The kind of stats-led sports engagement that has flourished in the US has gradually made its way to British shores, and key players in the betting industry like Ladbrokes have taken note.
Entain, the LSE firm behind Ladbrokes, has launched its own spin on the fantasy sports app, Seven, which has subsequently been partnered with the bookmaker, one of its two biggest UK sportsbook brands alongside Coral.
Seven was developed by Entain’s sports technology and modelling division, Angstrom, a London-headquartered business which has mostly focused on US sports up to this point.
The firm was acquired by Entain in 2023, and quickly put to work in improving the US sports modelling and trading capabilities of BetMGM, the company’s joint venture with US partner MGM Resorts International.
“We saw there was a massive gap a couple of years ago when the US industry was still in its relative infancy, around pricing and offering of products to customers, especially in the player prop space,” said Ross Jarvis, Angstrom’s Director of Strategy, on the iGaming Daily podcast this week.
“Probably ahead of Europe, US sports and media has always been very player and superstar-focused and have been driven by proliferation of stats on TV broadcasts forever, all the way down to side bets made by viewers.”
Sportspeople have always been celebrities, dating back to the early days of professional athletics. Every decade has seen its stars – Muhammad Ali in the 1970s, Maradona in the 1980s, Michael Jordan in the 1990s, David Beckham in the 2000s, to name a few examples.
The game changed in the 2010s and 2020s with the growing influence of social media, however. Athletes now rack up hundreds of millions of followers, like Cristiano Ronaldo (700 million on Instagram), Lionel Messi (500 million), Neymar Jr (over 200 million) and Kylian Mbappé (over 130 million).
Social media and digitisation mean sports fans are closer to athletes than ever before.
The goalposts of accessibility have been shifted, and while people are still just as loyal to their clubs and countries as ever, following certain players is a big motivating factor behind sports fandom.
Sports fandom’s love of star players can be seen in the popularity of fantasy sports, none other than the sector Entain and Angstrom took inspiration from with the development of Seven. Some 13 million people play Fantasy Premier League (FPL) as of 2025/26.
“Seven as an opportunity when it came up was just gold dust, especially for me who is an absolute huge fantasy football nerd, as well as working in this industry,” said Jarvis.
“With Seven, we wanted to blur those boundaries between a real money gaming free to play app, but having the quality and engagement value of everyone’s favourite fantasy apps, whether that’s Club or FPL.”
Seven’s football fantasy
Free to play games are nothing new in the betting industry, and football is a particular area of focus for these games. Sky Bet and bet365 have both stamped their names in the free-to-play space with the Super 6 and 6 Scores Challenge games respectively.
The links between fantasy football and betting are also well established.
This is particularly the case in the US, where market leaders FanDuel (Flutter Entertainment) and DraftKings started off as daily fantasy sports (DFS) platforms before transitioning to wagering after the 2018 repeal of PASPA.
Angstrom’s goal, Jarvis tells iGaming Daily, was to combine the “rich endeavour” of fantasy football, often a very time consuming hobby, with the “much more transactional” and less time consuming model of the typical free-to-play football game.
“For most people, having two full-time jobs is one job too many,” Jarvis remarked.
The Seven game is played by picking a new squad of seven players each week. Unlike the FPL, each week comes with a blank canvas, you don’t have the same team you had the week prior.
Players must choose seven forwards and four from any other position. In that weekend’s fixtures, the chosen player must score the first and last goal. If they score the goal in the middle of a game, like the second in a 2-1 defeat for example, then they don’t win.
“We hated that feeling [that you get] In the gambling industry of putting a bet builder on, the World Cup being a great example, of let’s say England to win 2-0, and all your bets are based around that.
“You’ve also got Kane to score. You’ve also got over 2.5 goals, etc, but as soon as Norway scored that opener, you’re dead. The rest of the game has 75 minutes, 100 minutes if it goes to extra time, that excitement’s completely gone.
“One of our non-negotiables from the start was we want someone who’s playing Seven to have a degree of interest through to the 90th minute, or with VAR what’s more likely the 100th minute.”
On the face of it, Entain’s launch of Seven is just another example of a major betting company trying its hand at launching a new app, brand and product, but it may speak a lot more to the circumstances the industry faces in 2026.
Entain has openly stated that it created Seven after seeing the popularity of player-specific markets during the World Cup. This change in customer behaviour is one consideration.
But it may also reflect the competitiveness of the market, particularly the UK, which hosts thousands of brands, each eager to get their sportsbook on top.
Finding new ways to engage customers, such as through fantasy football-esque products, could give a firm the competitive edge, especially in a market subject to a heavy new tax regime.
And last but not least, it speaks volumes to the reason Entain acquired Angstrom in the first place back in 2023 – to bring technological capabilities like sports modelling and trading fully in-house, something other major firms are doing as well, like LeoVegas, which recently launched its Tiger sportsbook in the UK.
“You’re always going to have those football fans who are, whether it’s Arsenal or Man U, obsessed,” Jarvis summarised Angstrom and Entain’s goal with Seven.
“When you put out a good football product for those guys, they’re going to lap it up. But I think the real opportunity and the untapped audience is those guys for whom football is not their life, their absolute soul, their passion, it’s just one of those aspects they really enjoy.
“They’re football fans, but they don’t let their lives be shaped by it. And for those guys, who want to be able to have a conversation in the pub with their mates about which teams are in form, which managers need to be sacked, what would be the game that actually appeals to them?”
