William Hill ramps up retention on football with new free-to-play format
London-listed operator teams up with SportCaller to launch Free Or 4 game for UK customers
William Hill has launched SportCaller’s new free-to-play (F2P) title Free Or 4 to drive retention across its customer segment of UK football bettors.
The new game asks punters to predict six 3pm Saturday football fixtures that will feature three or four goals across England’s domestic leagues.
If all six predictions are correct, winners are rewarded with £200 of free bets, while a series of “easy-trigger” consolation prizes are also up for grabs.
Liam Barbour, head of customer product at William Hill, said SportCaller gameplay had helped to enhance brand loyalty and increase digital dwell-time with punters.
“It’s fantastic to broaden our ongoing collaboration with SportCaller and get back to free-to-play on football, sportsbook’s perennial revenue-driver,” said Barbour.
“We took our time developing Free Or 4, working in tandem with numerous focus groups, customer research and testing so that we could establish a straightforward concept where intuitive playability instantly resonated with our client-base.”
Free Or 4 is a weekly game and represents William Hill’s first return to football F2P with SportCaller since its Football21 game in 2018 offered a £10,000 jackpot each week.
According to SportCaller, Free Or 4 signals an important switch in F2P focus, moving away from low-probability prize pots as a means of mass-market acquisition to a greater level of sophistication and appeal via attainable prizes to improve retention rates.
SportCaller MD Cillian Barry said: “Flexibility in the ideation and deployment of F2P games came to the fore during the sporting shutdown, but we’re seeing that trend extend in sync with the new normal.
“William Hill understand these shifting sands of engagement, so it was a great experience to work alongside their dedicated team, coupled with some illuminating focus-group feedback, to create a game with simplicity, universal appeal and a core retention mechanic at its heart,” he added.