Give with one hand and take away with the other
As more firms opt to go down the free-to-play acquisition route, Fintan Costello of Revenue Engineers asks which products are best placed to lure the punters?
I’ve been a massive fan of the Sky Bet Super 6 game for years. It’s a simple product, extremely well executed and, more importantly, it appears to deliver. That’s why this season it was great to finally see the launch of free-to-play games from other operators such as Paddy Power, BetVictor and Colossus Bets.
Each company has put their own stamp on a free-to-play game with a large prize. Paddy Power has gone with predict ‘eight anytime goal scorers’ from eight fixtures to win £250,000.
In their ‘FreePlay6’, Colossus Bets offers to pick six correct scores to win £500,000 and get a chance to win another £500,000 the following week. Staying on brand you also have the option of fractional cash-outs depending on the performance of your pick. This game is also available to Colossus Bets B2B partners such as Betfair.
BetVictor, on the back of the successful Euro 2016 campaign, has launched ‘Golden Goal’ for the regular season where players pick the first goal scorer and minute in a chosen game to win £125,000. They can earn extra picks the more they wager on site.
Monitoring success
All three brands have launched a credible alternative to Super 6; the key question is: will they be as successful? In my view, not even close.
While all three brands have focused on a free-to-play prediction game with a larger jackpot, they have all managed to miss the key feature of mass media integration.
Super 6 has a very tight integration with Sky Sports: not only does the game sit on the Sky Sports website, but it has a large amount of dedicated airtime and is fronted by Sky Sports pundits. This changes the nature and tone of the product from a gambling game to something much lighter and more accessible to a non-betting audience. To me this is a huge strategic advantage that Sky Bet has with their game.
So what could Paddy Power, Colossus Bets, BetVictor and others do to compete? The obvious answer is to knock down the door at BT Sport and agree to a long-term tie-up similar to what Super 6 has with Sky Sports. Alternative solutions are to tie in with other media owners such as newspaper groups, sports news networks or fantasy football websites. This could, with the right partners, over time get them close to Super 6.
To really exceed Super 6’s performance the game mechanics and prize need to be at the ‘DUH’ level, this is when a potential player learns how the game works they say ‘DUH’ of course I have to play every week.
Future improvements
When we look at Paddy Power, making eight selections ‘seems’ worse than having to pick six correct scores, particularly given the prize is the same for both games. Colossus appears to offer a £1m prize, however in the small print it’s actually £500,000 with a chance to win an extra £500,000. While still better value than Super 6, the headline is slightly misleading.
The BetVictor Golden Goal offers the simplest option of game play and I believe if they integrated with the InstaBet App they could really take this game places.
Despite my negativity, the real winner here are the punters who now have a raft of free weekly games that offer a life changing prize, the ultimate free bet!