Assessing the Impact of Upselling in Online Fantasy Sports

TL;DR

This paper investigates how upselling affects user engagement and deposit behavior in online fantasy sports, revealing a trade-off between increased deposits and decreased user satisfaction, using experimental and causal analysis methods.

Contribution

It introduces an experimental framework and causal meta-learning approach to personalize upselling intensity for optimal user engagement and revenue in fantasy sports.

Findings

Higher upselling intensity increases deposits

Increased upselling reduces user satisfaction

Personalized upselling optimizes trade-offs

Abstract

This study explores the impact of upselling on user engagement. We model users' deposit behaviour on the fantasy sports platform Dream11. Subsequently, we develop an experimental framework to evaluate the effect of upselling using an intensity parameter. Our live experiments on user deposit behaviour reveal decreased user recall with heightened upselling intensity. Our findings indicate that increased upselling intensity improves user deposit metrics and concurrently diminishes user satisfaction and conversion rates. We conduct robust counterfactual analysis and train causal meta-learners to personalise users' upselling intensity levels to reach an optimal trade-off point.