Spotlight Sports Group Enters Partnership With Engage Games
Spotlight Sports Group, the global racing technology and media company behind Racing Post, has struck a partnership with Engage Games that takes it into the games vertical for the first time.
Announced on September 3, the deal pairs Spotlight's product and content distribution network with Engage Games' free-to-play and pay-to-play platform, giving operators access to bespoke games built collaboratively with each partner.
Engage Games, based in Liverpool, brings fantasy, predictor, survivor and bet builder mechanics to the partnership. Racing titles will run on Spotlight's own Smart View Engine, extending that technology beyond racecards and tipping products into games for the first time.
Spotlight said operators are increasingly turning to free-to-play games to drive engagement, retention, reactivation and acquisition, and the partnership is designed to give its global network of sportsbook and racing partners a direct route into that space.
Rob Brown, B2B Growth Director at Spotlight Sports Group, said: "This partnership marks a significant step for Spotlight Sports Group as we extend our product capability into the games space. In Engage Games, we have found a partner with a proven ability to deliver games that produce real commercial outcomes for partners."
Ryan Lawrence, founder of Engage Games, said: "Partnering with Spotlight Sports Group, one of the most trusted names in global racing and sports betting, reflects the reputation and results we've built, and it's the natural next step in our mission, to get better game experiences into the hands of as many players as possible."
Track Record Behind The Deal
Engage Games has already delivered results for major UK operators. Final One Standing, a survivor-format game built for William Hill, produced 92% weekly retention and generated 105,000 reactivations and first-time depositors over six months, making it the most successful free-to-play game in William Hill's history. It has since launched in Spain with William Hill, Engage Games' first step outside the UK and Ireland.
GoalBuilder+, launched with Betfred, was the first free-to-play game to use real pitch and goal coordinate data, challenging players to predict the exact scoring foot, pitch area and goal location of the next goal. It beat its entry targets by 220% in its opening month.
Lucky Stable, a free-to-play horse racing game built for William Hill and The Jockey Club and powered by Spotlight's Smart View ratings, was integrated directly into William Hill's sportsbook and featured on-course at this year's Cheltenham Festival.
It attracted more than 500,000 entries in its first four weeks, four times William Hill's previous benchmark for a racing free-to-play product. Most recently, Engage Games launched Matchday Challenge with BOYLE Sports, a bet builder-style game played on a peer-to-peer leaderboard.
Part Of A Wider Push Into Technology
The Engage Games deal follows Spotlight's hire of Adam Gill as chief technology officer in June, who joined from market research firm Savanta to lead technology and engineering across the group. In January, Spotlight had already outlined a 2026 Racing Innovation strategy built around its Smart View Tipping Feed and Racing Bet Builder products.
For operators watching how sports betting sites compete on engagement rather than price alone, free-to-play mechanics like these have become one of the clearest ways to keep sports and racing customers active between events.
Spotlight's move into games adds a well-capitalised distribution partner to a market that Engage Games had, until now, been building largely on its own.
