The Betfair veteran discusses why he feels his new venture RocketPlay has cracked the code for socialising sports betting and explains the company’s Zynga partnership.
Social Casino Intelligence (SCi): What is your background, and how did you come to be involved with RocketPlay?
Matthew Cullen (MC): I came from Betfair USA, where I worked for two years running business development and strategy before leaving last autumn. RocketPlay was founded in 2008 and started out as Gamingo, which operated the social network for soccer fans called Footbo.com. We ran that business up until last spring. About two years ago, we decided to move to developing fantasy sports cash games, and started operating those on both a B2C and B2B level, signing deals with a number of US newspapers and media companies. I’ve known the RocketPlay’s founder and CEO Mani Honigstein for a few years now. We met when Betfair was looking to license fantasy sports products, kept in touch, and I eventually joined the business full time in January this year. We’re a UK-registered company with subsidiaries in San Francisco, and Tel Aviv, and have a team made up of Betfair, 888.com, bwin.party and Kabam veterans – there’s 21 people in total; 5 in San Fran, and 16 in Tel Aviv.
SCi: Why did you decide to partner with Zynga for the launch of Sports Casino?
MC: There are two primary reasons that we decided to enter into a partnership with Zynga – reach and live services experience. First, we needed to figure out how to bring the game to market given that customer acquisition in the mobile-social category is so competitive. And second, while we have good live game experience on the team, you can’t beat a partner like Zynga when it comes to best practices around retention, social/viral, and monetization. When we looked at our options the Zynga deal represented the best value for us – it offered the prospect of targeting their 300 million monthly active users and specifi cally poker players, who we feel transition well to sports betting. And they’re interested in working with us on analysing and driving key metrics for the game. I can’t reveal any of the terms of the agreement, other than that it’s a revenue share deal, which we consider to be very fair. We’re all incentivised to make sure the business performs well.
SCi: Many have struggled to socialise sports betting – why do you feel RocketPlay can succeed where others have failed?
MC: Coming from fantasy sports helped, as we are experienced in looking for different ways to manipulate and display data to engage users, and coming from real money sports betting we knew we needed to try and replicate the in-play experience. The offerings out there didn’t offer dynamic elements, whereas we have put a compelling and captivating game layer on top of a robust platform, hence why we’re confi dent of success. Additionally, we’re making a concerted effort to address the inherent down time in sports betting – we’re tied to live events, of course – by offering users a wide array of side games like slots, video poker and blackjack. Players can easily toggle between various games while they’re betting on sports. And finally, as mentioned previously, we think our partnership with Zynga gives us a leg up on competitors.
SCi: You mentioned that you have a goal of moving into regulated markets. With a number of egaming veterans in your team, is real-money inevitable?
MC: If we went into real money I think initially we’d be focused on Facebook. We’re encouraged by the UK, especially after Gamesys launched a real-money bingo offering on the platform, which was something we didn’t expect to happen so suddenly. And given that most UK operators are sports-led, we believe they’re more likely to look to extend their current sports betting operations on these social platforms when the opportunity presents itself.
SCi: Are you looking to branch out into mobile development?
MC: We are already working on the mobile offering for both iOS and Android, so we’re looking to launch those offerings at the beginning of November. Because of the unique second-screen experience Sports Casino delivers, we feel it’s perfect for mobile and are quite excited about prospects there.