Play Ventures' Anton Backman: free-to-play lessons could reshape gambling product design

In an interview with European Gaming, Anton Backman, general partner at Play Ventures, outlined how lessons from mobile free-to-play games could carry over to real-money gambling. His fund backed UK operator Midnite, and he said its interest in online betting and casino began around 2020, when founders from its mobile free-to-play network started looking at real-money formats, initially skill games such as solitaire, bingo and match-three.

Backman said the demographic shift was what attracted a games fund. The emerging gambling audience grew up on mobile and social games and therefore has different expectations, he argued, and companies that understand this should have an advantage. On Midnite, he described an early-stage, founder-led investment in co-founders Nick Wright and Daniel Qu, whom he characterised as two US founders taking an outsider view of building a challenger brand in the UK.

The social layer is, in his view, the most important element that carries over from free-to-play and also the most underdeveloped. He noted that a slot is an isolated experience, whereas free-to-play social casinos introduced shared rooms and chat long ago. What breaks down is the game economy: in real-money gaming the maths is certified and the RTP is published, so operators cannot tune difficulty, rewards or drop rates live. That work has to shift into the metagame, content and social features instead.

Backman pointed to Aviator as an example of entertainment value driving play. He said instant games usually have a higher RTP than most slots, but he does not believe that explains their popularity. Instead, players share the same round, watch others cash out in real time and use chat, which makes the game feel like a multiplayer title and suits streamers.

On newer categories, he said many prediction market, sweepstakes and DFS pick'em products are sportsbook-like and benefit from regulatory arbitrage. Kalshi and Polymarket have a real chance of spawning new products, he said, though traction has so far been mainly in sports, and he believes the arbitrage window is narrowing.

He also criticised current European operator products as largely catalogues of thousands of slots from a few suppliers with little personalisation. Retention, he said, is driven mainly by bonuses rather than the product, so players often leave when bonuses stop. He expects the winners to look more like game companies than bookmakers, with social features and deep personalisation defining the next generation of platforms.