Predict the future

While 2018 saw the emergence of start-ups and challenger bookies hoping to make a dent in the world’s most saturated marketplace, a different type of product sprung up from the roots of various operators – the predictor game.

This may or may not have absolutely everything to do with Super 6, Sky Bet’s trusted free-to-play (FTP) predictor game that has millions of customers every week. That’s a lot. Super 6, which didn’t launch last year but has given birth to many copycat games, stands out as the leader in this market for a number of reasons.

First, it’s incredibly easy to understand – predict the correct score in six football games (with an additional tie-breaker question). Get them all right and you take down a cool £250,000 for 10 seconds’ work.

And that’s the second reason it’s so good; it’s instinctive and over in a flash. Its success must also be attributed to the lashings of exposure it gets on its namesake’s media channels, a benefit unique to Sky Bet. Meanwhile, Beat the Drop is Paddy Power Betfair’s stab at the FTP market, although it’s not quite FTP all the way.

Based on the popular TV game show The Drop, it launched for the World Cup in June 2018, with customers able to win a cool £1m, and was recently extended, albeit with a smaller FTP jackpot (£1,000) and a real-money version. Beat the Drop works because it is also inherently social; trawl through Reddit or betting groups on Facebook and you won’t have to wait long before seeing a desperate punter asking the audience for their advice.

Coral recently launched its latest FTP offering, a series of questions based around the PDC World Darts Championship. Built for mobile, it’s slick but it lacks the stickiness of Super 6 and the social effects of Beat The Drop.

Acquisition engine

So, why do FTP games exist? What’s the point in offering free entry to a game that could cost you hundreds of thousands? Conversion, of course. It sounds simple enough, but if converting a customer from FTP to real-money gambling were easy, most of us would be out of a job. Education is a key component of any FTP game.

Customers can get the hang of betting lingo and features for free, with the lure of a jackpot hanging in the incredibly unlikely event that they win. Teaching customers how to bet is one thing, but if I can play for free forever, what is going to tempt me into putting my hand in my pocket?

While you may think that your experience has come to an end once you’ve made your picks, this is, for products such as Super 6 or Betway’s 4 To Score, where things start to get interesting for the operator.

They will take your picks, convert them into bets and present you with an everso-tempting opportunity. At the risk of sounding like a cheerleader for Sky Bet again, what I love about Super 6 is how they simplify this experience; a bet on all six correct scores would be akin to buying a lottery ticket, so they convert your picks to match results and both teams to score accumulators, presenting an attractive opportunity to both punter and operator.

This year will see the emergence of more FTP products – sports betting’s answer to social casino. The winning products will encourage cross-sport activity, something that very few, if any, have managed to crack yet – until now.

[Bio] Adam Wilson is the co-founder of Bookee, the simple, swipe-based sports betting app. He previously worked at Initial Rewards, 888 and as an affiliate marketing consultant.