How free-to-play games can ramp up retention for the World Cup and beyond
SportCaller MD Cillian Barry looks at the rise of free-to-play games and explains how best to implement them to confront many pressing challenges for operators
ESPN may be an international sports broadcaster, but the US network has definitively discovered this month it doesn’t necessarily need to acquire costly TV rights in order to engage with millions of fans and viewers. College basketball may not make a big ripple on this side of the pond, but the NCAA’s March Madness is a perennial fan favourite stateside, and ESPN’s NCAA Tournament Predictor on the event garnered a staggering 17.3 million entries. Not too shabby for a free-to-play contest which asked players to predict the incredibly unlikely – in this case, the outcome of every match in this high-octane 68-team brawl.
The fact that not a single player made it through to the second round of an impenetrable bracket (which featured shocks galore and saw ESPN launch a consolation “Second Chance” $5,000 game) is something of a moot point. Whichever way you dice the data, it simply shows what a free-to-play sports game can do for digital fan engagement and connectivity. If you get the variables right, of course.
Closer to home, Sky Bet have been unveiling some big numbers of their own during the first half of their financial year, with group revenues of £339m up 47% on 2016/17 and EBITDA up a whopping 92% to £118m. This is, in large part, down to their product innovation and also a dedicated team at all levels who execute to the highest standard and work well with suppliers. Their suite of free-to-play games have played an important part in their growth story over the last ten years as they’ve successfully made these a central part of their product portfolio and used them as a strategic driver for acquisition and retention.
At SportCaller, over the last eight years, we have worked with the likes of Paddy Power Betfair, William Hill, Sky Bet, Channel 4, ITV, Sportsbet, TVG and Ladbrokes Coral across Europe, the US and Australia and have learned a few things. There is now a broad recognition in the industry that free-to-play has an important role in engagement via social channels, acquisition, cross-sell and retention and our client case studies support these points. These new recruits also match up to the industry’s general wisdom that its key target is now the mass-market, low-value punter who enjoys a few bets at the weekend.
So what are the key considerations with any free-to-play game? Firstly, you need to keep the format simple, ideally with a market that can be easily linked to an accumulator bet or a bet builder prompt. Secondly, it is worth taking the time for comprehensive client integration so that there is a single sign-in, with unified live odds and deep linking, ensuring a seamless user journey from game to real bet. Thirdly, don’t underestimate how important CRM is, whether that means the old reliable email or push notifications, for enhancing repeat-play levels, not to mention the conversion from new to funded accounts.
Two of the KPIs we pay closest attention to are the conversion rate from free play to a click on a live price or bet prompt, and the percentage of people returning each week to play. On the former, it varies by sport, but the average we see is now 7% with an average bet stake of £11.50. On the latter, we see 30% coming back to play each week, and post-World Cup our focus with our clients will centre around how we retain and engage the new customers from the end of World Cup into the 2018/19 season. The combination and optimisation of these numbers means that the client is seeing both a higher return and value from customers playing the game than those that are not.
While deeper user engagement in an increasingly regulated marketplace (just take the likely repeal of PASPA in the states) endures as the global battlefield for operators, FTP sports contests provide a simple stepping stone from fantasy bets to their real-world equivalents, without the need for getting caught up in a regulatory scrap. Anything for a quiet life.
Cillian Barry is MD and co-founder of SportCaller, the free-to-play game platform which allows fans to connect and compete across a variety of sports.