TopCorner

[BenNewman90]

TopCorner

Business Concept

What is TopCorner

A Football result prediction game, originally conceived for the World Cup and Euros, but could be used for other tournaments like the Premier Legue. It is similar in some ways to a typical football sweepstake, but much better.

The Football Prediction game was started for the World Cup 1994 by a small group of friends. The competition had about 30 people in it, all friends or friends of friends.

When it moved to a website it always had 200+ players.

The old site was originally built in the 90s, but no longer works as all the technology is out of date, and the site looked and behaved as a site from the 90s. It's so dysfunctional that there aren't even screenshots available.

How does it work?

It couldn't be easier.

You make a prediction for every game in the tournament e.g. you predict England 5, Brazil 0.

• If England really did win 5-0 the you get 3 points for the correct score.
• If England won 1-0, then you get 1 point for the correct result.
• If Brazil won, you'd get 0 points for the wrong result and score.

Stakes and prizes

It's £10 / USD 10 / EUR 10 to enter. Pretty much all of the stake money (minus the minimal expenses of running the site and processing payments) is redistributed as prizes. We give away a range of prizes - not just winner takes all.

Who wins

• The top 5 positions, last place, midway place, first child. Last place a midway place are very useful, as they give users something to aim for no matter where in the table they are.
• quarter-way-through prizes (after a quarter of the games have ben played), and every other quarter. This gives users a chance to redeem themselves if they had a terrible start.

USPs (Unique Selling Points)

Much simpler than fantasy Football and other football prediction sites – you need only a passing interest to take part because:

• It's very simple.
• Predictions can be changed until kick off time so it can become very strategic.
• A range of prizes are given (not just to the leaders) so more people stay involved for longer.

How big can this go?

In theory, there could be a TopCorner 'room' for the Premiership and every other major league, each with thousands of players. This is a tried and tested model with nothing else quite like it.

Business model

• Advert banners
• Allow newspapers to franchise it like is currently done with Fantasy football in the UK
• Taking a percentage of the 'pot' is not desirable, apart from to cover the running costs of the site like paypal charges etc.
• This is an easy model to start small with and grow, as you only need a few people to play and it's fun. I will definitely be using it for the Euros.

The Application

Admin screens

Static Data

• Groups (e.g. “Group A” or “Quarter Finals” in the world cup, “1st Round” in the FA cup etc)
• Teams
• Fixtures and results entry
• There may be an API for this...

User screens

• Sign up / Registration screen Name, email, password, photo upload, biography memo (a few words about who, why etc)

• Could look into facebook/github/Google+/Instagram(?) login

• Usual validation checks

Nice to haves:

• Who do you know? this will help to suggest local sub-groups (e.g. family, workplace etc .. can be a member of as many subgroups as needed … helps with motivational emails such as “you are leading the Newman Family group” etc

Predictions Page

List of all matches which have not yet passed kick off time showing:

• Game 1 • Prediction 1 • Game 2 • Prediction 2

Each record will be saved to database. Only changed predictions will be saved afresh, and added to an audit trail of changes with the date and time and the changes.

Have an AUTO-FILL button which allocates random predictions for games predictions that are blank.

Results page

• This page shows all results from all players in position order
• The page should either calculate (or access pre loaded calculations) points awarded for each game by each player and display them in position order for everyone to see.
• Can have analysis options, to look at how everyone is voting.

The grid will show in each row:

• User name, user photograph, total points – then each cell will show prediction for each result and below that the calculated points for that prediction (if the game has passed)

The page also allows you to see what your opponents have predicted for the yet-to-play games

Server Stuff

Database:

• Quite a bit of database work in this... and it definitely needs to be secure as we can't have people changing their predictions retrospectively.

Very important is an email server which fires off emails with:

• The latest positions,
• Update your predictions (where they haven’t been updated for a while)
• recommend a friend
• complete your payment
• Missing predictions for next few days (only if they are missing)
• Join a friends and family group

Other points/features

• Payments can be made with Paypal, which apparently charges 2.5% and can automatically update your database to change users 'paid' status to 'true'.. it uses a callback or something... definitely a technical spike.
• Clicking on a team could provide the latest news on them... @tawfiknasser @afifisuha @noorafi..??
• Free team kannafe on Thursday afternoons.
• Can include a chatbox and other social media like features.
• To be clear, this project will be redesigned and written from scratch, just taking the original idea as inspiration.
• Making a great MVP should be very achievable.

[matthall8]

Really nice idea Ben. It'd be good to learn more about what tech stack you're thinking of using to develop this.

[BenNewman90]

Thanks for the comment Matt. Without listing the obvious:

• We will definitely be using express, and probably REACT. We will need to discuss how necessary REACT is and whether or not handlebars provide enough functionality.
• Paypal for receiving payments and automatically updating the database. This will be very cool I think.
• Using an agile project management platform/tool. I think you may be able to advise on which...
• Various yet to be researched football APIs...
• Heroku for hosting a database.
• Generally well tested code... that will be a first.

Do you have any other suggestions or anything you would be interested in using/doing?