[Digital Today reporter Chi-gyu Hwang (황치규)] IT information services company Hecto Innovation said on June 25 it has strengthened an ongoing football match prediction event on prediction platform Polyball and added events with total prizes of 100 million won.

Polyball will start an event at 1 p.m. on June 25 that pays 1 million won per person to up to 100 users who correctly predict all results of the knockout-stage matches of a global football festival.

It will also diversify how users participate in predictions. From the fourth round of events starting on June 29, it will add “Beat Polyball,” an event in which users compete against “Polyball AI,” an AI-based match prediction system.

Polyball is currently running a prediction event for the global football festival. It gives users who correctly predict each match result “balls” that can be used to enter prize draws for items such as a “Nintendo Switch 2” and “dining-out coupons.”

The Polyball football prediction event also operates a ranking competition system in which more correct results build up a “hit score” for match prediction “sharpshooters.” A correct match result gives a base 100 points. If a user correctly predicts an upset with a low selection ratio, a weighting is applied, allowing up to 200 points per match. Team ranking matches, in which users form teams with friends and acquaintances based on hit scores, and individual ranking matches based on personal score totals are held. For each ranking match, various rewards are given to top-ranked users in each round, including 10,000 won Naver Pay vouchers.

Launched in March, Polyball is a prediction platform that began with professional baseball match predictions and offers free prediction games across various fields such as sports matches as well as politics, the economy and culture. Hecto Innovation is pursuing service advancement based on blockchain technologies such as non-fungible tokens (NFT) that cannot be forged or altered and digital asset wallets.

A Hecto Innovation official said, “Polyball is a user-participation platform where users can go beyond simply watching sports matches to predict directly, compete and gain rewards.” The official added, “With the global football festival finals as an opportunity, we will present various content including AI match prediction and provide users with a new sports fandom experience.”

According to Polyball user prediction data, more than 90 percent of users who took part in match predictions expect South Korea to advance to the round of 32.