Bounty Sports, the trailblazing North American provider of paid fantasy pick’em, has entered into a strategic content partnership with Inside The Pocket (ITP) the leading free-to-play (F2P, P2P and DFS) aggregation platform, to broaden its distributional scope across Canada and the U.S.

Bounty Sports is currently available in 23 U.S states, as well as the whole of Canada, affording ITP clients the opportunity to position peer-to-peer paid skills-based DFS alongside F2P and P2P verticals to optimize customer acquisition and consumer insights. ITP’s single-integration approach for one or multiple products introduces, in complementary fashion, customer engagement and retention across various products as sports betting regulation continues to roll out across the North American landscape.

The deal sees Bounty Sports deliver its comprehensive fantasy product portfolio to a new network of operators, affiliates, and media partners via the ITP platform, an industry-first aggregation model for the gaming industry. This ground-breaking marketplace now allows a host of innovative suppliers one simple route to market which, in turn, offers ITP clients a wealth of value-creation opportunities across a spectrum of content from a single, seamless integration.

Across the North American market, DFS companies invariably enjoy engaged audiences in many U.S. states or Canadian provinces before they open up to sports betting. This creative collaboration now allows ITP clients the chance to see F2P working in tandem with skill-based gaming and peer-to-peer DFS in an innovative, and socially responsible way.

ITP clients can target specific recreational player-groups and fulfil specific acquisition and retention goals. This partnership very much presents a way of entertaining and educating players without the need to push them towards more questionable introductory offers which have already proven themselves unsustainable for a mutually beneficial and socially-responsible ecosystem.

Over the past 12 months, Bounty has committed significant investment to expanding its peer-to-peer platform as a fan-engagement tool, which hosts contests where fans can compete against each other in daily tournaments with the goal of selecting winning teams. Users earn points for correct selections, where the top-ranked individuals win cash prizes. Its user-friendly platform engages everyday fans who have grown weary of the time-consuming demands of traditional DFS, not to mention the constant threat of being picked off by sharps. Instead, Bounty Sports offers a fun and engaging digital community for its users to interact with other sports fans, without significant cost and time commitments.

Through a single integration, single contract, and single source, ITP opens a full F2P / DFS / skill-games marketplace via the most modular and democratised strategic platform around, assembling the best minds and models for a new era in sports fan engagement, localized to specific markets. ITP’s proven international scope and flair for localization promises to drive diversified fan engagement around targeted free-to-play games. Thanks to its open-aggregation approach, ITP already offers the broadest and best-curated mix of games and formats, with one platform integration acting as a gateway to virtually unlimited content.

Jess Hodgson, CEO at Bounty Sports, said: “Despite some notable successes and consistent growth, this rapidly-changing sector always asks you to evaluate your next best steps. Which is why this third-party collaboration with an aggregator as unique as ITP made such strategic sense for Bounty Sports. Their technical know-how sets them apart in the overlapping F2P / DFS domains of game development, player management and multi-level data.

“Our longstanding contention at Bounty Sports is that traditional fantasy sports models are geared towards the sharps who dedicate significant resources to creating algorithms which can unravel the complexity of DFS scoring systems and last-minute team-roster changes across the leagues. In response, Bounty has created an entirely new ecosystem in which fans can participate in fantasy sports alongside other more recreational users, without being picked off by cutting-edge algos. We’re combining the power of traditional pick’em style pools with the social element of fantasy and F2P.

“In order to excite and attract the largest number of fans participation in North American sports, we need the flexibility to embrace however and whenever they are ready to get involved. Amid the ongoing rollout of regulation and sportsbooks across Canada and the U.S., DFS and the evolving shape of F2P will remain a critical piece of the fan-engagement jigsaw for sports, with the agility to support, educate and engage the casual sports fans. ITP understands this challenge and, together, we are dedicated to raising the roof for the North American sports fan.

“Sportsbooks and media companies across the still-nascent North American market can now enhance their portfolio in league with Bounty Sports and ITP, with this sports betting content aggregation platform affording easy access to the best products on the market, featuring F2P, peer-to-peer DFS and other agile content solutions. So, we look forward to growing our client-base and seeing how our localized games perform in diverse territories as regulation continues to coalesce state-by-state and province-by-province.”

Hussain Naqi, Founder and CEO of Inside The Pocket, said: “We’re thrilled to announce Bounty Sports as our latest high-profile signing. We already know that Canadian compliance around advertising and inducements is strong and stringent. While in North America as a whole, fixed-odds-format games require sports betting licences. Thanks to this exciting collaboration with Bounty, ITP’s deep well of games, data and associated tools can now work in fixed-odds formats but also as peer-to-peer, DFS-style-licence games. Accordingly, we can provide media companies or affiliates with a constant pipeline of games with excellent repeat-play metrics, toggling between free-to-play and pay-to-play if so desired. Equally, we can offer sportsbooks something that is delineated from DFS/existing versions of DFS to help them separate their products from the competition.

“We’re supremely well-positioned to leverage this opportunity because we can diversify content, leverage consumer data and segment it for our clients as the North American market’s shifting sands crystallize. Our complementary partners at Harte Hanks and Xpoint are also affording ITP unique consumer insights and precise regulatory-location control that will allow us to hyper-segment audience communication in good time for the upcoming NFL season the World Cup 2022 football, always tent-pole events for operator performance and correlated marketing targets.

“As the number-one F2P aggregation platform, we offer a unique way for our clients and prospects to acquire and retain repeat-customers at a low cost, but also to stay fully compliant in non-regulated states or provinces. ITP’s all-consuming range of content and data tools helps to drive engagement for sportsbook and DFS audiences, by virtue of a series of game formats that have player-education and augmented activity at their core. Increasingly, however, we are adding a range of new products and game types to our ever-expanding repertoire – from pay-to-play products to pools-based fantasy games. This deal with Bounty is the latest in a long line of compelling propositions.”