Interactive
FREE-TO-PLAY GAMES AND LOTTERIES SPORTCALLER
SportCaller: Harnessing FTP and Lottery synergies
Cillian Barry, Co-founder and Managing Director at SportCaller, explains the natural synergies between lotteries and free-to-play games and assesses a future of mutually beneficial growth between the two verticals.
Cillian Barry, Co-founder, MD, SportCaller
To what extent players were aware of the odds they had to overcome, or even cared, is moot. But one question persisted: how long would recreational players enjoy playing competitions where nobody wins, even if those games are free-to-play?
P66 NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE / MARKET DATA
Of all the established gaming verticals, lotteries have long represented the acceptable face of gambling. Typically, many more people play regularly for small stakes. It matters not that probabilistically speaking they are playing the most unlikely odds on the circuit. Instead, the comparative moderation of small-stakes-big- win scenarios gives credence to people’s dare-to-dream sensibilities within an ostensible framework of ‘harmless fun’ entertainment.
In a similar fashion, Free-to-Play (FTP) broke out into the sector by employing jackpots as a milestone means of acquisition and retention. Not unlike the odds of a Saturday long-list accumulator, engaging games were created around predicting the winners of a televised horse racing card, the outcome of a tournament bracket (say, football’s World Cup or college basketball’s March Madness), or asking players to correctly answer a series of 20 questions.
Of course, despite an avalanche of entries, many of the jackpots were never won, with the odds stacked hugely against those playing them. To what extent players were aware of the odds they had to overcome, or even cared, is moot. But one question persisted: how long would recreational
players enjoy playing competitions where nobody wins, even if those games are free-to- play?
Well, much like the lottery itself, it seems that FTP jackpots provide some of the gaming industry’s most resilient perennials for enduring appeal with customers. Te promise of a better tomorrow, framed around your favourite sports or media events, is a powerful device.
At SportCaller, the past 12 months has witnessed a period in which FTP has evolved as a genre, staking its claim to being recognised as an industry vertical in its own right. Tis new billing as a pillar product has been demonstrated by our clients’ progressively varied use of FTP games in the past year.
Te longstanding use of jackpots as a mass- market acquisition tool has rapidly evolved to a much greater level of sophistication in smaller attainable prizes as a reliable method of retention, and then on to more recent event- related trivia games (running off deep wells of historical data and new tech). Tis only elevated engagement even in the pandemic-induced hiatus for live sport.
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