Pooky Launches Free-to-Play Public Beta in time for World Cup Qatar

On Nov 16, 2022

Pooky, the forthcoming gamified Web3 sports prediction platform, officially goes live on November 16^th.

With an initial focus on football, the free-to-play beta launch of the game will run throughout the Fifa World Cup Qatar tournament.

Those participating in the public beta will receive a whitelist spot to mint an exclusive Genesis Pookyball NFT during the project’s private sale in January 2023.

Essentially, Pookyball NFTs are your digital pass to the game and will come in five different rarities.

The launch announcement follows Pooky’s closed alpha release on Oct. 21, which received extremely positive feedback.

Pooky’s mission

Pooky is on a mission to transform sports betting through utilizing Web3 tools and NFTs.

The concept revolves around Pookyballs (NFTs), which give holders the right to enter the prediction game.

In the game, players will predict results from the major football leagues and tournaments, including the FIFA World Cup, English Premier League, Italian Serie A and Spanish La Liga.

Additionally, your Pookyball NFT never expires and can be used indefinitely.

The model encourages social interaction around the world’s most popular sport, and aims to eradicate all the negative aspects of traditional gambling.

Stefano Riff, co-founder of Pooky, said: “We wanted to build a healthier alternative to traditional sports betting. By going back to the roots of sports prediction — challenging friends and demonstrating your knowledge of the beautiful game — Pooky encourages social interaction and fun whilst creating communities, both on and off the platform.”

How Pooky works

Players guessing the outcome of football games receive points for predicting winners, number of goals and exact scores.

Moreover, players are ranked on a leaderboard and top players can win crypto and rare Pookyballs.

The points scored matter, and will be converted into Experience Points (PXP), which are necessary to upgrade Pookyballs.

In turn, this increases the chances to score more points in the next prediction round and maximizes the players’ in-game rewards.

A sustainable Pooky economy

Pooky has worked with specialist crypto economists, token engineers and game designers to create sustainable game economics.

A single, capped supply of the ERC-20 utility token will serve as the title’s in-game currency, providing a medium of exchange and player rewards.

In addition, the game will operate using a rewards pool per season and per competition, and distribute payments based on token in-flow.

Unlike Play-to-Earn titles that suffer from rampant token supply inflation, Pooky does not award tokens for simply playing.

Instead, gamers must demonstrate the skill to top leaderboard rankings, and maximize rewards.

Spending tokens on upgrades not only increases their chances of receiving rewards, but also burns a percentage of the amount spent, providing further value to the players.

The result is a long-term, sustainable circular token economy.

Play-and-Earn in Pooky

Pooky is built on a Play-and-Earn model, which focuses primarily on quality gameplay and entertainment.

The initial public beta will enable players to play the game’s free version, and start unlocking rewards.

In the free version of the game, Rookyballs and PXP rewards will be lower than the full NFT-driven version.

Pooky’s initial version will only support football, with more sports to follow like tennis, basketball and Formula 1 in 2023.

Born out of passion

Founded in 2022 by Claudio and Stefano Riff, Pooky was inspired by Stefano being blocked from using online sportsbooks.

His crime? Simply predicting ‘too many’ results and winning ‘too much’.

Now, the two co-founders – passionate sports fans – are committed to developing an alternative to the traditional betting model, underpinned by blockchain technology.

The company was officially incorporated in September 2022, and raised more than €3 million from pre-seed investors, including Claster Investments VC.

For more information about this exciting new game, you can visit Pooky’s social channels on: