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6 min read

vGoal goes ALBA BERLIN: The evolution of a prediction game

Initial Situation

 A few weeks ago, we received an inquiry from Interzero, a leading circular economy company committed to making raw material cycles more efficient and promoting a resource-saving circular economy. Interzero is the main sponsor of ALBA BERLIN, one of Germany's top basketball teams, and was looking for an internal prediction game for employees that could ideally be integrated into the existing SharePoint and Teams environment. Max Beer, Marketing Manager Sponsoring and Events at Interzero, came across our solution vGoal, a prediction game for SharePoint and Teams. We developed vGoal as an HR tool for team building, enabling company employees to easily predict the results of European Championship and World Cup soccer matches via an application. vGoal Mac

Max Beer, Marketing Manager Sponsoring & Events at Interzero: “In VIALUTIONS, we have found a partner who was able to implement our specific request: an internal prediction game via Microsoft Teams. As the main sponsor of ALBA BERLIN, the prediction game allows us to involve our employees in the partnership. We are therefore delighted to be able to follow an exciting season on and off the court as a company.”

 

Challenge

The question now arose as to whether we could adapt our soccer prediction game for Interzero so that it could be used to predict the results of ALBA BERLIN's games in the Basketball Bundesliga. We were very keen to implement the project, but first had to figure out what adjustments this would require on the technical side. The structures of soccer and basketball differ greatly, not only—obviously—in terms of the sport itself. For us, the challenges were as follows: In a soccer European Championship or World Cup, there are first group stages, which then lead to knockout rounds. In basketball, there are the first and second half of the Bundesliga season. This meant that the basic structure of the prediction game had to be adapted first. In the original vGoal, there were three ways to score points: if the game result was predicted correctly, if the correct goal difference was predicted, or if at least the trend was correct. In basketball, simply because of the high number of baskets, it makes no sense to predict a specific result. In other words, it is very unlikely to correctly predict the final score. Scoring the correct “goal difference” also makes little sense here.

 

Implementation

Together with Interzero, we therefore decided to simplify the structure of the application so that users could only bet on a win or a loss. We were able to use the basic structure of vGoal, but had to make some changes to the logic. In addition, some design adjustments were requested and implemented. The addition of the Euroleague was also discussed, but this request was initially put on hold due to time constraints.vGoal Tablet

 

Outlook – What's next for the prediction game?

In the course of adapting our soccer prediction game for SharePoint and Teams, we came up with a few ideas for what a future solution could look like. For example, a Teams license is currently required in order to participate in the prediction game. This makes it considerably more difficult to involve external parties such as customers, suppliers, etc. It would be conceivable to develop an MS 365 solution. However, the current architecture does not allow for this, so the solution would have to be developed from scratch. We can certainly imagine setting up such a prediction game and thus making it usable not only for internal HR purposes but also for customer loyalty. The European Football Championship will take place in Germany in 2024, and there will be a new version of vGoal for this event. Interested parties are welcome to contact us immediately. If you are interested in a prediction game for SharePoint and Teams from another sports area and have a similar app in mind for your employees and colleagues, please do not hesitate to contact us. We would be happy to customize this app for you.