GameOn Entertainment Technologies (CANADA: GET) (UNITED STATES: GMETF) (EUROPE: 9E7) is one of the newest listings on the Canadian market, and is the leading technology company providing consumers, broadcasters, sportsbooks, venues and brand partners with interactive, social experiences around sports, television and live events.
Sports betting has been around since time eternal (I’d even wager that some ancient Roman spectators made quite a killing betting on the gladiators…), and the industry has seen unprecedented growth in the last few years.
The sports betting market is projected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 10% over the next 4 years and GameOn is setting itself up to be an entrenched piece of infrastructure during this US$134 billion growth period.
Not only has the industry of esports broken through to the mainstream as the pandemic moved everything online, but real life sports are set up to make a huge comeback as the world opens up again.
We spoke with the CEO of GameOn, Matt Bailey, to learn what GameOn does, a little about their team members and business model, and the moves they plan on deploying in the near future.
What Is GameOn, In A Nutshell?
Essentially, GameOn is looking to enhance interactive entertainment for nearly everything you can watch on TV. The goal is to make it all more social and more engaging.
The company powers the most watched content in the world with granular, predictive gaming technology innovations.
Of course, the company works with sports teams and major sports leagues. However, it doesn’t stop there.
GameOn also works with TV networks, touching upon the ranks of news and even reality TV, having recently partnered up with The Real Housewives.
Yes, The Real Housewives.
GameOn primarily works in a B2B fashion, creating revenue partnerships with other businesses, then implementing the technology. Their strategy involves building out as platform with each partner that seamlessly integrates GameOn’s technology (such as live predictions and betting) with the partner’s programming.
The company is currently working with content partners such as MX Player India, and other prominent networks within North America.
Rewind A Bit… How Do You Predict The Real Housewives?
Whether you like watching them or not, it’s indisputable that a lot happens on reality TV show such as The Real Housewives. Every time an event takes place, you can place predictions on it.
GameOn’s partnership with NBCUniversal is initially testing “The Real Housewives of Potomac,” which entails a prediction game that provides users a way to watch the show and partake in the predicting on their mobile devices.
Since the prediction game for “The Real Housewives of Potomac” was launched, new users have increased 281% week-on-week, and active users grew as high as 144% week-on-week.
We can imagine the programmers for such events have a ball figuring out what to use their predictive technology for.
Another interesting facet of GameOn’s technology is that there are absolutely zero geographic barriers: you can bet against those sitting right next to you, or those sitting on a couch on the other side of the world.
The GameOn engine writes out scripts that display results and distribute prizes all in real time.
What Was CEO Matt Bailey Doing Before GameOn?
Back in Australia, Matt was working for a TV network that streamed the Olympics, National Rugby League, and Cricket. After he moved to the U.S., Bailey had sales roles with the Brooklyn Nets and CMC Sports & Entertainment.
Once Bailey entered the start-up world to leverage his sports and TV expertise in a new venture, he has never looked back.
What Sets GameOn Apart from its Competitors?
We found that there are several competitors working with the same providers that GameOn has partnered with; however, the tech products are more of the off-the-shelf type, which provide single action solutions.
GameOn gets behind the eyes of the fans and designs their products to be centered around two concepts: engage and retain. This provides long-term benefit for entertainment providers, and inherently creates longer-term relationships with them.
Perhaps the biggest advantage of GameOn, though, is its leadership team.
Chief Product Officer, Santiago Jaramillo, built Dapper Labs’ NBA Top Shot – a platform that has made headlines for consistently creating and hosting record-breaking NFT sales this year.
GameOn’s VP of Partnerships, Ryan Nowack, comes from Madison Square Gardens, a premier arena in New York that has seen countless superstar events and timeless performances. Nowack successfully sold the New York Knicks, New York Rangers, and the arena itself.
To top it all off, GameOn’s Chairman, J Moses, helped create Grand Theft Auto, one of the most popular action-adventure video games of our time, and we’re not talking about just one of the games in the franchise, we mean the entire franchise. He still sits on the board for Take2 Interactive, who acquired his prior company. If that wasn’t enough, he has his MBA from Harvard… but we think that’s enough.
Could You Elaborate on MX Player?
MX Player is India’s largest over-the-top (OTT) platform, and is one of the largest platforms of its type in the world.
Did you know? OTT means over-the-top, which is a means of providing television and film content over the internet by the request of the consumer. It is referred to as over-the-top because it goes above and beyond the realm of existing internet services, and does not need to rely on a cable or satellite package. Netflix (182m monthly users), Amazon Prime (112m monthly users), and Disney+ (103m monthly users) are all examples of OTT platforms.
MX Player has a staggering 280 million users actively watching every single month, which puts it ahead of all of the other OTTs we mentioned and even rivals the user base of seemingly omnipresent platforms like Spotify (271m users in Feb 2020). GameOn is building out all of MX Player’s cricket prediction games for India Premier League (IPL), which is the largest cricket league globally.
280 million people will have a chance to watch cricket and other sports from MX Player’s platform and experience GameOn’s prediction games, all equipped with live prize distribution.
The MX Player partnership is expected bring GameOn 7 figures in revenue during Q4 2021.
There are 2 streams of income from partnerships such as this.
The 1st is plain and simple: licensing revenues. The fee the client pays to use their technology to enhance the engagement and retainment of their audience.
The 2nd is revenue sharing. GameOn prefers to create a true partnership with their media networks, rather than keeping a strict client/contractor relationship. GameOn may even waive licensing fees if a partnership is a substantial opportunity.
What’s Next on the Agenda for GameOn?
There was one word on Bailey’s mind when it came to GameOn’s future:
Scale.
As the company is optimizing its business model, it finds itself moving closer to the next launchpad. The scaling process for GameOn has been divided into a simple, 3-step process.
- Sell. Previously Bailey’s sole job, proven by his success in past ventures, GameOn now has a full-blown sales agency in place, along with plentiful partnerships to help sell GameOn to potential clients and partners.
- Product. The idea is to be constantly coming up with new ideas for products to achieve GameOn’s two biggest goals: Engage and retain. As the nature of partnerships are versatile, from cricket leagues to reality TV, there is a never-ending pipeline of product possibilities to continually investigate, develop, and launch.
- Execute. The tech team gets scaled out to close all the deals the company is putting together. Creating the plan is only half the battle; executing on that is where the magic happens.
In light of step 2 in the scaling process, GameOn recently announced its partnership with Blockparty to create a first-of-its-kind NFT predictor product. Read the full press release below:
GameOn Partners with Blockparty to Launch First-of-its-Kind NFT Predictor Product
Vancouver, British Columbia–(Newsfile Corp. – July 13, 2021) – GameOn Entertainment Technologies (CSE: GET) (FSE: 9E7) (“GameOn” or the “Company”), the leader in providing broadcasters, TV networks, OTT platforms, leagues, tournaments and sportsbooks with interactive, social experiences around sports, TV and live events, today announced a partnership with NFT platform Blockparty to launch a first-of-its-kind NFT Predictor product…
Disclaimer: GameOn Entertainment Technologies is a communications client of Edge Investments, and we own shares in the company.