Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/855205
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 30 JULY 2017 Gaming XI Specialising in football is the key to successful fantasy sports in Europe VALÉRY BOLLIER DAILY Fantasy Sports (DFS) being an American concept means most DFS games are currently based on US domes- tic sports, such as American football, basketball, baseball, ice hockey and so on. It is therefore necessary for any European iGaming operators hoping to integrate a DFS product with their platform to make a strategic decision regarding which sports to integrate. Naturally, football is the most logical pick because it is the only real mass-mar- ket sport in Europe. With football repre- senting 65-70% of the bets on sports, the cross selling opportunities are massive. Moreover, when it comes to football clubs, Europe stands comfortably as the epicentre of the world with some of the best Brazilians, Koreans, Cameroonians and Australians playing in European teams. Offering a DFS game on European football means expanding the market across the entire globe. Thus, offering a Daily Fantasy Football game clearly seems like the wise move. Should operators, however, also pick ''smaller'' sports? Tennis is by far the second most popu- lar sport in Europe with 10-15% of the European bets, however, regrettably, the specific format of this sport only allows what is referred to as a ''bracket chal- lenge'' DFS, which is far less appealing to customers and therefore remains solely a niche market. Operators hoping to offer a variety of sports will therefore need to offer as many small sports as possible, while acknowledging that if each of these is capable of contributing at least a moder- ately adequate level of interest and profit, then combining these sports will almost certainly generate an interesting level. This strategy, known as the ''long tail'', has proven to be largely efficient; however it is only so for a market that has successfully reached a certain level of maturity. The reason for this is evident; with a figurative massive cake on the table, as is the case with new markets, and with the competitive intensity still being low, it seems ill-advised to spend time and money hunting for mere crumbs on the floor. It is not the ideal strategy since not only will you end up with less cake for yourself, but the pieces that could have actually been yours will be consumed by your competitors. The end result will then only be the reduction of your own market shares. In Europe, DFS is still in the very early phases of its development. At this mo- ment in time, adopting this strategy must therefore be acknowledged as a counter- productive move for operators. When it comes to social games such as DFS, this strategy is even less beneficial at an early phase, since social games can be looked at as a dance floor; no one wants to be the first one to step forward and dance but also, the more people there are dancing, the better. The notion of "critical mass" is crucial and is clear in the benefits it offers; as opposed to scattering your customers in different directions towards a variety of games, and instilling a sense of dissatis- faction and disloyalty, a single big suc- cessful dance floor should be presented instead. Once the success of your first dance floor has been secured, it would then be advisable to consider opening another one. Once your football DFS product has proven to be successful, you will need to choose whether or not to open up any other sports, but not a moment before then. An operator recently expressed that since DraftKings is offering American sports to its European customers, it would be logical to do the same thing. DraftKings is a pure player in DFS as opposed to a multi iGaming platform. When specialising in only one kind of game, the strategy should be to form bridges between the various sports being offered, which is the only thing that really can be done. However, when various types of games are being offered, it is far more efficient to develop bridges between one's most successful games and the new ones. To begin with, adopting a DFS solution offering multiple sports may seem like the safest, most efficient strategy. How- ever, now that the counterproductive im- pact of a long tail strategy on a new social market has been acknowledged for the most part, it seems logical that specialis- ing in football during the next 18 to 24 months will prove to be the real benefi- cial strategy for any iGaming operator looking to adopt a DFS product. About the author Valéry Bollier has nine years of experi- ence in the media and online marketing and 13 years of experience in the iGaming industry. He is a shareholder and former CMO of ZEturf (20% of the French online horse racing market) and co-founder/CEO of Oulala, the first B2B fantasy football game based on European football. Oulala was awarded in 2016 best Daily Fantasy Football Game. He was also declared 'Tech ambassador of Malta' and 'iGam- ing Idol' in the category 'Data & Business Intelligence'. In 2017 he was elected the ''ICE prophet''. Building the world's #1 football community FANLEAGUE is a new ground breaking social sports betting concept headquartered in Malta, where you can challenge your friends in predicting predefined English football games and have a chance at winning the guaran- teed jackpot prize. The brand aims to create the first football social network where fans of the beautiful game can connect with their friends, benchmark their skills in compe- titions or play together in teams. And it's easy to play. Predict the outcome of 13 predefined English football games by select- ing "1" for home win, "X" for draw, or "2" for an away win. It's also possible to hedge your bets by selecting multiple outcomes. If you score 10 or better, you win. If you are alone with 13 cor- rect predictions, you win big. Grow your FanLeague 'tree' by inviting your friends and then compete for a separate Prize Pot if any of them turns out to be a real pundit. FanLeague considers itself truly social and wants to give back to the community by donating 10% of its turnover to youth football clubs. So start building your 'tree' and invite your friends before someone else does! FanLeague will go online in early August in time for the start of the season on August 12. If you would like to learn more about the concept, check out their website at www.fanleague.com.