Worlds Collide With Playbook Fusion - CEO Steve Rogers sits down with iGaming Gazette

Playbook Fusion hit the market back in June and has made a lot of noise since. But for those who haven’t heard about your studio, what is it and what makes it different?

Playbook Fusion is a pioneering studio on a mission to bring never-seen-before sports gaming content to the market. In our games, the worlds of sports betting and mobile/video gaming collide in an entirely new genre of immersive sports-themed content. We believe that our games will prove to be a catalyst for a revolution in the online gaming/gambling landscape with the fusion of skill-based gaming and betting.

This is something the industry has yet to deliver but we know that there’s a core, untapped audience of players who want this kind of content. These players enjoy sports-themed video and mobile games, and the ownership and skill required to master titles like FC Ultimate Team, but they also like to place bets on their favourite sports, teams and players. At the moment, there isn’t really a gambling format that provides the experiences they are seeking, and Playbook Fusion is changing that. 

Can you tell us more about the team behind the business?

I’ve spent more than 25 years in the gambling industry culminating in my role as Chief Commercial Officer – Virtual Sports at Inspired Entertainment. This has enabled me to amass a deep understanding of key factors such as regulation, compliance, content deployment and ultimately what makes a great gambling game. 

Where I lack understanding or experience, which is mostly in the mobile/video game space, I have brought in experts and out-of-industry talent. This includes Santiago Jaramillo who has spent more than 13 years producing AAA games for the likes of EA Sports and Dapper Labs – this includes working on titles like FIFA, MonopolyGo! and NBA Top Shot, a first-of-its-kind product anchored in blockchain technology. We’ve also built out an incredible team of designers, developers, sound specialists and mathematicians from the gaming and gambling industries.

You’re operating in an incredibly competitive space. How will Playbook Fusion differentiate and catch the attention of operators at the scale needed for long-term success?

With our games, players can develop their skills while having a much higher level of ownership over the outcome of the game compared with more traditional gambling content. This is provided through some revolutionary mechanics that allow players to boost the capabilities of their teams which in turn increases the chance of their team winning the matches and progressing up the divisions. 

They can also do things like purchase and win packs that they open to strengthen their line-up and then decide what type of contest they want to take part in. This type of gameplay appeals to an audience that operators are not really engaging right now, and this includes the lucrative but hard-to-reach Millennial and Gen Z cohorts.

These are people who are never going to walk into a betting shop or wager with a sportsbook just because it’s the Euros or the World Cup. These are YouTubers and Fortniters – tech-savvy audiences that will ultimately become a sportsbook’s core player base in the years to come.

How do the worlds of mobile/video gaming and gambling align through your content? How have you brought the two together?

They come together by combining the formats and mechanics used in mobile/video sports games with the option to bet and win money based on the outcome. For example, our first game uses the football manager format with players able to build a team by acquiring and trading players. They then compete across several game types. 

Players earn points based on their performance. The more points the player earns, the more league levels they clear. Then when it comes to the gambling elements, players can wager on each match and win prizes based on the outcome.

Why is ownership of outcomes becoming increasingly important to players?

Because players are used to a greater sense of ownership in the other gaming experiences they partake in. Mobile and video games are built around skill development so that the more the player engages with the game, the better they become at it. 

This gives them a much deeper vested interest in the game and a more rewarding experience as they slowly come to master the game and progress through the various stages and levels it contains. In comparison, simply betting on the outcome of a sports match does not provide the fast action, progress and development these players enjoy. Ultimately, it is about providing a rich, entertaining experience, and skill development and having ownership over the outcome are crucial to this.

Tell us more about your first run of games and what operators and players can expect. 

Our first game will be a football-themed title, Playbook Football Football is the most popular sport in the world so is the ideal sport to introduce Playbook Fusion to operators and players. Because of its mass-market appeal, we expect it will draw in players beyond the primary audience of our games, which is something operators will want to see. 

Following on from football, we will launch games based on the management format for basketball, cricket and more. The team is also hard at work on other formats and mechanics so that we can continue to bring fresh experiences to players.