Rugby World Cup Game Drives Acquisition for Blue Square

Blue Square, one of the largest interactive betting services in the UK, have launched a new multi-player challenge game for the Rugby World Cup, representing the next phase in Blue Square's online games strategy to drive customer acquisition and loyalty for their gaming site www.bluesq.com . The 'Ruck and Brawl Challenge Game' is a multi-player fighting game that sees players manage a rugby team through the 'real' World Cup competition off the field - bar-room brawling. Developed by specialist play agency 3RD sense, the game features an email-based challenge mechanism that allows players manage their team, challenge others to fights and then watch Flash-based movies of the fights online.

Chris Griggs, Content Manager at Blue Square, believes the Ruck and Brawl Challenge game helps them address the two main issues faced by site owners: attracting new users and encouraging occasional users to visit more often. 'The challenge format actively draws new players in through existing users. The game incorporates bonuses for players who fight more often and for those who challenge more new users.'

Tom Gueterbock, Director of 3RD sense, explains that Ruck and Brawl also addresses the crucial issue of converting game players into active users of the betting site, 'The game has an in-built gaming element, where each player wagers points on each fight and the winner takes points wagered by the loser. Also, anyone can play Ruck and Brawl, but players can only win prizes if they have a Blue Square account and the prizes themselves are Blue Square bet vouchers. The game also incorporates banners that advertise the latest odds as well as direct links to open an account.'

For 3RD sense, who have formulated Blue Square's games strategy from its inception 12 months ago, one of the challenges of moving to the multi-player format that focussed on drawing in new users, was to maintain the continuity of the previous single-player environment retaining the loyalty of the existing user base.

'It was important to get existing users to buy into the game as they'd be the ones drawing new people in,' said Gueterbock. 'So we set Ruck and Brawl in an 'Australianised' Blue Bar, the site of the previous competitions. We also translated some of the popular single-player games into features of the larger challenge game. There are three single-player 'training' games, punching, kicking and throwing games which stand on their own, but that also contribute to the fighting game. The more points scored in these single-player games, the more points a player's team scores in the fighting games.'

Gueterbock went on to explain the importance of developing a rich environment to house the game to encourage repeat visits. This was achieved through tongue-in-cheek characterisations of rugby players and the Australian bar in which the game is set, entertaining and cartoon-like Flash movies of players fights, detailed scoreboards showing results both of players and overall team performances, a personal statistics page and regular email updates.

Ruck and Brawl will run for the duration of the Rugby World Cup and continued to be promoted on www.bluesq.com homepage and through a viral marketing campaign to Blue Square customers.

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