streak for the Cash is a remarkable example of the engagement of the ESPN digital user,” said ESPN’s Vice President of Fantasy Product Management, George Leimer. “There are a lot of fans making a lot of picks, representing a remarkably diverse mix of sports. Streak has been a great way for people to discover new sports, as well as engage more deeply in big events.”
Streak for the Cash is played online or through the ESPN Streak app, which requires fans to select the winning team or player in a variety of daily matchups and “prop” picks across all major sports, in order to accumulate the longest winning streak each month.
Fans are required to select the winner of matchups between teams, individual competitors or a combination of both. Picks include “straight up” matchups and intriguing “prop” picks, which might include predicting the number of strikeouts a particular MLB pitcher will have versus hits he gives up, for example.
The billionth pick was made by a sports fan from Stoneham, Mass., with the username “Dan Steely” – presumably also a fan of Steely Dan – who has been playing Streak for the Cash since 2009. Mr. “Steely” chose to play the Serbia versus Brazil friendly football match June 6, a prop pick asking whether Brazil would win by three or more goals versus any other result. He picked “Any Other Result,” and Brazil won 1-0, giving him a W and a one-pick streak.
For the record, Dan Steely has an all-time record of 1,457 winning picks and 1,344 losers for an overall winning percentage of .520. His longest streak of W’s is 10. Impressive numbers.
Obviously, Dan Steely is an avid player of Streak for the Cash, but he’s certainly not alone. More than 6 million fans have played the game since it began. Add it all up – 1 billion picks by 6 million players over a period of just under 6 years – and that’s 5.5 picks per every second of every day.
Perhaps even better, fans have won a total of more than $7.3 million in prizes since 2008. And in case you’re wondering, the longest all-time streak is 35 wins, established in February of this year by Duke Yeager (aka Zamgas) who won $60,000 for his efforts.
Streak for the Cash will include every match in the World Cup tournament, and Leimer’s team is anticipating that thousands of picks will be made for each game.
