While many enjoy a solo experience when it comes to video games, the market for competitive gaming is on the rise. Increasingly players enjoy the ability to play for high scores, beat other player's milestones and earn rewards for their efforts and Game Taco is a leading tournaments platform that allows players to play online skill games for real cash prizes.

We spoke with Game Taco’s CEO Nancy MacIntyre to discuss Game Taco and its partnership with FanDuel, to create FanDuel FaceOff where real players can play against real people for real cash. 

MacIntyre shares the developments that the partnership has seen, their future goals and what a competition platform such as this could do for the wider gaming industry.

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Pocketgamer.biz: Can you tell us a little about Game Taco and how the partnership with FanDuel Faceoff came about?

Nancy MacIntyre: Game Taco is the premier real money gaming entertainment company and parent company of WorldWinner. WorldWinner pioneered the skill gaming category and since 2000 has been the place where gamers can play skill games for fun or compete for cash prizes and rewards. This includes original titles and games with hugely popular game licences all developed by our in-house game studio, such as Atari Breakout, Wheel of Fortune, Scrabble Cubes, Bejeweled, Trivial Pursuit, Boggle, Yahtzee, and more.

In 2021, we partnered with FanDuel, the leading destination for sports fans online across Daily Fantasy Sports and Sports Book to develop an all-new skill gaming experience. Together we recognized the strong affinity between competitive esports and sports fandom and set out to develop a new platform targeted to Fan Duel’s robust audience. The result of that partnership is, FanDuel Faceoff, a skill-based mobile game platform that lets players leverage their existing FanDuel accounts and wallets to compete against other similarly skilled players or challenge their friends across a library of sports, strategy, puzzle and word games, for fun and for the chance to win cash prizes in tournaments. As WorldWinner and FanDuel audiences were largely mutually exclusive, it was a win-win-win for both companies and most importantly, the players.

What developments have there been since your partnership started last year.

Both the WorldWinner and the FanDuel Faceoff platforms have grown in the past year. Impressively, FanDuel Faceoff has hosted over 50M tournaments since launch. Currently, FanDuel Faceoff offers 11 games, with Field Goal Faceoff, Block Trail and Puzzle Pyramid being the most popular amongst players. We also just added Jordan Spieth’s Fairway Frenzy and Boggle to the platform, and both are quickly becoming favourites among the user base. And this is only the start. We have huge plans for FanDuel Faceoff with more familiar titles and more original games, including some featuring popular sports figures and brands launching later this year. Stay tuned for those reveals in the coming months.

What are some long-term goals for the partnership?

Our long-term goal is for FanDuel Faceoff to be an integral part of FanDuel’s market-leading ecosystem of product offerings. FanDuel Faceoff is fun, social, engaging and challenging; attributes we know FanDuel customers enjoy. Throughout this partnership we have listened, adjusted and executed based on feedback from FanDuel Faceoff users to make the platform as compelling as possible. We plan to continue to expand our game offerings and innovate the platform to keep FanDuel customers engaged and coming back for more.

What do you think a platform like FanDuel Faceoff can offer the games industry?

The Game Taco and FanDuel partnership is the first-of-its-kind for the skill gaming sector and one that broadens the spectrum of what’s possible when you strike the right combination. In our case, the right combination consists of two of the most trusted brands in their respective categories committing to invest, innovate and expand the aperture of esports through real money skill games.

For many game developers and IP holders, this presents an opportunity to re-engage their audience, introduce their brands to a coveted demographic and generate meaningful new revenue streams. The continued audience feedback and growth we’re seeing with FanDuel Faceoff, and active monthly engagement by those players, reinforce the sheer interest for playing skill games for real money across that audience.

What is the process of onboarding new games to the app?

We have 11 curated games currently available on FanDuel Faceoff with many more to come driven by the feedback we’ve received from their customer base. Over time, you can expect that we’ll add new, exclusive content, bonuses, social features, and other FanDuel-exclusive experiences that we think will resonate well with players. The process for onboarding is a collaborative effort between both companies, from ideation to development, with extensive testing before we greenlight for launch.

One of the apps newest games Jordan Spieth’s Fairway Frenzy has an endorsee on board. How important are these sponsorship roles?

One of the hallmarks of being a sports fan is having favourite players that we connect with, root for and admire. With games like Jordan Spieth’s Fairway Frenzy, we’re giving fans a unique and fun way to play as one of the best in the game, whether golf is their sport or not. Jordan Spieth has a massive fan base, and we’re pleased with the response players have shown in the game so far.

We plan to introduce other sports titles and casual games in the future that deliver the challenge and fun that we know the FanDuel Faceoff players enjoy. Those will include broader sports tie-ins through sponsorships. It’s one of the best parts of the job because the possibilities are endless.

Finally, what can we look out for over the course of 2023 for Game Taco and FanDuel Faceoff?

More games, more customer centric innovation, and to borrow a FanDuel tagline, more ways to win! We have big plans and expectations for FanDuel Faceoff and couldn’t be more excited to explore all the possibilities that our partnership brings.