Supplier News

UK – Playtech Sports launches first Virtual retail product with Coral

By Phil - 28 July 2016

Playtech has gone live with its first ‘out of the box’ retail Virtual Sports product across 100 UK Coral shops with the potential to deploy it across 1,000 outlets in the next 12 months.

Replicating a real-life football accumulator or acca, the Virtual Sports Football Accumulator product, that is streamed locally via a Linux hardware box solution, is comprised of four 90-second matches run simultaneously every five minutes. This gives players a wide-range of options in every betting round and allows them to view a ‘Feature Game’, while concurrently seeing results appear for the three remaining fixtures.

The Accumulator product, delivered ahead of schedule and in record time for an instore installation, is the first Playtech Sports virtual product to be launched in a retail environment and is unique to the market.

The over-the-counter product is currently undergoing a three-month trial in a number of outlets with the roll out reaching 100 shops by the end of this month. If successful it will be deployed nationwide.
Playtech also plans to distribute the new virtual product nationwide across the entire Coral shop estate via its satellite broadcast solution shown on Coral TV– another unrivalled industry offering.
In June Playtech delivered the world’s most realistic virtual sports product with its new smash hit tennis game live across all platforms, channels and devices.

Following a year-long process of exhaustive and record-breaking motion capture initiatives at Warner Bros Studios and 3D design and modelling work at the Playtech Sports studios, both in the UK, Playtech virtual tennis is as close to the real game as anyone has ever achieved with mind-blowing graphics, gameplay and extensive betting opportunities.

Virtual tennis is available online, in retail, and on mobile and includes comprehensive lifelike action, pre-match betting markets, realistic gameplay and incredible attention to detail including dynamic cloth physics with players’ shirts moving as they stretch to hit a backhand cross-court winner.

All Playtech Sports’ virtual products are future proof and developed with tournament, matches and leagues in mind.

Elliott Norris, Head of Virtual, Playtech Sports, said: “We’ve been working round the clock on a retail solution and firmly believe we’ve launched the best product on the market. Not only does it play extremely well, it looks great and is extremely simple and cost effective to set up, distribute and deploy,” Norris added.

Mark Kemp, Gaming Director, Coral, added: “The project was a delivered swiftly and promptly and we’re delighted with the results. Playtech’s new virtual sports retail product adds yet another dimension to the industry leading Omni-channel customer experience we have across all channels.”