On September 28, Cyprus-based supplier ThrillTech released its new platform ThrillArena one day before the SBC Summit opened in Lisbon: a tournament system that connects the video gaming, live dealer, and sports verticals into one. The most striking aspect is how the prize pool is funded — the operator does not contribute a single cent, and the entire amount is voluntarily crowdfunded by participating players.
The mechanism is not complicated: when players voluntarily register, they pay a small additional amount into the prize pool, which then rises accordingly. ThrillTech calls this turning tournaments from a marketing cost for operators into a participation opportunity for players and a revenue source for the platform. This is their second product following the prize pool engine ThrillPots, and both generations follow the same idea: players pay voluntarily, and operators gain incremental revenue. This summer they just signed two operators, Super and 888AFRICA.
Tournaments most fear being blocked at both ends: after skilled players take the lead, newcomers stop entering, and late registrants have no motivation to catch up. ThrillArena handles this with a dynamic points engine, where scoring factors are continuously adjusted so that players who enter late still have a real chance to climb. Daily and weekly tournaments award prizes on a cyclical basis, monthly seasons retain the most active group of players, and there is also a player-versus-player challenge mode. Anyone who has done an evaluation of white-label platform solutions knows that the tournament module is a standard part of an event system, but the prize pool funding structure is rarely treated as a separate evaluation item.
For this kind of event engine spanning three verticals, integration into a platform still goes through an API, and the workload for API documentation integration depends on how many gaming verticals it needs to touch. ThrillTech was founded in 2023 and has already obtained licenses in the United Kingdom, Sweden, the Netherlands, Romania, Malta, Gibraltar, Peru, and Ontario, among other places. Its Greek supplier license was just obtained this summer, and this week it is making its first public demonstration at SBC Summit booth B331. Teams currently comparing platforms may want to ask one more question: who funds the tournament prize pool. To discuss the differences among various event modules in more detail, you can contact us.