Website Profile: No Cat-napping for SundayLeague.com - August 2004  

In the second of a new series of features profiling sports websites, Jeffrey Lee, marketing director for Cat Games, tells Sport and Technology all about the company's successful soccer management site, SundayLeague.com.

Sports websites have proliferated until there are now millions. Dedicated sports sites, media organisations, sports clubs and individual athletes have all embraced the web for publicity and hopefully, profit. Many sites have succeeded in building a large online audience. Building revenues as been a harder task. 
Cat Games was launched in 2001 to help maximise the effect of sporting websites. The premise is that popular online games, based around a shared sporting affinity can generate massive online communities and substantial revenues.  The first game SundayLeague (www.sundayleague.com) was based on the world's top sport, soccer, and has become the biggest online soccer management game with over 1.2m players worldwide. SundayLeague was followed by SeniorLeagueHockey (www.seniorleaguehockey.com) which is the leading online ice hockey management game. More games, including baseball and cricket are launching soon.
Based on the award-winning technology of the Cat Games online games engine, all the products are funny, cartoon-style games in which a player is given a team of lazy no-hopers to manage in competition against other managers worldwide. Managers are responsible for all aspects of their club, including team selection, tactics, training, playing style and aggression levels from 'pansy' to 'psycho'!

Partnering with the big guns

The games are partnered with the top websites in their sport - so SundayLeague is available on the Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea websites for instance, with the colours and branding of those top sporting brands.  This 'white labelling' means that visitors to the website move seamlessly between the website and the game, which is perceived as an integral part of the website offering.
The game is available in seven languages and has just secured its first major international partners, launching with Roma in Italy and soon with some top German and French clubs. The game also appears on top sports portals like Sky Sports, Rivals and Wanadoo in the UK and Sport4fun in France. 
In a similar vein, SeniorLeagueHockey runs off the world's top ice hockey website - NHL.com. The baseball game, launching this summer (www.bushleaguebaseball.com) will be partnered with a world-leading baseball organisation.

Revenue streams

The basic business model is that the games are free to play. Some game options need credits. These can be earned by winning games, given away by sponsors, or bought from as little as £1 by SMS message. Managers welcome the fact that they are not forced to pay for the game, and that they get something for their credits in a transactional deal, rather than a flat subscription demand.
The games so far have over 1.5m managers, with around 10,000 joining every week. The games are highly interactive with managers spend around 20 minutes per day on the game. Communication and interactivity are encouraged by a variety of in-built forums, messaging and chat and the games generate over 20m page impressions each month. SundayLeague has achieved Hitwise rankings in the top 10 UK games sites and top 20 UK soccer sites.
This level of activity creates a large inventory for advertisers, meaning that even managers who do not pay bring a certain value to the games. Among others, advertisers and sponsors of the games include Coca-Cola, Electronic Arts, O2 and the leading US cellular company, Nextel.
The interactive nature of the audience also means that Cat Games learns a lot about its users in feedback and data capture surveys. This enables highly targeted campaigns to be run to the email list of 450,000 subscribers or via personal in-game messages.

It's a design thing

Part of the success of SundayLeague has been the layout and interface, which needed to handle substantial gameplay complexity, but still not be daunting. An advantage is that many people are familiar with the basic principles of management games from various PC/console products. Cartoon-style artwork reinforces the funny slant of the site, and allows large images to download quickly due to low colour use. It was also important to create a game that could run on any browser and modem with no additional plug-ins or downloads.
Cat Games knew the popular management game format would work online - with the added attraction that managers could compete in a community against other human managers, rather than alone against the computer. The idea for SundayLeague developed when Cat Games saw that the plethora of existing soccer management games all try to make the most realistic game possible. They create premier league, champions league then world cup versions, all emulating the world's top players. This is all great, but pretty similar and not really much fun - and there is a lot of humour in sports!
So Cat Games decided on a more original, irreverent approach. Whilst its gameplay is the equal of traditional competitors, the game does away with previous reliance on real players and statistics. It captures the grass-roots spirit and fun of soccer, the sport that SundayLeague players know from personal experience.
The games are aimed at boys of all ages - mainly at the person who's passionate about soccer - the person who's got up on a freezing cold Sunday morning with a hangover, and fallen flat on his face after his 35-yard Beckham-style free kick has hit a tree.
SundayLeague's main strengths are its addictive mixture of humour, gameplay and vibrant, competitive online community. The site's funny, unique graphic style is key, as is its technical reliability. Also there are prizes to be won - and it's free!

For further information contact Marketing Director Jeffrey Lee - +44 (0) 208 376 8805, Jeffrey@catgames.com

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