Reinventing sports betting through social play
Betclic
Concept A
Competition Betting
Concept B
Missions & Challenges
Concept C
Boosters & Gamification
Concept D
Fantasy League
Context
Betclic had a strong drive for innovation. The ambition: create new betting modes that would let players compete against each other, adding a social and competitive dimension to traditional betting. From this brief, I structured a full ideation cycle across four distinct directions.
4
concepts tested
4
concepts tested
Challenge
Before committing engineering resources to any of the four concepts, we needed to validate real user appetite. Building all four would have been a massive - and risky - investment. The challenge: identify the one worth building, before a single line of code was written.
Try → learn
before you build
Try → learn
before you build
My Role
Initiated and led the full discovery cycle solo - from competitive benchmark to concept ideation, wireframing, and user testing protocol design. Built all four lo-fi prototypes. Led the user interviews and structured the analysis. Presented findings and recommendations to product leadership.
Rapid Prototyping
I built low-fidelity prototypes of all four concepts in a matter of days. Each prototype was designed to be realistic enough to generate genuine reactions - but not polished enough to obscure usability issues. We then ran interviews with real Betclic customers to test each concept.
4 lo-fi prototypes
Built fast, each with a distinct interaction model and competitive mechanic
User interviews
Real Betclic customers - tested individually on each concept to capture unbiased reactions
Structured analysis
Feedback categorised by appeal, usability, and risk of cannibalization
The 4 Concepts
Each concept explored a different competitive mechanic. Users were excited by the idea of competing - but most concepts revealed a critical tension with their existing habits.
Concept A
Competition Betting
Tournaments without odds, single entry fee, player vs player rankings
Strongest concept across both user profiles. Social, competitive, and intuitive.
Concept B
Missions & Challenges
Progression system, bronze/silver/gold levels, loyalty rewards
Lower appeal. Felt more like a chore than a game.
Concept C
Boosters & Gamification
Classic betting + strategic power-ups (double, copycat, all-or-nothing)
Too complex to understand. Users couldn't grasp the value quickly enough.
Concept D
Fantasy League
Become a team manager, score points based on real match statistics
Cannibalized regular bets. Users wouldn't do both in the same session.
Prototype Low-fi - Sample
Outcome
Concept A - Competition Betting - emerged as the strongest, scoring significantly higher across both user profiles. But complementary research surfaced a critical risk: the social mechanics could cannibalize time spent on core sports betting, Betclic's primary revenue driver. That insight led to a deliberate decision to halt development. The process didn't just validate a concept - it prevented a costly strategic mistake. The real outcome: the confidence to decide what not to build.