New sports betting app launched

Bookee, a mobile-first sports betting company, has high hopes that its newly launched swipe-to-bet mobile app will “revolutionise” the sports betting industry, claiming that it has been designed to make betting personal and social for the casual punter, allowing users to place bets with a simple swipe of a finger.

The basic app interface offers players a randomised ‘deck’ of suggested small-stake personally-selected bets on a range of sports and events, giving them the opportunity to swipe either left to discard or right to accept the bet.

Options include bets on a specific sport – from football and tennis to darts and boxing – as well as bets tailored for specific leagues and matches. Other categories include “Strike it lucky” which features only long-odds bets; “Game of two halves” for those looking for half time / full time results; and an “Accas” tab for multiple bets in one.

The concept is the brainchild of co-founders Adam Wilson and Adam Kalmanson, veterans of bookmaking firms such as William Hill and 888.com.

The duo believe current betting practices to be old-fashioned, with users still having to trawl through pages and search for specific bets. Instead, the Bookee app brings together gamification and betting by providing the facility to discover new bets, with the player always guessing what type of bet will be suggested next.

The suggested bets are provided by third party odds provider FSB, which provides turnkey betting solutions to multiple online gambling brands.
The app comes with a range of user-focussed features, including:

Once a bet is accepted, users have the opportunity to alter the initial stake by using the ‘Stake Slider’. The app provides a clear indication of each pay-out for each stake level. Players can also use the ‘discover’ tab to call up specific categories of a dynamic range of bets.

A specific deck is available containing combinations of ‘Curated Random Accas’, where users choose from a range of suggested accumulators. Alternatively, bettors can use the ‘Build Your Own Acca’ facility by tapping a button that adds individual suggested bets to one larger accumulator.

If a user makes a mistake, , there’s a back button to bring back the most recently rejected option and give the bet further consideration.

Bookee claims that future functionality being built into the app will include a facility that learns individual players’ preferences to offer more targeted betting opportunities.

Co-founder Adam Kalmanson said in a statement Wednesday:

“We invented this app because we became frustrated with how stuck in the past parts of the betting industry are. Where other betting sites have adapted a 100 year-old infrastructure to retro-fit the smartphone revolution, the Bookee app is specifically designed for mobile use only.

“The popularity of apps like Tinder and Uber have shown that we are in an era of gamification, binary actions, and instant gratification. We are the first people to provide this type of service in the betting world and our strapline is “Swipe. Bet. Done” because it really is that simple”

The app is currently available for download on the Apple App Store and is poised for an Android presence in early 2017.