Mike Ybarra exclusive: Lessons from Activision Blizzard, industry opposition and PrizePicks’ player-first mindset
PrizePicks CEO Mike Ybarra joins Gaming America’s Tim Poole for his first interview since taking the job. We cover: the crossover between video games and traditional gaming, opposition from FanDuel and DraftKings, controversies at Activision Blizzard, and his aims to enable autonomy and drive growth.
Key highlights
- “The first six months at Activision Blizzard were probably the hardest of my career”
- “I’m blown away by what I’ve seen at PrizePicks so far”
- “I’m not worried about what competitors are saying about us. I’m more worried about what we can do for the innovation of our product”
- “We’re going to give teams and people the autonomy – and we want people who have the same player-first mindset, the innovation, the hunger and the desire to win in this space”
After nearly 20 years at Microsoft, and an eventful time at Activision Blizzard, Mike Ybarra was in a mode of “mini retirement.”
“To be honest, I didn’t know what I wanted to do after my time at Activision Blizzard,” Ybarra exclusively tells Gaming America. “My wife is very understanding – we’ve been together for 26 years – but a lot of that is in the grind of work and I’m not around. So, after being home with her for six months, I think I was driving her a little crazy, sitting there doing nothing!”
A call from PrizePicks quickly offered a solution, however, and in August 2024, Ybarra was appointed the fantasy operator’s CEO – as Founder and previous CEO Adam Wexler moved into an Executive Chairman role.
“I had little to no experience in the traditional gambling space, but I’m a big sports fanatic. When PrizePicks called, I started diving into the daily fantasy sports (DFS) space to really understand it. It turned out it’s a pretty immature industry from a timing perspective, so it was really easy to learn and get up to speed on what this looks like: the regulatory landscape, the player mindset, the NFL, the NBA and their momentum in this space.”
That growth profile piqued Ybarra’s interest, as he is someone who likes “butterflies in his stomach two or three days a week – not seven, not zero, but an industry that has enough pace of change.” Ybarra has no doubt already learned there is plenty of pace and dynamism in this industry.
“Lo and behold, here I am. I’m three months in and I couldn’t be happier. There’s been a lot of listening and learning from the team. I don’t know the space as well as anybody in this company, so there’s a lot of consuming all the incredible knowledge and passion this team has.”
For Ybarra, though, the main takeaway from this period of learning was validation. In initial meetings with the team, the exec came away thinking this is the “hungriest fight-to-win team he’s ever been part of.” That “energy and commitment” has continued on a daily basis and is fueling Ybarra’s own passion for the business.
“You really don’t have an idea of the culture, the passion and what this business looks and feels like at first. But, three months in, I have a pretty good framing of that and it validates a lot of the reasons why I’m excited. I was excited to join and it has me looking forward to the growth profile, the product innovation that’s happening. I’m blown away by what I’ve seen so far.”
New horizons, new personnel
Just this week, Ybarra introduced his first major C-level change since being appointed CEO, hiring Marcus Sanford as CFO. Sanford previously worked with Ybarra as CFO for Blizzard Entertainment (of which Activision Blizzard is the parent company).
PrizePicks did already have a CFO, though, Ari Koteles – who was in the role since 2021. According to Ybarra, Koteles was looking for something new, hence a move over to a newly created role of Chief Business Officer.
“As our business continues to grow, it’s important for us to have a leadership team that has broad experience and capabilities, and a passion for this space and gaming in general. So I’m very happy to have Marcus Sanford join us as CFO. I spent six years with him at Activision Blizzard; he worked both on the Activision side and the Blizzard side running a multibillion-dollar business with me. We know each other very well and I’m very lucky to have him join the organization.
“With Marcus joining, we had Ari who’s been with the business for a few years now and has done some fabulous work. Ari is really about growth: what’s the right type of differentiated product we should be creating? How do we want to approach the DFS space? What does it mean for the PrizePicks profile to be on this trajectory? So we really needed a Chief Business Officer, someone that’s thinking about all those things 24/7, driving that player-first mindset and just infusing the organization with that customer-centric view. We found the right position for Ari that scales the leadership team – and we’re all very excited about it.”
Naturally, taking over an organization like PrizePicks also requires some crossover with its Founder. After all, Wexler this year told Gaming America the organization almost went bankrupt during the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, by contrast, it is looking at billions in revenue – and it was Wexler who steered the firm through all these obstacles.
For Ybarra, initial meetings with Wexler were one of his biggest influences for joining the company. A close working relationship has since formed.
“I can tell he’s just a good human – that’s so important,” Ybarra says. “I’ve had a long career. I’ve worked with people who – I don’t know if I’d say are not good humans but – have different motivations. In my conversations with Adam, the trust level was very high. I could tell his heart is in this business and he’s the kind of person you could be best friends with, watching the game with after work every day.
“From that standpoint, he was a big reason why I chose PrizePicks – and I work with him every single day. Adam may not be the CEO, but Adam’s knowledge and, more importantly, his passion and the ideas he brings to this business, I’ve never seen someone with more passion and ideas for the business. So we have a great partnership in running PrizePicks.”
(Left, new CFO Marcus Sanford; right, Executive Chairman Adam Wexler)
Reflecting on Activision Blizzard
As already stated, Ybarra is bringing over two decades of experience in the video game industry. There is a definite, growing, crossover between video games and real-money gaming and the business case for Ybarra’s appointment as CEO is fascinating.
But, given the global headlines generated at Activision Blizzard over the years, discussing only the business case would not paint the full picture. Company culture made repeated headlines due to cases of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior, with various stories still being reported today about disputes between executives – despite Microsoft’s acquisition of the company in 2022.
Ybarra held senior roles at Activision Blizzard during these high-profile and controversial periods, while he acknowledges the wider video game industry has become known for its cultural issues.
“I would say the first six months were, surprisingly, probably the hardest of my career,” Ybarra tells Gaming America. “I’m a huge video game person. Blizzard’s been a big part of my life and the friendships that I made through their games, if you think of World of Warcraft, Overwatch and all of those things. So I was ecstatic to join an organization that has created what they’ve created.
“But, one month in, Covid hit. That was hard, because you’re getting to learn people and all of a sudden I remember distinctly saying, ‘okay, I’ll see everyone in about two weeks or so.’ I didn’t think it would be two and a half years before we came back.
“But a month after that, the culture issues hit and the behavioral issues were in the press. And I gotta tell you, Tim, every day you wake up and you read a new article about it. It’s not easy to see, because you start questioning: ‘why did I join? Did I make the right decision in joining this company? When I see the 15-plus years of behavior challenges that are in the press, how do I lead a team of 5,000 people through that every single day?’ The press is basically running a lot of negativity about you as a person.
“That was the hardest six-month period in my career and it wasn’t fun reading all of that. But at the same time, you ask: ‘what are the lessons?’ One of the first things I did was started talking to the organization about how important culture is and how we have to treat culture the same way we treat our product: World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo, Starcraft; they are all huge pillars at Blizzard. Culture has to be a pillar we take seriously and there has to be accountability. There’s a zero-tolerance policy around some of the behavior that we’re reading about in The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.”
Ybarra is still adamant he would “absolutely” go through that whole experience again, helping others through the tough period and assisting those with “hearts in the right place” to overcome adversity.
Gaming America wonders whether this experience has prompted Ybarra to place a higher importance on culture at PrizePicks than he perhaps might have, had he not worked at Activision Blizzard.
“Oh, absolutely. The video game business has a long history of culture revolution. You look at Riot Games, you look at Xbox, you look at Sony, 2K Games – the list is so long. Xbox went through similar, it just wasn’t as public as Blizzard’s. I don’t think any company has had the publicity Blizzard had, but there were issues there for every company, not just the video game business; certainly in the traditional gaming space it exists as well.
“And so I take those lessons: how do we apply them? What I can tell you about PrizePicks is it’s incredible how powerful the culture is here. People are here because they want to be here. They have fun. They love it. It’s an environment that I think was built on a foundation of how Adam and others wanted to see the culture of the space. So we’re playing from a place of strength here at PrizePicks, and that’s always great to see.”
Working with Jen Oneal
Headlines that specifically addressed Ybarra also surfaced during his time with Activision BIizzard, when he was promoted to a Co-President position with Jen Oneal. Oneal, however, later resigned and said she was only offered an equal salary after she had handed in her resignation.
“It was a crazy time of change at Blizzard,” Ybarra reflects. “I think there was so much going on and a lot of reaction to things. Jen and I had a great relationship co-running Blizzard. We saw things the same way, whether that be compensation, values or the vision for where we want to take the company. Ultimately, senior management thought differently about a couple of those areas, and that added a lot of stress on top of both of us.”
According to Ybarra, there were nights when he and Oneal would sit in their offices and, once again, contemplate whether to remain with the company or leave the organization. “How do we manage this incredible time of change and, frankly, negativity in the press around the culture pieces and the product strategies? But, at the end of the day, she brought a lot of value. She brought a lot of leadership into the culture approach and I will always value that from her.”
This form of gaming and that form of gaming
At PrizePicks, naturally, Ybarra will have to adapt to gaming in a new sense. In this first interview since taking this job, he has already distinguished between video games and “traditional gaming.” With time, Ybarra will probably get used to simply saying ‘gaming’ – but the intersection between both worlds is an intriguing one.
“It’s funny, when I first started discussions with PrizePicks, I didn’t really relate video games to traditional gaming,” the CEO explains. “But as I quickly learned about the operations of the business here, there are a lot of similarities, and a lot of strengths when you think about the reach and total addressable market opportunity. There is crossover in how you think about engagement, monetization and brand preference, and free-to-play games like Fortnite or Overwatch.
“You have tons of people coming in. How do you get more in? How do you keep that product innovation first and foremost so that people come back to you? The biggest synergy I see at PrizePicks is a player-first mindset. People here are always thinking about the people using our application and our services, and how they can exceed their expectations. I think that is exactly the mentality the video game space has.”
Gaming America asks whether Ybarra sees the two industries merging further, given the rise in recent years of esports betting. There is agreement from the CEO in response, as well as a mention of two further crossover points: lootboxes and gamification. It is for this reason Ybarra sees more video game personnel switching into gaming in the future – and vice versa.
Regarding his new industry’s landscape, Ybarra acknowledges a breadth of competitors.
“I love when I read how hungry these competitors are because, frankly, I think the industry is big enough for all of us. At the same time, it’s going to drive us to push our innovation and our player-first mindset to even higher levels. It fuels us to see the competition that’s out there. I think we do to others as well, so I like to say it’s healthy competition. It’s not like I want to see any company disappear off Planet Earth. I want to see us all succeed.”
Opposition from FanDuel and DraftKings
One issue facing PrizePicks before Ybarra’s arrival – but no doubt one that will continue during his leadership – is the opposition of certain industry giants. FanDuel and DraftKings are two such companies who, in the past, dominated the fantasy industry. They still do – now they simply dominate the US sports betting scene too.
Last September, for example, the Florida Gaming Control Commission sent a cease-and-desist letter to fantasy operators PrizePicks, Underdog Sports and Betr. No such letter was sent to FanDuel or DraftKings.
When Gaming America spoke with Wexler on the matter earlier this year, he was keen to emphasize he had nothing new to add to the discussion, with his opinions already made clear publicly. But he did note any ongoing opposition from such big industry players can be viewed as a compliment.
“I look at it the same way,” Ybarra states. “Honestly, I’m not too worried about what the competitors are saying about us. I’m more worried about what we can do for the innovation of our product than anything else. I think that’s the North Star for this company, not worrying about what others are doing but controlling our own destiny and making sure we’re doing everything we can. I would agree with Adam; I think PrizePicks is a major player in this industry and we’re going to continue to innovate our products, and drive that business forward.”
A player-first mindset
Indeed, driving growth is priority number one on Ybarra’s CEO to-do list. When we ask what his one main aim in the hot seat is – in other words, what he wants to have achieved when looking back on his tenure in the distant future – he admits “it’s a hard question three months in.”
But growth and a player-first mentality remain at the top of the agenda. How? “I think you have to start with the people and the talent. What I’ve said a lot in my first three months here is: the most important thing we can do is decide who we have working here at PrizePicks, who we bring in, because they’re going to drive the future of this business forward.
“We’re going to give teams and people the autonomy – and we want people who have the same player-first mindset, the innovation, the hunger and the desire to win in this space. My hope is we can grow the talent we have, and we can bring some new people in, setting a foundation for leadership that drives growth.”
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