Born free: Low6 CEO Jamie Mitchell on cracking America with F2P games

For free-to-play games developer Low6, 2021 was a year of roaring success as its flagship UltimateFan app managed to secure $5m in funding and looks set to break into the US market.

The firm has also struck countless partnerships with professional sports teams including NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars and Cincinnati Bengals, as well as the NBA’s Detroit Pistons, alongside football clubs like Rangers and fan-led influencer channels. 

The Low6 UltimateFan app ups the ante on the standard fantasy game by offering players pack openings, fantasy points scoring and the chance to acquire NFTs. It operates across fantasy sports platforms including versions for football fans in the UK and American football fans in the US, as well as Ultimate Bengals for the Cincinnati Bengals and Ultimate Jags for the Jacksonville Jaguars.

All this saw up-and-coming developer Low6 being named as EGR’s rising star and virtual and fantasy operator of the year at the EGR Operator Awards 2021, with other accolades including innovation of the year award winner at the EGR Marketing and Innovation Virtual Awards in June 2021, as well as being named as a ‘ones to watch’ in the EGR Power 50 2021.

With the sports technology firm planning to make a splash in 2022, as well as making changes to its gamification apps in the coming months, EGR spoke to co-founder and group CEO Jamie Mitchell to find out more about Low6’s ideologies and the secret behind being a successful start-up in the industry.

EGR Intel: Congratulations on winning two EGR awards last November at the EGR Operator Awards. Why do you think the judges selected Low6 as the rising star and virtual and fantasy operator of the year?

Jamie Mitchell (JM): I think we were chosen as rising star because our approach to the industry is quite refreshing. We’re very much looking to engage players in a safer and more responsible manner than has typically been seen across the industry, and we have a very different approach to gamification and how that lands with Millennials and Gen Z. Our approach has won us a lot of partnerships across the globe. In addition, our UltimateFan app hit the ground running, boasting 150,000 weekly players on the platform, the top-grossing app in the App Store and the third most downloaded app in the App Store over the summer.

All of this has been great validation for the teams in Low6 that have worked on raising our profile across the industry – winning lots of business from a product perspective and for the technology team having produced such a good UltimateFan daily fantasy game.

EGR Intel: What do you think were Low6’s biggest achievements over the past year?

JM: The biggest achievement for us has been the onboarding of around 40 staff members, all of whom have embedded well and started to set a really strong culture across the business, one we hope will sustain for many years to come.

In terms of operational achievements, working alongside brands such as the PGA Tour, the UFC, the Cincinnati Bengals in the NFL and so on is testament to how well Low6 is regarded within the sports industry, that we can compete with other operators and win clients of this calibre.

EGR Intel: Low6 was named as one of EGR’s ‘ones to watch’ last year and you raised $5m in funding in January. What else can we expect to see from you?

JM: The company will become a publicly listed company in the next few months. From there, you can expect to see aggressive growth in America as we are now positioning ourselves as an American business. We have ambitious revenue targets to achieve, so there are big things to come from Low6.

EGR Intel: Many online bookmakers in the UK have long had free-to-play games to help with user acquisition and retention. How would you assess where the US market is in terms of that product offering?

JM: All of the stats, data and anecdotal conversations we’re currently having with partners is making it clear that free-to-play gamification is absolutely front and centre for most igaming partners. For process, first-party data is the party to be at – it’s what we talk about internally all the time. We provide first-party data and curated-fan data to organisations’ rights holders in the gaming sector as well as to rights holders directly. With the changes that social media platforms have made, there’ll be an increasing reliance on companies like us to provide first-party-compliant data. So, I believe you’ll see explosive growth in the free-to-play markets in the US over the next 12 to 18 months.

EGR Intel: In your experience, what works and what doesn’t with free-to-play games?

JM: I think what’s really important with the free-to-play strategy for any organisation, rights holder and so on, is that the onboarding experience must be seamless. The minute you put a barrier to entry for a free-to-play game, you’ve basically lost the end-user because they’re not paying to enter that game. It’s free to play so it needs to be easy to access.

Once you’ve achieved a seamless entry, then you can start to be really creative. We try to be inventive, doing pack openings and weekly drops, and don’t just stick to the traditional style of game which has been around forever. Gen Z and Millennials are super smart, super intuitive and will work their way around. There’s no need to put an instruction manual on every game.

EGR Intel: Following Low6’s most recent round of funding, what are the firm’s plans for US expansion?

JM: We’ve just taken on our first US hires, we’re opening our first office in the US and overall the US is our absolute prime focus at this point in time. I wouldn’t be surprised if more employees shift towards the United States. As CEO, I’m moving to live there permanently.

We want to take advantage of the sports betting landscape in North America. And we believe that by investing in people and infrastructure in the US, it’s the right thing to do.

EGR Intel: Can you tell us about the PGA Pick’Em game Low6 created and how it helps with engagement?

JM: The PGA Tour game has been a huge success for Low6 so far. The difference with that game is that the request was very much to help the user understand betting. So, you place virtual coins on a player, and if they win, they correspond to the points bet odds that were offered on that player at the time. The call to action is to educate users as to how the betting markets work.

EGR Intel: Following Ben Barker’s appointment as chief revenue officer, how will he aid in your firm’s US expansion plans?

JM: Ben joins us from customer engagement platform Monterosa, where he’s already taken part in aggressive revenue growth through global partners in his previous role. We felt that his experience was exactly what we needed in terms of curating and cultivating some of the commercial deals that we’re looking to fulfil over the next 12 months. Ben gives us an experience that wasn’t necessarily in the business before in this space, certainly in terms of gamification.

EGR Intel: You have recently announced your first foray into college sports with the Learfield partnership. What was the thinking behind this decision?

JM: College sports in America are bigger than professional sports. We saw March Madness once again break all sorts of sports betting records. For Low6, we wanted an economy of scale in North America, and partnering with the Learfield College Network gives us access to almost 180 colleges to exclusively provide free-to-play gamification. We’re live with five colleges right now but the ambition is to get to 50 by September, in time for the college football season.

EGR Intel: Your UltimateFan app recently passed 150,000 installs, what do you think is the secret behind its success in such a short space of time?

JM: The secret to its success is the fact that communities are at the heart of the app. We understand that pack opening is really luck of the draw as to who you get but making sure the game is simple is another major factor.

The app has a truly incredible community of 150,000 people playing the game. It’s the third most downloaded fantasy game in the UK, so that is testament to how well we have been marketing it across social media. Sportsbooks and other potential partners alike are very keen on the product.

The app is set to be re-released in August, and the platform will include trading which allows players to trade cards with each other for the first time. The re-release will also feature our very first trip into the metaverse, which is possibly how I would describe it, but there are many more big announcements still to come.

EGR Intel: Low6 has a blend of professional sports teams and fan-based partnerships. Is this at the core of the Low6 ideology?

JM: Absolutely. When you look at brands like Gymshark, they are all influencer-led brands and their marketing campaigns are all pushed by social media and influencers. We looked at whether we could blend a mixture of professional franchises with influencer-led campaigns to achieve the best of both worlds. We wanted to get the die-hard fans who have an allegiance to a club alongside the Millennial/Gen Z user who dips in and out of apps like YouTube and TikTok. This is at the core of what we do and sits in the Low6 ideology.

EGR Intel: Low6 recently partnered with its first charity in Sporting Minds UK. Can you elaborate on how that partnership works and how it ties into the wider landscape of the industry and giving back to the community?

JM: It was really important for us to partner with a charity this year. We wanted to look for a sort of local-ish charity and Sporting Minds was close by. Ultimately, Sporting Minds help young professional athletes who drop out of professional sports and then struggle with their mental health. We were desperate to give back to the sporting industry, and if we can help young athletes with their mental health by supporting this charity, then we’re only too happy to do so. Sporting Minds held a fundraiser recently and raised £12,000. Low6 are committed to continuing to help them raise lots more funds in 2022.

EGR Intel: Do you believe ESG is a core principle of a successful business model?

JM: As a corporate company, I think the charitable side sets a culture within your own business. We put this to the folks in Low6 and asked how should we help charitable organisations and who do we want to partner with? Lots of thoughts and ideas flowed back, indicating that it is a big part of our professional values and culture.

EGR Intel: Your IPO is set to take place later this year. What will going public mean for Low6?

JM: We aim to be a publicly listed company by the end of June and we are now at the advanced stages of the process. This will give us the ability to raise funds, host events and execute our business plan, which has been on public record as wanting to build a billion-pound company and one that will change the face of sports gamification forever. I think our ambitions can only be helped by becoming a publicly listed company.

EGR Intel: Lastly, is there anything about Low6 that we may not know about?

JM: I think the one thing that people probably don’t associate with Low6 is that we’re a data company at heart. We curate hundreds of thousands of bits of data every single day. We help overlay specific contextualisation that can be incredibly valuable to operators.

The reason this isn’t well known is because we don’t talk heavily about just how much data we have, how data-driven we are as an organisation and how it can change the igaming industry forever moving forward. I suppose that’s the takeaway from me – if you haven’t heard of Low6, or even if you have, we’re not all about games; scratch the surface and you’ll see we’re a hugely complex data-driven organisation first and foremost.