Expect 120 million unique gamers to play online soccer during the Fifa World Cup this year

Huddled in a corner seat at a gaming parlour in Andheri (East), 16-year-old Jotin Chand is deeply involved in playing a video game. His facial expressions reveal that he’s tense. Jotin is playing Pro Evolution, an online soccer game which has stadia and crowds that appear stunningly real.

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Fifa Online is one of the most popular online soccer games created by the world leader in this genre, Electronic Arts. The gaming industry expects at least 10 per cent of the global Internet population, or 120 million unique gamers, to play online soccer during the Fifa World Cup. Worldwide, online gaming is a $1.3-billion market in terms of advertising revenues, subscriptions and virtual item sales.

Mumbai-based Games2Win, which currently has soccer games like Soccer Sensation in its portfolio, is lining up a couple of more such games with an investment of Rs 10 lakh. The company expects soccer games to contribute about 10 per cent to its revenues this year.

“Soccer sells — even in a cricket-crazy country like ours. Simply walk into a gaming parlour and you are more likely to find gamers playing Fifa or Pro Evolution rather than cricket,” reasons Alok Kejriwal, chief executive officer of Games2Win.

“The craze for soccer is rising, and so is the number of accounts on social networking sites. There are fancy football games for serious football enthusiasts and experts. Then, there are the funny ones, which are spoofs of soccer controversies. The best part is the soccer rivalries on social networking sites where one fan challenges his rival friend,” explains Kejriwal.

Games2Win recently developed a football application for Facebook called Football Kick Off. “We soon plan to take all our soccer games into the iPhone,” he adds.

Joining the league is Hyderabad-based 7Seas Technologies, which is set to launch two games — Soccer Ball and Soccer Tournament — with an investment of around Rs 5 lakh each for the Fifa World Cup 2010.

“The two games, targeted at international gamers especially teenagers, will be made available on our website www.onlinerealgames.com next week. We expect to get return on investment (RoI) on these games by March 2010,” says L Maruti Sanker, managing director of 7Seas Technologies.

Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Entertainment’s gaming subsidiary Zapak, too, is eyeing the opportunity. The company already has five games. Zapak launched Power Soccer, considered the world’s best online 3D browser-based MMOG (massively multiplayer online game), in India last year.

“Power Soccer is a great fit for our users, it is packaged with extremely small download for games of this quality. Sports is a popular genre on Zapak with cricket topping the charts followed by football. We expect these games to receive more than 5 million gameplays a month,” says Rohit Sharma, chief executive officer of Zapak.

Mobile gaming companies are not outfield players when it comes to soccer, according to Nazara Technologies, considering that the global mobile gaming market is around $2 billion and expected to double in the next two years. The share of mobile soccer games will be around 2 per cent of this.

“Till now, we haven’t developed anything related to soccer because of its low demand in India. However, due to the hype around the Fifa Cup, we are developing a few games,” says Nitin Mittersain, chief executive of Nazara Technologies.

Nazara will invest $50,000 (approximately Rs 23 lakh) to develop a high-quality mobile soccer game targeting gamers in the 10 to 30-year age group.

“Given the craze and huge fan following for soccer games, RoI from our games should be 100 per cent in a period of one year. We expect revenues of anywhere between $200,000 (Rs 92 lakh) and $500,000 (Rs 2.3 crore),” concludes Mittersain.

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