Bookmakers always win. They’re like banks (at least until Bitcoin and friends change that). They are the gatekeeper; they control the odds, who bets, how much they can win and ultimately, they decide who can play and who can’t. Seasoned sports bettors who have studied formations, injury lists, statistics, lineups, history and form can be blocked from platforms at the whim of the owners.
Bettors can also be excluded for arbitrage betting and matched betting.
Hold on, arbitrage and matched betting? If you’re not a sports bettor and this sounds complicated, let us explain. Arbitrage betting means leveraging overpriced markets to your advantage. In other words, exploiting odds to place bets on multiple outcomes to win a small — but guaranteed — profit. Matched betting profits from the free bets, incentives, discounts and offers bookmakers and sports betting sites offer new customers.
Only in sports betting can you get a bad name for being good — and playing within the rules. Bookies don’t want winning players on their site. A platform built on a blockchain and using cryptocurrency as the medium could disrupt this system and give control back to the players. There is much more to it, but in essence, a decentralized sports betting platform would remove the control from a single owner and give it to the community, removing the risk of any one individual being banned from placing bets.
But for us, the more damaging flaws of traditional sports betting are the emotional turmoil, risk of addiction and personal financial loss it can inflict.
In Pooky’s sports prediction game model, players don’t have to manage risk because there is no risk. After buying the initial digital collectible (NFT), players don’t have to pay extra to make predictions. Making up for losses is not necessary because players don’t lose for incorrect predictions. It sounds too good to be true, but that is what web3 and blockchain technology can do, it’s a new paradigm, a way to do things differently. It can remove the flaws of existing sports betting and keep only the positive.
Most sports bettors are in it for the fun. They know and understand that having something at stake while watching sport can make games more entertaining, more exciting. Sums are mostly small. 10, 20, 30 Euros. We created Pooky to harness this same excitement. Not as a replacement, but as an alternative to sports betting.
Pooky is a sports prediction game. It offers a healthy way of having something at stake whilst watching a football match, without playing an ‘all or nothing’ strategy; without risking anything, and always winning something. What does that mean to our players? It means making predictions is more entertaining! More fun. It adds an extra layer of entertainment to a match without additional risk.
And just as football is a team game that brings people and communities together, Pooky players predict in a social environment, in a community of football fans. There is an atmosphere of togetherness that doesn’t exist in traditional sports betting on the same level.
