Introducing Predict & Win: Turn the Season's Biggest Matches Into Store Traffic

The biggest engagement moments of the year are not always on your marketing calendar. They are on the world's. This summer, the world's attention turns to football, and for a full month billions of people will follow every match and check scores more often than their inbox.

For most stores, that attention passes right by. You can feel the energy, but a one-off discount does not capture it, and building a custom campaign for a four-week window is rarely worth the effort.

Predict & Win closes that gap. It is a prediction game your customers play right inside your store: they predict match scores, earn points for how close they get, climb a live leaderboard, and win rewards you choose. It goes live in one click on Shopify, with SDKs ready for mobile apps, and runs all tournament long with no work for your team.

Here is what is new, and what it means for your store.

A game your customers actually want to play

Until now, riding a major sports moment meant stitching together a banner, a discount, and a lot of hope. Predict & Win replaces that with a real game.

It lives as a banner in your loyalty widget. Customers sign up, tap in, and predict the final score of each match before kickoff using a simple score picker. Inside the game they get three tabs, Matches, History, and Board, plus a running header showing their points, rank, and how many matches they have played. When a match ends, it moves to History with the final score, their pick, and the points they earned.

What this means for you: every match on the schedule becomes a reason for a customer to come back, open your store, and engage with your brand. That is dozens of return visits over a single month, from an audience that opted in to play.

Scoring that rewards getting close, not just getting it right

Most prediction mechanics are all-or-nothing. You nail the exact score or you get nothing, so casual players drop off fast.

Predict & Win scores on accuracy instead. Customers earn 4 points for the exact score, 3 for the right goal difference, 2 for picking the correct winner, and 1 just for playing. In the knockout rounds, calling how a match ends, full time, extra time, or penalties, adds a bonus on top. Only the highest tier counts per prediction, so the logic stays simple and fair.

What this means for you: even customers who guess wrong still walk away with something. That participation point is small, but it keeps people in the game match after match after match, which is exactly the repeat behavior you want.

A live leaderboard that keeps them coming back

Competition is the engine. Across the tournament, every prediction adds to a customer's total and reshuffles a live leaderboard. When two players are level on points, the one who predicted correctly earliest ranks higher, so there is always a reason to get in before kickoff.

You decide whether to show or hide the leaderboard. Show it to lean into the rivalry and the daily check-ins, or hide it and run the game purely on per-match rewards.

What this means for you: a leaderboard turns a one-time prediction into a month-long habit. Customers come back not just to play, but to see where they stand.

Rewards you control, your way

This is where Predict & Win flexes to fit your store. You define rewards in two independent buckets, and you need at least one.

• Per-match rewards are set by result category, exact score, same goal difference, correct winner, and participation, and that mapping applies to every match in the game.
• Leaderboard rewards go to the top finishers, up to 10 positions, awarded once at the end of the tournament.

And you deliver them whichever way suits you: through Gameball's built-in reward component, through the external reward API, or by extracting the list of qualifying customers and fulfilling it yourself, which is perfect for a sponsored, physical headline prize.

This works for you if your brand wants a seasonal lift with rewards that match your margins:

• Apparel and fan merch can hand the leaderboard winner a signed jersey and give every player a small voucher.
• Food and beverage can reward each correct winner with a free item on the next order.
• Sports, outdoor, and electronics brands can save the big reward for the top 10 and use small participation perks to keep everyone engaged.

Pick the matches that matter to your audience

You are in control of the fixture list too. Choose exactly which matches to open for predictions, or filter by country to pull every match a given team plays and add them in one go.

What this means for you: a local or regional brand can open just its home side's run, while a global store can run the whole tournament. The game only ever shows the matches you selected.

The audience you keep after the final whistle

Most seasonal campaigns end when the event does. This one leaves you with something durable.

After every match, each participant is categorized by their result: exact score, same goal difference, correct winner, or participation. You can extract any of those groups, or the leaderboard ranks, with a click. Use the list to reward people, or to build a "football fans" segment you can re-engage long after the tournament is over.

What this means for you: Predict & Win is not just a month of engagement, it is an opted-in, re-targetable audience you own going forward. The traffic spikes during the tournament, and the segment keeps paying off after it.

Live in one click on Shopify

Predict & Win is available on Gameball's Pro and Guru plans for Shopify and Salla, and for Enterprise accounts. It installs in one click on Shopify, with SDKs ready for mobile apps, so you can be live in minutes with no developer work.

One detail worth knowing: customers sign up to play. That sign-up is what turns anonymous match-day attention into a known, contactable audience for your store.

What's Next

Predict & Win is part of a simple idea we keep coming back to: the world's biggest attention moments should belong to your store, not pass it by. This is the first of more seasonal, real-time games designed to turn cultural moments into owned engagement.

Have questions about Predict & Win, or want help planning your rewards before kickoff? Reach out to your Customer Success Manager, or contact our team at [email protected].

Not on Gameball yet? Book a demo and we will get you set up before the first whistle.