Case Study: Stampede
Every Sports Fan Has an Opinion

Founder, designer & developer · Solo project · 2026

Stampede Front page
  1. StampedeLate ed.
    Buy or sell

    The regular seasonis too long, and everybody knows it

    Fewer games would mean every night counts, and the sport has spent years quietly admitting it: rest days for the stars, half-empty buildings in the dead months, a postseason that starts before casual fans notice. Nobody circles game fifty-eight on a calendar. Cut a month and nothing anyone will miss goes with it, and the nights that are left start to matter again. The players want it, the broadcasters want it, and the ticket buyers already voted.

    Midseason attendance has fallen three straight years.

    Games
    82
    Midseason gate
    -9%
    Straight declines
    3 yrs
    StampedeThe room
    Where the room landed

    The regular season is too long, and everybody knows it

    Midseason attendance has fallen three straight years.

  2. StampedeLate ed.
    Buy or sell

    Kill the lottery.Worst record picks first.

    Tanking only works because the ping-pong balls reward it half the time. Hand the first pick to the worst team outright and the bottom of the table becomes a race nobody wants to lose slowly.

    The last four number one picks came from outside the bottom three.

    StampedeThe room
    Where the room landed

    Kill the lottery. Worst record picks first.

    The last four number one picks came from outside the bottom three.

Two real Stampede cards. Swipe, or tap Sell or Buy, to see the card turn over. The crowd splits here are made up; in the app they're live.

At a glance

Client
Stampede
Industry
Sports media (consumer app)
My role
Founder, designer & developer · Solo project
Timeline
2026
Services
Product, Web

Headline results

  • Designed, built and launched solo, from idea to the App Store
  • Free on iPhone with no ads, covering six leagues
  • Nine card types, plus Letters, the Wire, the Barometer and the Credential

About Stampede

Stampede is a sports news app that asks what you think. The day’s news arrives as cards, and every card asks for a call: good deal or bad deal, buy or sell, over or under, who won the trade. Swipe it, and the card turns over to show the fan verdict, your take beside it, and the friends who backed you or came for you.

It covers the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, WNBA and college sports. It’s free on iPhone, with no ads, and an Android version is on the way.

Summary

Sports fans already argue about every signing, trade and slump. They just do it in group chats and comment sections, where nobody keeps score. I wanted to build the place where that argument happens on the record: one question about one real story, answered in a swipe, with the crowd’s answer right behind it.

Stampede is a solo project. I took it from idea to the App Store myself: the product, the brand, the interface, the app, the website at stampede.fans, and the launch.

Approach

One card, one story, one question

The core loop had to be fast enough to do in a line for coffee. Each card is a single real story with a single question, and the answer is a swipe: right to back it, left to doubt it, up to skip. The site’s promise is that it takes about nine seconds to have an opinion on the record, and the feed is tuned to the clubs and leagues each fan follows, so every card is one they’d actually argue about.

A deck with nine ways to take a side

Not every sports argument is yes or no, so the deck mixes quick calls with deeper ones: news, buy or sell, trades, rankings, roster debates, over or under, score predictions, trivia and legacy tiers. Some cards ask for four names in order, some for the winner of a trade, some for a number over or under. Swipe or tap, every answer takes seconds.

The payoff: see where the room landed

The split lands the moment you swipe: where the rest of the country stood, where you stood in it, and whether the room beat the model’s call. That instant comparison is the reward for taking a side, and the hook that makes you want the next card.

A social layer that rewards having a take

  • Letters let fans defend a call in writing. Every letter is filed under the side its writer took, and replies show their hand, so you can see who’s arguing against their own pick.
  • The Wire collects replies, mentions, follows and friends’ takes as they happen.
  • The Barometer tracks the mood of each fanbase, club by club, and which stories moved it.
  • The Credential is your fan profile, and it fills in as you swipe: your classification, your leaning, your record on the calls that have settled, and a streak for showing up every day.

Built to spread

Any result can be shared as a printed board, straight to a group chat, which is where sports arguments already live. Early users get a numbered founding credential that nobody after them can have. The whole brand leans on the look of a newspaper sports section, from the front page and the wire to letters and the printed board, so the app feels like somewhere with a point of view rather than another scores feed.

Launch

Shipping solo meant owning everything around the app too: the App Store listing and its copy, the landing site, the privacy policy and terms, and an account deletion flow. Stampede is independent and unofficial, and says so plainly, since it’s built on news about teams and leagues it has no tie to.

Where it stands

  • Live on the App Store as Stampede: Sports Takes, free, with no ads
  • Six leagues covered: the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, WNBA and college sports
  • Nine card types, plus Letters, the Wire, the Barometer and the Credential
  • Android version on the way

See it live

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