Interactive ODDSLIFE
creating a platform that is both diverse and infi- nitely scaleable. It comes down to how you ini- tially plan to build your platform, like building a game or an App. If you seek to make changes after 12 months, in effect seeking to retrofit a modular solution, then you will run into major difficulties. Our solution is modular from the outset, enabling us to add and remove different pieces without jeopardising the whole. It’s meant a lot of time and investment upfront, but it means that we can make every experience from country to country a uniquely different one. We can also offer access to Android, Facebook, iOS and a host of free resources from the Internet. We have loaded the costs of development on the creation of this scaleable and flexible solution as part of our busi- ness strategy, as the traditional costs of players acquisition have been removed from the equation. We don’t have to acquire users, so we focused instead on the development process, which enables us to modify and adapt to better service our media partners, who ultimately supply the users.”
“We have loaded the costs of
development on the creation of this scaleable and flexible
solution as part of our business
strategy, as the traditional costs of players acquisition have been removed from the equation.”
Oddslife is currently a 20 strong team, the majori- ty of which are based in the UK, with develop- ment and design teams based in Thailand. Established for over four years, the company pre- dominately spent its early years developing its software. The company is adamantly against out- sourcing, preferring to keep its skills in-house and having started small with a single media partner in Spain, MARCA, the network has begun to snowball as partners are now referring other potential partners to the network. Oddslife views its relationship with each media partner as not only crucial to supplying its user-base, but also as the expert in regulatory and legal matters within each jurisdiction. Oddslife supplies the platform and it’s the media partner that complies with the rules in that market, with Oddslife adapting the software accordingly rather than seeking to get into matters of compliance for each and every market the network enters.
What is time-consuming, however, is the offer to the player. Mr. Sojmark underlines that the com- mitment the team makes to individualise the offer to the player in each market is what distinguishes Oddslife’s offer. “We have to spend time on the concept,” he states. “This is not just a prediction game. We are building in story-lines, compelling moments in the sports. It is a world on its own. It
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is time-consuming and not a straightforward product, but rather a long term investment with each partner. As such, our partners look to estab- lish a 36-month commitment term with us in their country, so they don't have another local media partner competing against them from day one. They see the value in that and the fact that it would be impossible for an individual media part- ner to offer this to players by themselves. We supply the platform that enables them to under- stand their visitors and allows them to gather details about them and engage further with every user. Each tends to stay on the site for nine min- utes initially, which builds to 10 minutes for the second visit with a bounce rate around 20 per cent, which is fantastic for the provider.”
If you examine the model that Oddslife is creat- ing, it’s far removed from a traditional gaming site, and much closer to say Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin or Google+, in that it’s initial goal is the creation of a richly populated database, as opposed to seeking to quickly establish sustain- able revenues. Instead of growing revenues, Oddslife is seeking to establish a huge number of users and to keep building its user database in the social sector, while at the same time associating a lifetime value to each player for the future. If you look at the figures that Oddslife tracked during its trial period, it’s signing 10-20 times more users to its platform as opposed to a ‘real’ bookmaker. Social gaming operators also have much more
loyal players than traditional bookmaker sites, where the typical churn/acquisition process ($200-300 per player) is hugely costly, as opposed to the relatively easier route to re- engaging with customers and re-acquiring users through social gaming. Of course, Oddslife isn’t just looking to the bookmakers to monetise its network in future, but to advertisers and sponsors seeking to target its highly defined player-base as well as introducing a virtual currency tailored to each partner.
“We are taking a wide approach,” says Mr. Sojmark. “We are in talks in the US, speaking with potential media partners in Asia, and in the early development stages in Latin America. Every country is very different. Where real money gam- ing is regulated in one country and not in another country, the offer has to be tailored to be relevant in each market. Our focus right now is to establish new partnerships in new markets to expand the network. The tipping point will come when we have a global network linking together very localised individual networks that offer value to all parties. We are seeking the best possible way to localise the business. We are not setting up our own consumer brand, but establishing a player acquisition model with our partners having invested our resources and expertise in software development. We have an amazing platform, we now just need to seed it into global markets and encourage it to grow.”
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