On MulteeGaming, skill at a video game is the only thing that will affect the outcome of your bet. This is the big difference with the usual online gambling on sports or casino games where randomness plays a major part.

Pure skill betting

MulteeGaming offers to players of major games (Fifa, Halo, Starcraft, PES) the ability to challenge another player and bet on their win. The platform offers advanced recommendation features, to ensure a balanced experience for players, as well as more free for all features such as tournaments.
Remarkably, ethics comes early in the discussion with Multee. Besides the obvious anti-cheating mechanisms, the platform provides players with a history of their wins and losses on the platform, so that they can keep track and avoid going overboard. This contrasts starkly with business practices in casinos or online betting platforms, where disclaimers about gambling addiction are by and large for PR purposes, as bottom lines depend on customers losing the maximum viable amount of money.

High ARPU model

Ethics shouldn’t however be confused with measly revenues. Players on Multee are indeed high ARPU since every challenge played involves a transaction, but the emphasis is on long-term retention rather than short-term gain. On average, 10k challenges are played each month, with daily tournaments and events being organized on top of it.
With their team of 12 and their recent 300k€ round, bringing their total funding to 420k€, Multee has set its sights on crossing the 1k daily challenges by early 2013. The increasing number of casual players coming to the platform, in addition to more hardcore players, indicates that the concept is starting to gain mainstream traction, with a 50% increase in active users over the last two months alone.

Tech and gamer identity

Multee prides itself on the speed with which its team works, as no development or design is outsourced, allowing for quick prototyping and better community support. Its team is infused with a strong gamer culture, and very good relationships with the germ communities of the titles they support. This translates to tailored experiences. In Halo Reach for example, original maps were created through community support so as to offer an experience especially balanced 1v1 gameplay.
However good its team and growth rate are, Multee still has ways to go to get brand awareness, currently limited to gamer communities. Its main competitor, Toronto-based Virgin Gaming, which has clear brand recognition and a large partnership with EA, has a comparable offering and is certainly a few steps ahead on the branding front. On casual gaming, competitors such as Game Duell are already in the market. Nonetheless, recognizing this doesn’t prevent CEO Vincent Morel from thinking that there are very real opportunities to be seized.

Going further and better

In the short term, Multee is working on hot features requested by its players, in particular a melee mode where challenges involve more than two people and gains can go to several players. This feature alone shows the will to win through innovation of the Multee team, as such a feature is nowhere to be seen on Virgin Gaming or Game Duell. It is also preparing a localized marketing campaign to raise awareness, and is planning to add a couple new games to its platform.
Publishers would do well to get in touch with this startup, as the team knows it needs to offer its prospective partners something truly compelling in order to overtake its competition. As we see dreadful bingo or slots games popping up all over the free to play markets, monetization innovation that actually strengthens the gaming experience is sorely needed, and this is what Multee aims to deliver.
The plan is clear: offer a betting platform that publishers could effectively use on top of their leaderboards and competition mechanisms, and boost monetization. Such an approach would furthermore open up a world of opportunity in single and team cash tournaments and challenges. While an API isn’t yet open for experimentation, there are already elements in place, and Multee has started discussing implementation models with publishers.