Brief

Manchester United on Mobile

From L to R: Sameer Pabari (Manchester United Director of Media), Rajesh Sawhney (President, Reliance Entertainment) and CEO of Jump Games, Salil Bhargava

Jump Games signs an exclusive global deal to design, develop and distribute mobile games with Manchester United Football Club.

Beating the global game developer biggies such as Gameloft and EA, Jump Games, a part of Reliance Entertainment—an Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group signed an exclusive deal with one of the biggest football clubs in the world, the English Premier League champions, Manchester United Football Club. As part of this deal, Jump Games will be developing mobile games for Manchester United for the period of three years and hence would be their exclusive mobile game partners across the world. During the tenure of the deal, Jump Games will develop six games a year on the mobile platform which will be distributed across the world through local operators and across handsets.

“In this complex world, mobile is dominant form of entertainment with around 13 billion people using it. In sports, football is the most popular game on the globe with a viewership of around four billion. The combination of both served as the perfect match to reach the global audience and hence the deal,” said Rajesh Sawhney, President, Reliance Entertainment. According to him, this is one of the biggest deals of mobile content and quotes it higher than the recent highest IPL (Indian premier league) deal which was worth $112 million.

It was interesting to see such sports-related deal coming out of Indian boardroom and it will be really nice if they can live up to the high standards of a club such as Manchester United. Explaining the deal, Salil Bhargava, CEO, Jump Games said, “As part of the deal, we will take content and create around Manchester United. The games will not only be football games but will also include games revolving around club related puzzles and trivia which will bring people closer to club.” In fact, the first game itself will not be a football game. Instead, it will be a crossword puzzle called as Manchester United Word It, but the next one would certainly be a football game. In terms of Indian pricing, the game would cost around Rs. 50 each across operators and in some cases would also be available on pay per play basis in which user would have to pay each time he desires to play the game.

Talking about the deal and Indian selection, Sameer Pabari, Director –Media, Manchester United Football Club said, “The quality of product and the team of Jump Games were amongst the major factors for the selection of the deal. As far as India is concerned, according to our survey, it is the third largest market for us in terms of number of fans of Manchester United and hence it is very important market to tap.” Manchester United has an organized global fan following of about 300 million and out of which India has about 20 million fans.

This deal would certainly boost the confidence of Indian game developers and probably would enhance the quality of games developed in their centers. Mobile games development thus, has taken a global route and it would be really icing on the cake if we can break the ice in large PC or console games development.