The third edition of SBC Summit North America’s First Pitch competition was a packed house at The Meadowlands as the industry gathered to see what the best and brightest new ideas for sports betting were.
Podcast host Jesse Learmonth hosted while the following panel of judges asked questions of the contestants before eventually picking Scrimmage as the winner:
Adam Krejcik (Principal Eilers & Krejcik Gaming, LLC)
Lloyd Danzig (Managing Partner, Sharp Alpha Advisors)
Clark Smith (Director, NJEDA)
Melissa Blau (CEO, iGaming Capital)
Ryan Faber (Founder & CEO, Flatiron)
Scrimmage co-founder and co-CEO Dan Taren presented on behalf of Scrimmage, which he said is a bespoke customer loyalty offering for operators rooted in gamification.
“I’ve really enjoyed the talk about gamification here at the conference,” Taren said. “It’s pretty clear to me that many of us share in my belief that gamification will be one of the leading drivers of growth in the global betting markets.”
“The way we think of gamification at Scrimmage is this: gamification is taking inspiration from video games, on how to design a product with core human motivations as the driver of each feature. Gamification is not just taking aspects from video games that young people play, putting it on a product, and expecting it to result in retention,” he added.
As Taren then explained, the cash rewards users can earn playing these Scrimmage challenges have already proven to be effective. He noted that DraftKings customers that sync with Scrimmage bet ten times more often than without, while at FanDuel that number was six times. On average, customers would increase usage sixfold after syncing with Scrimmage.
When asked why there was so much variance across operators, Taren said it could be based on the users, but also suggested that certain types of quests may have been more appealing. However, he did admit there was probably more research to be done in order to fully understand the disparity.
The company earns money not from the operators but from the customers who choose to redeem their rewards points back into the Scrimmage game. Taren said that, while customers have the ability to redeem rewards for cash, he and the Scrimmage team are confident that, like video games, users will spend the money back into the app instead of cashing out.
The lack of upfront costs to the operators themselves was one of Taren’s biggest selling points, as he mentioned how this gives smaller opportunities for DFS sites like Prize Picks the ability to augment retention without having to spend a tremendous amount of money upfront.
This selling point certainly landed with the judges, who unanimously name Scrimmage the First Pitch winner. As part of the prize, the company earns a variety of prizes including an Eilers & Krejcik Gaming subscription, advertising here on SBC Americas, web design from Vegas Kings, digital marketing from Receptional, and investment and advisory help from Discerning Capital.
