SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Just five months on from its latest instalment, and we’re ready to return to Augusta National for the 85th edition of The Masters.
Despite the limited number of patrons at this year’s tournament, a return to its traditional April placement will be a welcome change from the drizzly one-off (hopefully) November edition, as world No.1 Dustin Johnson attempts to become just the fourth player in history to successfully defend the Masters title, and don the Green Jacket once again.
At Fitzdares, the excitement is building and one way in which the luxury bookmaker is driving engagement is through its Fantasy Masters game.
Created by Harry Collins, former Chief Marketing Officer at Fitzdares and founder of Network Gaming, the fantasy game aims to be ‘the best Masters game bar none’
“We created Fantasy Masters in 2013 as a way to engage our audience at golf’s biggest tournament, and use it as a customer acquisition too,” Collins told SBC.
“We emailed our database and asked them to invite their friends, rewarding them with a free team if they brought 3 friends. This helped us find new like-for-like customers and also meant those players enjoyed the experience of the game much more.”
So how do you play? The game takes a two tier format: a £100 game and a £10 game. In both tiers, punters can pick five golfers from the tournament and one reserve to create a team.
Players can then compete to win a share of the ‘pool’ of money generated by the total entry fees – with scores calculated by the total prize money that their team wins
The player which finishes at the top of the leaderboard walks away with 40% of the prize pool, while those that finish 2nd, 3rd and 4th win 10%, 8% and 5% respectively.
When pressed on why the Fantasy Masters will play a key role in engaging bettors watching the tournament from the comfort of their sofas, Collins explained that the game has been ‘complementary’ to Fitzdares’ book so far and helped drive engagement among sports fans.
But while many of us are still longing to watch sports with our friends, Collins highlighted that the social aspect of Fitzdares Masters can help foster a sense of camaraderie among players who are able to enjoy the experience together.
He said: “Our live leaderboard makes the event – is all about playing with and against your friends. People often share teams, making use of our buy four, get one team free. So they spend the four days enjoying the experience together, or arguing about who left out the winning player!
“It does also help that we have some famous sports people and celebrities who happily share their names on the leaderboard.”
