Football Survivor revived for real-money gaming by WantMyBet founder
UKGC-licensed Premier League predictor game went live on Christmas Eve
A revamped real-money gaming version of Premier League predictor game Football Survivor launched in the UK on Christmas Eve.
The former free-to-play (F2P) concept, also known as Last Man Standing, was resurrected by WantMyBet founder Olly Joshi, who became CEO of Football Survivor back in April 2019.
The game sees players pay for entry to a private league before predicting one team to win in the Premier League each week, although players are never allowed to pick the same team twice.
If the result comes in, the player progresses, but if their prediction fails, they are eliminated. The last man standing at the end of the league cycle wins the entire prize pot.
Public leagues are also available, whereby users must predict 20 winning teams in the Premier League to compete for a cash prize provided by Football Survivor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1BorxXVO9g
Football Survivor originally launched as a F2P website but has now been turned into a real-money gaming mobile app licensed by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC).
The app, built in-house, is available to download on both iOS and Android. Payments are handled by EveryMatrix platform MoneyMatrix, while customer identification is taken care of by GBG.
Football Survivor takes a 15% admin fee from the cost of each league entry.
A marketing campaign to promote Football Survivor will commence in the coming weeks, with a particular focus on influencers, including shareholder and former footballer Jamie Redknapp.
Redknapp promoted the concept in an Instagram Story on Christmas Eve.
The launch marks Joshi’s second foray into peer-to-peer gambling after his football betting social platform, WantMyBet, was wound down in 2019.
Joshi told EGR Intel that the start-up paid the price for trying to be a middle man, instead of taking bets like a bookmaker.
“Given the way we interact these days, there is so much social interaction around betting among friends,” said Joshi, when asked if he still had faith in social betting.
“It inspires conversation and debate and a lot of traditional bookmakers are trying to catch up with it because nobody has really cracked it yet.
“We are not trying to say we own the social betting space– we just know that people like betting and being competitive with their peers.
“With Football Survivor, we are simply aiming to provide an up-to-date way of playing,” he added.