Building ESPN-style bracket challenges into my sports betting social app

I’ve been working on a project called Bet Buddy, a social sports betting app where users compete with picks, leaderboards, and challenges.

This week I started building Bracket Challenges (March Madness style) into the platform.

The goal is to make it work like ESPN’s bracket challenge but with a few extra things:

• Users can create public or private bracket contests

• Invite friends with a code

• Leaderboards update automatically as results come in

• Picks get marked correct / wrong / busted in real time

• Future rounds show your original pick crossed out when it gets eliminated

• The real advancing team replaces it in the bracket

I also built logic so that:

• Official results automatically advance teams

• Brackets lock after submission

• Points are awarded by round

• Leaderboards update as games finish

Right now I’m focused on improving the UX of busted brackets so users can clearly see where their picks went wrong.

Here’s the app if anyone wants to test it:

https://betbuddybet.com/dashboard

Would love feedback on:

1. What makes bracket challenges addictive for you?

2. Are there any features ESPN/Yahoo brackets have that you think are must-haves?

Also if anyone here has built tournament bracket logic, I’d love to hear how you handled scoring and result updates.