Lisburn man launches Euro app

Steven McComb’s free-to-enter game, GAWA (Green and White Army) Fantasy Football, plays like the tradiitonal fantasy football game but with a little Northern Ireland twist.

Each team must have two Northern Ireland players during the group stages.

Steven explained how his success with his game, www.the-draft.com (now www.unique11.co.uk), led to the new collaboration with the IFA.

“The Draft did quite well,” he said. “We had users from 35 countries and saw our unique users grow from 40,000 a month to 100,000 a month.

“The IFA has a new commerical director who has brought some new thinking. They want to improve fan engagement and off the back of the hype for the Euros we have launched this game as official partners.”

There are plenty of reasons to sign up as well with some top prizes on offer.

The top prize is four VIP Tickets for the first Home World Cup Qualifier (Saturday 8th October 2016).

Second Place will win a signed Northern Ireland shirt while third will grab themselves a signed Northern Ireland football.

There will also be prizes for the round winners, with two match tickets to the first home World Cup Qualifier up for grabs at the end of each round.

The game was officially launched on Friday night (27th May) at Northern Ireland’s 3-0 friendly win over Belarus at the National Stadium at Windsor Park.

“We already have around 400 or 500 people signed up,” Steven said. “There are some big prizes on offer and we hope to get a few more prizes from our sponsors.”

While it is exciting times for Steven and his company, he is hoping to use this as a springboard to bigger and better things.

He said: “This is a big opportunity for us. We want to use it to branch out and extend into other sports and leagues.

“It is a good test case to show to larger sporting bodies what we can do.”

GAWA Fantasy Football is free to play and anyone wishing to sign up can do at: http://gawafantasyfootball.com/.

The deadline for teams to be submitted is Fridat 10th June as Euro2016 officially kicks off that evening.