With the Premier League season up and running, attention among some football fans turns to free-to-play games. Whether it’s assembling the most cost-efficient squad for another Fantasy Premier League (FPL) season or dabbling in SkyBet’s Super 6 score prediction offering, the appetite for free-to-play products to accompany a football weekend is as strong as ever.
Enter Seven, the first standalone B2C offering from Angstrom since the sports modelling and data analytics firm was acquired by Entain for £203m in 2023 to boost BetMGM’s player props and same game parlay (SGP) offerings.
The app requires players to pick a squad of seven players – three forwards and four from other positions – each Premier League game week, with the goal being to correctly select the first or last goalscorer in a match.
Successfully pick seven players to start or finish the goalscoring and you scoop the £100,000 weekly jackpot. However, there are prizes on offer for at least three correct picks, including free bets and cash rewards, with winnings from the Seven app also accessible directly through Entain brand Ladbrokes.
Despite strong competition in the free-to-play market, Angstrom’s director of strategy, Ross Jarvis, is confident Seven, which took 18 months to create, won’t be a flash in the pan.
EGR: What was the inspiration behind Seven?
Ross Jarvis (RJ): We looked at the landscape of free-to-play games out there and how gambling apps and businesses in general appeal to that slightly younger demographic; predominantly people in their 20s who have grown up with games like FIFA and other really cool interactive games where you’re authentically inside that sports and football culture.
We came to the conclusion it’s quite a leap from there to a standard sports betting operator, so we wondered whether there was something which could be created that tailors to this audience a bit more as they start to evolve into a recreational sports bettor over time.
Then we looked around the free-to-play universe within the gambling space and adjacent areas. One of our main inspirations, which we thought of as competition and a litmus test for how we wanted to challenge and do something different, was Fantasy Premier League (FPL), which has been incredibly successful.
The product has 30 million annual players, but by Christmas you’ve got a massive churn rate. I’m a huge FPL nerd but to do well you almost need to do it as a full-time job. Millions of people love the game, including myself, but it is a real investment. Then, on the other side of the scale, you’ve got traditional free-to-play games which sit within a gambling operator. There are some good ones out there, but a lot of the time they can be pretty transactional, and you don’t really get that strategic or emotional hit.
With Seven, we tried really hard to put ourselves in the middle of those two. We didn’t want a game that was as strategic as FPL, but we didn’t want a lottery game either. We wanted just enough strategy in the middle so that someone who takes their football quite seriously can get that five or 10 minutes of extra enjoyment heading into a weekend.
EGR: Entain has previously highlighted a shift in betting interests towards player markets, particularly during the World Cup. What is driving this?
RJ: If you think about US sports, they built around and grew with superstar culture – think Michael Jordan in the NBA or Dan Marino in the NFL. These players are bigger than the sport, bigger than life, and I think that has naturally translated into sports betting.
When it regulated in the US, player props were understood straight away. Player-based stats and thinking about the MVP [Most Valuable Player] award, as opposed to just who wins a championship, is really baked into that culture. Over time, the actual data and ability to surface interesting products to the user has caught up with that interest. That culture is coming over from the States and into the UK and Europe as well.
EGR: Are you concerned about the product not standing out in a saturated free-to-play market?
RJ: Seven isn’t meant to be a one-season wonder – this is designed to be a mainstay of the Entain portfolio. There are obviously lots of competitors out there that will have better name recognition, and already be established on people’s phones for many years.
We’ve never called this a ‘product’. We’ve deliberately set out to build something which is its own unique brand. We are very consciously trying to be a challenger to what is out there in the market at the moment. I’d be naive to say there isn’t a commercial aspect – we want to eventually convert some players through to Ladbrokes via that funnel – but our main goal has always been to deliver the best possible offering to customers. If we get that right, the rest of it should take care of itself.
EGR: It’s approaching three years since Entain completed the acquisition of Angstrom. How has the relationship fared so far?
RJ: It’s been great, and I can’t speak highly enough of Entain in the sense that one of the greatest things we’ve had over the last three years is the ability to crack on with things ourselves. Obviously, we align our priorities at the start of each year, but we have one of the most talented teams I’ve ever worked with at Angstrom. I think Entain knows that and trusts us to get on with delivering the job.
This year we’ll hit a major milestone when the new NHL season kicks off as we will have a significant product live with BetMGM for the top six sports in the US – NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB and the two college sports [American football and basketball] – before the end of the year. That covers SGP, pre-match, in play and all manner of player props as well.
When we were purchased, we were very active in NFL and MLB, but a lot of sports were still in their early stages. It goes to show we’ve really ramped up in a relatively short period of three years.
EGR: How has Angstrom embraced the opportunity to work across Entain’s sports betting brands?
RJ: One of the cool things about working with such great people at Ladbrokes is it’s very much a collaboration. One thing we’re working on right now with Ladbrokes is building a darts model from the ground up. What we want to have in place at some point in 2027 is what we define as the absolute best darts product in the UK market.
Darts is never going to be the next football but for one month a year [over Christmas] it’s probably the premium sporting event in the UK, and we felt there needed to be a product which fits that standard. That’s just one micro example of how at Angstrom we always try and be in the conversation, and we like to think we have experience and a voice to help solve unique problems which Entain can’t always get to.
EGR: How has Entain changed since your first spell working with the operator in 2019?
RJ: In a previous world, there were less headwinds to contend with. Now, every operator is adjusting to get around issues such as the increase in taxation in the UK and so on. It’s different circumstances, but I do think the same challenges and opportunities are still there. The gambling industry in the UK and beyond is still huge. It’s not going away, and there’s still a massive opportunity to give even more new innovative products to customers as well.
EGR: How much further can the Angstrom product develop to compete with the sports betting market leaders in the US?
RJ: There’s still a lot we can do. Angstrom’s DNA is modelling and creating interesting markets and pricing those markets as accurately as possible. We can always make that side better via growth in the US. An exciting dimension for us, which we’re dipping our toes into, is looking at what other new sports are on the horizon because the US market changes quickly.
Two and a half years ago, before [Indiana Fever guard] Caitlin Clark emerged, no one was really talking about WNBA, and now it’s one of the most trending topics on X every day. UFC is always pretty visible, and golf is also part of the conversation. We’re always looking at what could be the next exciting sport for Angstrom.
We have such a talented team of real industry veterans and we can do a whole spectrum of things. Pricing is in our DNA but there’s a whole lot we can do in the risk management space as well. We’re making a lot of moves about how we shore up that side of things, so not only can BetMGM benefit but the Entain platform globally as well.
The post Angstrom strategy director on making Seven a “mainstay of the Entain portfolio” first appeared on EGR Intel.
Self-confessed fantasy football “nerd” Ross Jarvis explains why the free-to-play app won’t be a “one-season wonder” and how the team set out to “build something which is its own unique brand”
The post Angstrom strategy director on making Seven a “mainstay of the Entain portfolio” first appeared on EGR Intel.