Bet365 Launches UK Fantasy Football Offering
Bet365 has launched a brand new fantasy football tournament ahead of the Premier League start. Customers can win real money on daily and season-long games. The Scout Gaming Group-powered games are available on both desktop and mobile platforms.
Bet365 Launches UK DFS Offering © Pixabay.
Stoke-on-Trent-based operator bet365 has launched a fantasy sports competition that offers cash prizes to players ahead of the new Premier League campaign starting on Friday.
The new product, which includes season-long and daily options, is a result of a deal struck six months ago with Scout Gaming Group, a B2B Fantasy Sports and betting provider. The agreement with bet365 is the largest in the company’s nine-year history.
Customers using the bet365 app will see a new ‘Fantasy Sports’ tab, which the company has placed in a prominent position, receiving top billing alongside soccer, racing, greyhounds and tennis categories.
The cost to enter the season-long tournament is set at £4.25. Over 3,000 teams have entered, with the prize pot above £20,000. However, with two days remaining until the first game of the season (Crystal Palace v Arsenal on Friday night), the prize pot is likely to increase.
Bet365’s rake on an entry to the season-long tournament is 72p which equates to 20%. The remaining 80% goes to the prize pot. The company have confirmed that the overall winner when the season ends on Saturday 6 May will receive 10% of the total prize pot. In addition, cash prizes will be awarded to any customer whose teams finish 1st – 635th.
Bet365 is also offering customers a chance to play with higher stakes. Alongside a game with a buy-in of £42.50 (292 entrants so far), there is a ‘High Roller’ version of the game, which costs £467.50 to enter. However, at the time of writing, take-up for the more expensive version has been low, with 13 entrants to date.
As well as the ‘Fantasy Football’ game, bet365 will be offering the format in other sports such as US sports such as American football, baseball, basketball and hockey. Other sports that are popular with UK audiences, such as tennis, will also have ‘fantasy’ games based on them.
Golf’s Wyndham Championship, which runs from August 3-7, 2022, in North Carolina, already has an active fantasy competition which customers can enter. They have an initial budget of £100m to spend on players who earn points based on their on-field performances.
Despite the Premier League’s own Fantasy Football offering, which attracts over nine million players each season, UK audiences have so far not been keen on daily fantasy sports (DFS). However, stateside fantasy sports offerings are big business. In 2012, $5.3bn was wagered on DFS offerings. This figure has skyrocketed to $8.86bn in 2022.
DraftKings is the leading operator in America, and they launched a DFS product in the UK in mid-February 2016, but despite running for more than six years, it has not attracted much interest.
DraftKings’ biggest rival, FanDuel, also launched a UK-focused DFS product but closed it within a year, stating a desire to concentrate on its primary market.
However, as bet365 are the UK’s biggest bookmaker, the company believe its user base is large enough for the product to work. The group reported revenue of £2.79 billion for 2020/21, up from the £2.76 billion it reported the year before.
