In this article, I'll walk you through the setup of creating a Pro Football Mock Draft using our Custom Sports application. Because I am using an app intended for other purposes to create this mock draft, some of the desired display features may not be available. However, if you follow this guide step-by-step, you will be able to accomplish your goal of creating a virtual mock draft.

To start, click "Create Campaign", give your campaign a title, and click "Start Campaign."

I won't focus on the creative, or graphics, here but I do want to talk about what each schedule means. The schedule you see on the first setup page are the dates that the promotion will be shown live on your site. Think of this as the overall dates that the promotion will run.

Next, click on the Season tab and follow these steps:

Now that those settings are in place, it's time to create your Teams, or in this case, the players that will most likely be drafted.

You'll click "+Add Team" and this popup will appear:

In the "Team Name" field, input the player's name, position (best if abbreviated), and school. Leave the "City," "State," and "School or Org" blank since these details don't currently appear when participants are making picks. 

Once you've added the details, click Submit. Your Teams will be listed as you continue to create more.

In order to create a robust list of possible draftees, I added the top 10 players from each football position, i.e. 10 QB's, 10 WR's, etc. This gave me a list of 90 possible players. You can add more or less if you wish.

(screenshot from predictpick.nfl.com)

Now that my players have been added, I can create my round. In this case, there is only going to be one round added since the event is one event. If this were our Pro Football Pick'em challenge, each round would represent the week where a series of games are played.

I named my round "Draft Night" and set the schedule for the duration of the draft broadcast. You can add multiple games to a round, but in this example there will only be one round and one game. Now click "+Add Game."

Don't worry about choosing anything for the Select Team dropdown for "Home Team" and "Visitor Team" since this isn't a matchup. Select your only round and set the day and time of the game. This date and time will determine when picks close. A best practice is to set the time 10-15 prior to the event starting. Think of this as the Kick-off time.

Now that you have your players added, the round created, and game time set, it's time to add the teams to the mock draft. 

Click "Game Settings" to get to this popup:

Give the game a title and location if you'd like. For the mock draft you'll set Pickable Positions to 32 and Rankable Positions to 32. What this means is out of all 90 players you can only pick 32 and you want all 32 picks to count toward rankings. Then click "Submit."

How scoring works: If I pick Joe Burrow to be the #1 draft pick and he's chosen #1, I get 32 points. If he's picked #3, then I only get 29 points. If he's not even in the top 32, I don't get any points for choosing him. Each correct pick has a possible 32 points awarded.

Now that your game is set up, you can add the players to the game. Click the "0 Teams Playing" button to add all the players.

After clicking it, you'll get a popup that looks like this:

You'll click "+ Add All 90 Teams" to make them available for picking. 

After the actual draft has been announced, come back to this pop up to add their rankings. This is what will score the leaderboard on the live promotion.

That is it when it comes to setting up the mock draft using the Top Ranking style setup of a custom Sport promotion.

Quickly, let's take a look at what it looks like for the end user's experience. 

First, the user will create a profile, including a password. This allows them to log in and check their scores, the leaderboard, or change their picks.

You can also collect other data on this form as well, such as zip code, birthday, email opt-ins etc.

The one round and game (mock draft) will be displayed and they'll click "Make Picks."

At last, they'll be asked to choose their top 32 picks for the draft. After they have chosen 32 players, they won't be able to add any more without deleting one first. They can also search by player name.

They will also be able to check the leaderboard to see who they are up against and view their final score.

That's all there is to it!

I know this seems like a lot of information, but if you work from top to bottom, you should have a great mock draft that you can use in place of paper drafts. Using Audience to create the mock draft provides additional revenue opportunities, excellent user engagement, and audience growth.
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If you have any questions, feel free to reach out via chat, email support@audience.io, or phone (801-901-2011)!