What is Oddslife?
As life as a games developer so we make free to play games for the industry, for media partners and for operators, that they can use to achieve their business goals so that might be acquisition, that be retention and a real advantage is, we customize the games for the operators’ goals. We really understand what they’re trying to achieve and make sure that it’s going to achieve that objective for them.
How do you define gamification for betting industry?
Gamification is a tricky word, it’s a bit of a buzz word that’s been thrown around a lot. I would say gamification is using gaming elements outside of the gaming environment, in order to nudge your users to do some, a behaviour that you want them to do. So, what we do at [inaudible 00:40] is we build games. Mechanics of the game itself are not gamification, but the way we would use that to encourage users to take on a certain behaviour or to be retained longer, would be gamification if it’s implemented correctly.
Why is gamification such a complex discipline for bookmakers to undertake?
I think it’s tricky because the customers have a certain behaviour, a certain experience that they’re expecting already, and when you try to be gamification to that experience, you’re changing the experience for them and maybe in a way that they’re not so, so it’s not so favourable for them. If you really want to be making sports bets, you want to make sports bets, not be playing a game with things dazzling around your screen or whatever. Somebody who is attracted to that would probably go to a casino or something, a bit of a different experience. So it really needs to be, something that fits naturally with the sports book, that complements the experience and encourages that to get deeper into sports betting, rather than distracting and taking them out of the experience.
Who has Oddslife partnered with?
The most recent was this summer we worked at Bet First in Belgium and we developed a game for them for the world cup, it was a last man standing game. But again, it’s trying to understand the objectives of the client and really develop a game that works for them. This was a last man standing game with a variant that you could get a survivor kit, or multiple survivor kits to remain in the game if you’d been eliminated, and the mechanic was set up such that you could earn survivor kits by referring your friends to join the game. Now, their objective was acquisition in trying to get a lot of new customers to their sports book, and by encouraging that behaviour, referring your friends we had a viral element that got a lot of customers into our game and ultimately it can then be converted into customers.
What are your growth plans for 2019?
A lot of growth plans for 2019. We’ve been focusing a lot more on the B2B market, really trying to work with operators. Our focus on the US market now, as that starts to open up and a lot of states that won’t be legal for some time, but operators are going to want to get in and start to establish a customer base in that market before they’re able to offer it sports book, so we can give them games that give them a chance to start engaging with customers. Start to build up that relationship and then when they do open the sports book eventually, they have the customer base already built and they don’t have to be competing in what will then be a kind of market.
How much are you looking forward to Betting on Sports America 2019?
Absolutely, it’s going to be huge for us. I think the market’s got a lot of education over there, a lot of learning about what it is to be sports betting, that we have the experience over here that they don’t have in America and so for Oddslife it’s a chance to get in and show that we can be a part of educating customers. A lot of the American consumers won’t have the experience with all the different types of bets that you can make in a sports book. We can offer free to play games that mirror that sports book experience, it will help them to be educated, help them to learn sports betting and then eventually become real money betters in the long run.
