In a recent interview with G3's Will Bolton , our CEO and Founder, Steve Rogers, discussed the imminent launch of Playbook Fusion's debut title, Playbook Football. 

Watch here or read below

Playbook Football is generating a lot of buzz ahead of its launch. Can you share the inspiration behind the game and what sets it apart from other football-themed iGaming products?

Playbook Football is our first title, and the inspiration came from looking at how we could combine video games, particularly sports-themed video games like FIFA, Madden, and NBA 2K, with virtual sports into an RNG-derived gambling game. Ultimately, how do you marry the skill, the team building and the persistence of the video games industry with the gambling industry? We're now on the cusp of launch, which is exciting.

 

What can we expect from the upcoming demo? Will it be open to the public, select partners, or both?

We're open about it because we've talked about the game being in development for a while. We demoed it at ICE for the first time, which was quite restricted, but now we're going to put the game on our website, so essentially anyone can go on there and play the game in full demo mode. Operators will be able to experience the game and understand it a bit more because it's only really when you play something yourself that you get under the skin of how it works and why it's special.

 

How are you planning to gather feedback from the demo to iterate before full launch?

Over the past three months we've had a broad range of player feedback. For us, it's not just about whether the operators like it, understand the concept and how it fits with their other products; It's also about whether players will enjoy it. We've had benefit of getting the game in the hands of user groups where potential punters have been able to play the game and give feedback about all manner of things. Is it too complicated? Is it too easy? Is the UI intuitive?

In general, the feedback has been good. It has been helpful to receive comments from third parties because we're so immersed in the development of the game that sometimes it takes someone external to identify potential issues. The player research and the operator feedback has informed the development of the game and operators are keen to see how this hybrid product is going to perform alongside the other verticals they have.

 

How confident are you that Playbook Football will be a success?

There's never a guarantee, but we've put ourselves firmly behind one sport with Playbook FootballÔ. I know from my experience in virtual sports that football is always the highest performing product and we made an easy choice early on that football is our chosen sport. We have since iterated and are now on version 60 of the game.

We launched Playbook Fusion in June 2025 and began development on Playbook Football in September. I'm as confident as I can be that this game is going to work from a technical and playability perspective. We're already thinking about version 1.1 and 1.2 in advance and how the roadmap looks for further iterations.

 

What have been the major changes across these iterations?

It's only around halfway through the development cycle that you start to get all the components of the game working in conjunction with each other. Then the focus is around how you play the game, ensuring the game logic is correct, and so on. The last 10-15 per cent is all about asking if the game feels right.

 

What’s the marketing and launch roadmap for Playbook Football post-demo?

The post-launch roadmap is relatively modest. There have been some features we've decided aren't going to get into version 1.0 that we're going to drop it into 1.1 - otherwise you just build forever, and you never get the game live. We've got 10-15 small features that haven't made the cut for 1.0 and they'll be in 1.1. The roadmap beyond that is things like a multi-game variant where you've got eight-ten concurrent games happening at once, or you've got a World Cup variant, for example. We're already thinking ahead to the World Cup next June. What we've built behind the game is an extensive Google Analytics Power BI system that's gathering data about how players are playing the game. If we find that after launch the data is telling us something specific that we've not really considered, we'll add a feature that leans into it. We've left ourselves open to learn and iterate.

 

Do you foresee Playbook Football becoming a franchise or spawning a series of similarly styled games across other sports?

We will pick the sports carefully but that's the plan. Basketball, cricket, and American football - any team sport would make a natural fit. We've built the product such that it's 80% agnostic of the sport and 20% is a sport-specific element. For instance, in football it's 11 vs 11 and you've got squads, transfers, etc. whereas in basketball it's a different set-up. The plan is to build out a portfolio of Playbook games so that hopefully in the future, just like with virtual sports and crash games, we can justify a tab on the site. If we've got five or six successful sports products, it's easier to justify positioning Playbook within its own tab

Read more