Everyone loves a good deal, but what if you could also get the chance to win an even better deal? Throw in a sporting event, and you’ve got Squarz , a sweepstakes that uses gamification to add an extra element of fun to specials and promotions.
Based on the popular sports pool Office Squares, every promotion on Squarz is tied to an upcoming sporting event and incorporates a game board with 100 squares. Each participant is assigned a spot on the grid, and the winning square is determined by the score or some other stat from the event. Since there’s no way to predict who might win, it’s essentially a micro-sweepstakes in which everyone has a 1-in-100 chance to win the big prize. But, unlike Office Squares, everyone walks away a “winner,” because every player still gets the deal.
In this interview, Squarz founder and CEO Chris Foufas explains how he came up with the idea. “Every year, around the Super Bowl and NCAA tournament, I would see everyone passing around their office square pools, and everyone would get in,” he says. “I saw this great game that everyone loved to play — I would see people playing it in restaurants — it was everywhere. And no one out there was even touching it on a commercial level. I saw the opportunity to tie in a deal or promotion, as well as the chance to win.”
The site launched in September and now has about 10,000 users. Squarz is also starting to expand to restaurants and sports bars, so that when customers come in to watch a game, they can sign up and have a chance to win prizes like drinks, appetizers or gift cards throughout the game.
As Foufas points out, Groupon made the coupon cool, and now Squarz is trying to make the sweepstakes cool. “There’s a social element, and there is always a promotion or offer tied in,” he says. “In the end it’s that chance to win that everyone seems to love.”
