Tipstake
Tipstake Tipstake is a sports prediction platform designed to connect punters and pundits through verified accuracy, not guesswork. Built around credibility, transparency, and community accountability, it gives Nigerian bettors access to trustworthy tips in a market long defined by scams and unreliable analytics.
Client
Tipstake
Industry
Sports Betting & Gaming Tech
Service
UX Research & Web Design
Duration
9 Months
OVERVIEW
Tipstake is a web platform built to solve one of Nigeria's most persistent betting problems: the absence of reliable, verifiable information. Designed for punters seeking better-informed bets and pundits looking to build credibility, Tipstake combines a global leaderboard, verified tipster profiles, and performance analytics into one accountable ecosystem. The product covers the full user journey, from discovering tipsters and evaluating their track record, to subscribing, tracking performance, and engaging with a wider betting community.
THE CHALLENGE
Nigeria is Africa's largest gambling market, with over 60 million active bettors, yet the tipping ecosystem around it was fundamentally broken. Most bettors relied on surface-level stats or gut feeling, leading to poor decisions and frequent financial loss. Worse, the market was flooded with unverified tipsters who misrepresented their success rates, turning the space into a breeding ground for scams. The deeper problem wasn't a lack of tips, it was a lack of any way to tell a credible one from a false one.
THE RESEARCH
Before any design work began, I set out to understand Nigeria's betting culture directly. User Interviews: I spoke with local bettors and reviewed online betting forums to understand their motivations, frustrations, and unmet needs. Core insights that emerged: Desire for Credibility: Bettors were frustrated by fraudulent tipsters and wanted a system that could authenticate both tips and the people providing them. Need for Analytics: Users wanted data-driven insight into performance, not just a tipster's word. Community Focus: Nigerian bettors enjoyed connecting with others who shared their interests, suggesting a competitive, social layer could meaningfully increase engagement. Ideation and Brainstorming: Working closely with the product and development teams, I explored ways to make data and verification the central experience rather than an afterthought. This led to two key directions: a Global Leaderboard to gamify accuracy and celebrate credible tipsters, and a self-regulating subscription model that let users verify a tipster's track record before paying for their tips.
THE SOLUTION
The research reframed the product entirely. Tipstake wasn't a tipping platform, it was a credibility system with betting built on top of it. Every design decision traced back to one goal: make accuracy and trustworthiness visible before a user ever subscribes. User-Centric Interface: I designed an intuitive interface that made it easy to find tips, track performance, and engage with other users without friction. Profitability Per Stake Dashboard: A dedicated dashboard broke down each tipster's historical performance, giving users real data instead of reputation alone to base decisions on. Global Leaderboard: A leaderboard ranked tipsters by prediction accuracy, creating public accountability while turning credibility into a competitive, visible achievement. Verified Tipster Profiles: To directly address fraud, I designed verified profiles that clearly displayed each tipster's track record and transparency history. Community Engagement Tools: Forums and comment sections were integrated throughout to encourage discussion around tips, strategy, and outcomes. Iteration from Feedback: Early testing showed the dashboard's data was overwhelming, so I introduced color-coded visuals to make key insights easier to digest. The leaderboard, by contrast, tested extremely well, with users reporting a stronger sense of community and motivation. A more significant setback came post-launch: Tipstake initially shipped without a detailed tip-verification process, and user complaints made it clear stronger vetting was needed. I worked with the team to build an additional verification layer, which materially improved user trust and satisfaction.
THE RESULT
Tipstake was tracked closely after launch across engagement, retention, and trust metrics. User adoption exceeded initial projections within three months of launch. Retention rate reached 65%, indicating strong ongoing value for users. Community engagement rose 60% following the introduction of forums and social features. User engagement increased 35% within three months, driven largely by the Global Leaderboard's competitive element. Subscription rates to verified tipsters grew 28%, directly tied to the new tip-verification system. These results confirmed that designing for transparency and accountability, not just usability, was what ultimately built user trust in a market where trust was the hardest thing to earn.
Conclusion
Tipstake gave me the opportunity to design for social accountability in a space where fraud had become normalized. By building a product around verification, transparency, and community, I was able to create an experience that didn't just help users make better bets, it gave credible tipsters a real reason to stay credible. This project reinforced how thoughtful design can rebuild trust in an industry that had largely lost it, and it remains one of the clearest examples in my portfolio of design solving a problem that UI alone never could.