Blast off: Boom Sports' entry into the B2C betting fray

It’s well-known within the industry that a history in fantasy sports can offer a secure footing in entering the real-money betting business. Former fantasy games developer Boom Sports bought into the real-money betting boom as soon as PASPA was repealed in 2018, as it swiftly rebranded to target media firms and sportsbooks, providing them with free-to-play sports games.

Two years on and the firm is leveraging its long-standing partnerships with major groups like Penn National Gaming to assist its development of a B2C betting business. Through its deal with Penn National, the firm has gained market access in a handful of second- and third-tier betting states, including Louisiana and Ohio, which are unlikely to pass betting legislation for another couple of years.

But with time on their hands, access to sizeable player databases and experience in the free-to-play business, Boom has established a sound foundation for its budding B2C ambitions. “It’s a combination of building a platform and games that work, as well as in certain cases the ability to share databases,” says Boom Sports president Med Nadooshan.

The firm is also eyeing potential media partnerships to cement its place in the betting landscape. It is expected that Boom’s close ties with the likes of Penn National and Comcast will act hugely inits favor in this area.

EGR North America digs into the supplier’s history and its well-rounded plans for entering the B2C fray.

Med Nadooshan, president for Boom Sports

EGR North America (EGR NA): Is Boom Sports related in any way to Boom Fantasy and how has the business developed over time?

Med Nadooshan (MN): Boom started as a fantasy sports company in 2015. It grew very quickly as we had a talented small group of people working on the platform. That coincided with the time that DraftKings and FanDuel and the big fantasy sports companies started to hit a snag in terms of regulatory issues in New York and other states.

All of a sudden, the whole fantasy sports sexiness went away. It just hit a wall. DraftKings and FanDuel burned so much money to be where they are today. Obviously, they’re very successful on the real-money betting side, but a lot of the smaller ones ran away.

And [co-founder] Steve [Murphy] managed to really keep the company afloat and iterate through his platform and make it stronger and stronger. Steve and I met when we worked together at High 5 Games. I was the CTO and COO and we worked on the strategy of online. I did a lot of the online infrastructure so High 5 could get into premium gaming social casino, so we were almost the second in the world, and we created multi-lingual social casino products and operated in 50-plus countries.

One of the things we had discussed together was getting out of fantasy sports, and that was a few months before PASPA was overturned.

We started looking into building new games and then we started to tackle media companies – big ones. We calculated and gambled on the widest audience to actually use our product. So, we had brand recognition via our ‘powered by Boom’ brand and that put us on the map as a B2B supplier.

We started to work with Comcast after they came to us and asked us to develop a free-to-play (F2P) gaming platform for them. That was the finance for getting out of purely fantasy sports into more of an F2P developer as an emerging business for real-money sportsbooks.

We now have several F2P deals with different companies, [including] a golf media company we haven’t announced yet. Market access was a deal that we made with Penn National Gaming and we have access to five jurisdictions in the US in which we will operate online casino and sportsbook.

We have the technology, we have the games and now we have market access, so we can package it any way we like and provide [white-label] offers to people who have brands, but don’t have anything else. I also want to mention there is another angle to what we do and that is on the casino gaming side, because we are well versed on that front, having worked at High 5 for many years.

EGR NA: What attracted you to Ohio, Missouri, Louisiana and New Mexico as potential betting states?

MN: The whole sportsbook storm is going to take over almost every state, and we want to reserve access to those markets for ourselves. Ohio is a great market with great sports teams. Missouri is a reasonably good market. We want to have access to as many states as possible because it ties back to our strategy of having offerings in as many states as we can. These states that we put our fingers on have a higher probability to open up.

EGR NA: Will you be allowed to access the player databases of operators you work with?

MN: Some of our deals definitely provide that database access. It’s a combination of building a platform and games that work, as well as in certain cases the ability to share databases.

EGR NA: And your history working with major media groups, how will that shape your B2C strategy?

MN: Media partners have different appetites for sports betting and sportsbooks. Some purely become involved with an affiliate-style deal. We believe some would do that. And then others who aspire to have a brand and operate, we would partner with them in terms of supplying them with games and technologies, as well as wherever they needed market access.

EGR NA: Is there anything you’re looking for specifically – national, regional or perhaps smaller technology firms versus big broadcasters?

MN: I can certainly say that we have an interest in regional as well as national. Obviously, the makeup of the US is a state-by-state approach, so regional is the right approach because they open up one after the other.

EGR NA: How will the B2C business help leverage your B2B business?

MN: We look at it from the enablement angle, as in we’re enabling our partners. So, for the B2C angle of the business, irrespective of who the operator is, we would be a beneficiary of that B2C market. But we believe that by bringing in the platform, mostly on the customer experience side of it, we do a great job in that area. And then we have significant experience with our management data analytics system, which is really very different to others we have learned about. This combination of all the above that we can provide on the B2B side helps the B2C side, and our partners end up with higher margins.

EGR NA: Will you use the Boom Sports branding for the B2C operation?

MN: We haven’t decided yet but it is possible, yes.

EGR NA: Why do you suspect that a customer would choose your B2C product over a more well-known brand like Penn National, which uses your platform but is just a better-known brand than yours?

Of course, brand is a key element in this picture. But user experience and game differentiation are also important because many products pretty much look the same or are very similar. Our games and the package we provide give us a leg up, and we can attract a spectrum of users, not just savvy sports bettors.

We have a younger audience who are interested in getting involved. The combination of ease of use, entertainment and experience management, the cost of product and pricing of the bet would be very competitive and actually very beneficial to us. So, we believe the combination will give us a lot of work. In terms of the key technology elements and key value propositions, those are all done in-house.

EGR NA: How much value do you see in a lot of the F2P games and is that going to be a big part of your B2C offering?

MN: You need to have a supply of users, retention capability and you need to do it at a low price. Remember I talked about how we can help improve margins for operators? F2P to us is not only served as experience management and to help retain users, but it really lowers the cost of acquisition overall.

For example, instead of somebody going and acquiring a customer at a cost of anywhere from $250, depending on the state, all the way to $500 or more. F2P plays a really important role as it is entertainment, retention and acquisition at lower costs, and there’s a margin improvement program.

EGR NA: You’re working with Penn National on upcoming Barstool Sportsbook products, so what can we expect from that?

MN: I can’t go into a lot of detail. We like to keep the buzz and keep people guessing, but I can tell you that a lot of emphasis is being put on continued entertainment, being fun and giving people a lot of different outlets to spend time playing games and enjoy themselves.

It’s not going to be a typical free-to-play app you see; it’s going to be very different and interesting. It’s both casual and more typical. The experience is fun. We have a very good relationship with both companies. Everybody looks for perfection and, given our position there and our ability to deliver, we are trying to keep everybody happy.