Top Eleven: how Nordeus markets and monetises its football game

Source: AppInTop Free SPY Service

Top Eleven is the #1 top grossing sports game in the UK today. Tomorow it is likely to stay this way. To learn from the best we have invited Nebo Radovic, the marketing manager as a guest to our mobile app marketing podcast to talk about how Nordeus markets its football manager Top Eleven. Here are the best bits from the 40-minute interview.

On platforms

Nordeus started on the web, as a Facebook game, which is a more viral platform than mobile. The company also found that it is easier to reach more users on Android, probably because there are more devices. iOS was the hardest platform to grow the userbase on.

Advertising ROI

Having started as a Facebook game, it was easier for Nordeus to stick with Facebook even when the game moved on to the mobile platform. So the Facebook social graph is used well, as well as the Facebook advertising. 

Aside from Facebook the company, that has a very strong analytics team, continuously tests other sources of mobile ads as well as Google. The company gets a positive investment on advertising, although the exact figures are not disclosed.

Geographical differences

Some countries are more expensive to get in than the others because viral and social factors differ from culture to culture. In some countrs people are more social and like playing with their friends.

As for the platform differences, iOS works best in the US and even though only a small part of the country is interested in football, this is a loyal and well-paying audience. iOS is generally very important in the developed countries such as UK, Canada, Australia and Germany, where Top Eleven also  maintains the top positions.

Because of Samsung, South Korea is an Android country, so it is essential to be present on Android there. 

Top Eleven monetises well in Scandinavia, Germany, UK and Switzerland, although not specific to sports, the gamers in those countries in general spend more money on games than elsewhere.

Cross-promotion

Considering that Facebook is the first platform the game was released on, the web users are offered opportunity to play the game on a mobile devices and vice versa to offer people choice to play Top Eleven as much as possible. Using a single sign-on with Facebook account helped. 

Utilising non-paying audience

30 percent of the Top Eleven audience are teenagers that do not have money of their own, but they help improve engagement of the game, spread the word and bring new users. They also are very competitive payers. 

To compete with them older players (with credit cards on their own) that do not have as much time to  spend on building the teams during the game process, are spending money on bying process, players and other resources to compete against them.

Making money with football clubs

Gamers like to have official merchandise of their football club, they like to associate themselves with the brand. So the football clubs share revenue with Nordeus, and to grow that revenue they also promote the games to their fans. Of course the number of clubs the company works with in any particular time is limited, but the additional revenue and marketing boost certainly helps.

In-app purchases

The top 3 in-app purchases made by the usesr are tokens to buy new players, new facilities and official merchandise. 

As far as monetisation is concerned, sponsored turnaments, e.g. by Gilette or Google Play, is additional source of revenue, although such events are usually one-off.

To listen to the full interview with Nebo Radovic of Nordeus, download the episode from iTunes, find it on TuneIn and tell us what you think.