Hooplo to launch Bolt and Ronaldo-branded social games
Social publisher to bring out games featuring Jamaican sprinter and Portuguese footballer.
Social games publisher Hooplo Media is to launch two new titles in partnership with Olympic 100m record holder Usain Bolt (pictured) and Cristiano Ronaldo, the most expensive footballer of all time.
Usain Bolt Athletics and Cristiano Ronaldo’s Footy! will be rolled out over the coming months, complimenting the publisher’s social cricket offering Howzat Cricket, developed in partnership with Game Ventures.
Commenting on the launch, Bolt said: “I have played many different games since I was a child and am still playing today, so you can imagine how I’m really looking forward to my own game.
“I’m the fastest man in the world and will definitely be the fastest man online when playing Usain Bolt Athletics,” he said.
Hooplo CEO Aly Chesney said that the games were designed to take advantage of the lack of strong social sports products on the market, and to capitalise on the success of Howzat: “We see social sports games as a largely underserved genre. The Usain Bolt and Cristiano Ronaldo titles will join our already successful publishing of Howzat Cricket.
We’ve been excited by Howzat’s growth to over 200,000 daily users on Facebook. It is now the largest online cricket game on social platforms,” he explained.
Hooplo, which has around 5m monthly active users across all products and channels, is to license the games to a number of leading social brands and distribution partners in the coming weeks, according to the company’s COO Chris Lee.
“We’ll also be in a position later in the year to talk about new games in other genres which are being released, including internally developed and externally published titles,” Lee went on to say.
Cristiano Ronaldo Footy! has been launched in partnership with Digital Artists Entertainment, a digital media brand focusing on the sports and entertainment sectors.
“We are very excited to help Hooplo and Cristiano create a world class, exciting and addictively fun football game. With over 43 million fans on Facebook, we feel this game is going to be a huge hit with his fans all over the world,” Scott Rupp, CEO at Digital Artists Entertainment said.
Photo courtesy of Steven Zwerink under Creative Commons licence.