GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 3 - January 2008

GPWA TIMES | ‘FORE’ward progress UTour Golf has been embraced by golfers and casual gamers alike, allowing SkillGround to enter uncharted waters in the world of skill game marketing By Gary Trask You arrive at the course and it’s a gorgeous Saturday morning simply made for playing golf. As you get to the first tee you hear the soothing sounds of birds chirping as the sun shines brightly. You check the wind, make your club selection and take a deep breath. There’s money on the line today and you want to start your round off right. When all systems are go, you unload your shot, but a slight slice sends your ball into the woods on the right-hand side of the fairway. Almost immediately, the other golfers in your foursome begin to taunt you. The trash talk has begun. It’s “Game on!” While this scene may be reminiscent of your regular weekend foursome at the local country club, it’s also being played out on a daily basis in living rooms all over the world, thanks to UTour Golf, SkillGround’s free, full-featured online golf game where players tee it up under realistic golf conditions and play for real money. “Golf is a game that has a lot of mass market appeal,” explains Michael Haines, a managing partner and founder of SkillGround’s Dublin-based parent company, Groove Media. “And playing golf online is a fairly easy thing for people to understand versus other skill games like the shooting or fighting games that can be quite difficult for the average person to learn and to be able to compete in.” SkillGround launched UTour Golf in August of 2007 and in just two months, it saw nearly one million holes played. In less than three months, 250,000 games had been played and by the end of the year the totals rose to 2.5 million holes played and 570,000 games. So, how and why has UTour thrived in such a short period of time? There are reasons aplenty, starting with the fact that since it’s a skill game, U.S. players can make deposits easily. In fact, the U.S. is one of UTour’s three biggest markets, along with the U.K. and Canada. Also, there’s Haines’s assertion that golf is unlike any other skill game out there. “It’s a different animal,” says Haines, who has more than 20 years of experience in ‘FORE’ ward progress