JetSynthesys‘ Nautilus Mobile, known for its Real Cricket series, is one of the top mobile game development studios and is particularly famous for its passion for cricket gaming. Since the launch of Real Cricket in 2014, the series has been a hit, with over 350 million downloads, one million active daily downloads worldwide, and 6.8 million monthly active users.
The brand’s objective is to invest all of its creativity and skill into creating multi-platform experiences that set the industry standard and are downloaded by millions of players every day.
In recent times, the brand has inked a licensing agreement with three Indian Premier League (IPL) teams, Mumbai Indians (MI), Rajasthan Royals (RR) and Lucknow Super Giants (LSG).
Through this development, Real Cricket users are now able to play with the cricketers from the given teams in the mobile game. As per the deal, the players from the aforementioned teams are included in the fully licensed mobile cricket game owing to this extraordinary cooperation. The game includes players like Hardik Pandya, Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Sanju Samson, Jos Buttler, KL Rahul, Nicholas Pooran, and others, making it a realistic and pleasant experience for cricket lovers across the world.
Furthermore, this agreement combines the team’s official insignia, clothing, and other elements to enhance the game’s authenticity.
To know more about the partnership, SportsMint Media reached out to Mr Anuj Mankar, Director & CEO of Nautilus Mobile. In a brief interview, Mr Anuj spoke on the business model of Real Cricket, the process behind team licensing for simulation games, and more.
1. After onboarding teams and players in the game, does Nautilus Mobile aim to become a commercial partner of IPL teams to gather the eyeballs the competition attracts?
At this point in time, our goal is to add the utmost levels of authenticity to Real Cricket. It has been a long-term vision and dream to bring in the official teams and players. We understand that this is just the start and over the next 12-15 months we will keep adding more partnerships and tie-ups. We will look at the right commercial opportunities at a later stage when we feel the product is primed to benefit from those kinds of deals.
2. What is the business model of a game like Real Cricket?
Real Cricket games are typical “freemium” mobile games, which means it is free to download however we monetize primarily through in-app purchases (micro-transactions) and in-game programmatic advertisements. We have also found brands and partners who have been innovative and done direct deals with us which allows us to put their brand into the game along the stadium periphery etc. just as you would see in an actual cricket match.
3. Can you please explain the process behind team and player licensing for simulation games?
Well, it differs depending on who you are going after. We chose to go through a partner who is well-versed with licensing deals and works with all IPL teams regularly to help us mediate and close the deals. I think having such a partner makes things a lot easier to navigate, considering there is a lot of discussion, paperwork, and nuances required to successfully get to an agreement. We have also partnered with WCA through Winners’ Alliance where it was more of a direct process. A vastly experienced and high-ranking individual in Winners’ Alliance reached out to me, only for us to meet in Mumbai earlier in the year. It was a great experience as we found our visions to match, and things quickly materialised. Obviously, once the outreach is made and commercials are agreed – the regular legal paperwork and handshakes entail. There are intricate guidelines that need to be followed, approval processes, etc. during integration but I am pretty sure that the results will be formidable.
4. With over 350 million downloads, can you explain the in-app advertising and how it becomes a selling point for potential advertisers?
Our games don’t just get downloads, we on average have about 2mn unique users playing our games every day for over 52 mins on average. This provides a great avenue for advertisers to showcase their products and brands. Essentially, games and apps are nothing but digital real estate. But at the same time, the attention and engagement that all of us get are way more than any hoarding in the city or website. This makes advertising on apps and games a natural choice especially since this generation is digital first.
5. Apart from the mobile gaming community, how does the entity aim to cater to other cricket enthusiasts?
With Real Cricket, Nautilus, Skyesports and Jetsynthesys we launched the world’s first e-cricket league last year called GEPL (Global E-Cricket Premier League) where the top athletes and players from Real Cricket were put into teams to compete in a league played on Real Cricket 24. The prize pool was INR 2.51cr and the finals were held at the Balewadi Stadium in Pune. What we witnessed was truly epic with close matches and excitement typical of an actual cricket match. Some of our players had physical handicaps which would not allow them to play regular cricket but here they all played on the same stage, on the same platform and were equally competitive. It is our dream to build this further and create an absolute thrilling viewing experience. We had a lot of women, children and older people in the crowd who had come to watch these matches, and I can tell you very proudly that they were glued to the action!
Now that e-sports has been included in the Olympics moving forward, our dream and ambition is to make Real Cricket part of the e-sports Olympics and be India’s first export to the world in terms of an e-sportable title.
6. Can you please elaborate on the incremental off-the-field revenues cricketers will receive through Real Cricket?
Our agreements are directly with the IPL teams, so I would not be able to elaborate much on the distribution there. However, about our partnership with Winners’ Alliance who represent WCA – some parts of the commercial arrangement will be shared with all the players we have integrated with, leading to passive income for those cricketers.
7. How can cricketers leverage the visibility received via the game?
We have tied up with these cricketers and teams to in fact increase visibility for Real Cricket. We believe the added layers of authenticity that we get from these partnerships truly set it apart from the rest. Regarding the larger superstars, I believe they have enough visibility. Some upcoming stars may find that their names have an added recall due to our gamers being able to play as them in Real Cricket! Regardless of the status of the player, one thing cool will always be that they will be able to see their digital selves in a video game!
8. Can you please shed light on content creation for social media featuring the in-game players for fan engagement?
We have plans to run some exciting Fan Tournaments for MI, LSG, and RR individually. This is a particularly fun exercise and one we are eager to execute. This will have our users and their fans sign up for a fan tournament, winners of which will receive both cash prizes as well as some exclusive giveaways from their favourite teams. Other than that, we intend to create some fun campaigns on social media, which will lead to better engagement and more community-building for the product.