Nextwave has signed a three-year licence programme to use Cricket Australia’s intellectual property and develop a new ‘Big Bash Cricket’ game, leveraging its popular mobile cricket gaming platform.
September, 17th, 2018
Gaming technology firm Nazara Technologies’ subsidiary Nextwave Multimedia has signed a partnership with Cricket Australia to develop mobile-based cricket league games for the international market.
Chennai-based Nextwave, in which Nazara acquired a majority stake this year, has signed a three-year licence programme to use Cricket Australia’s intellectual property and develop a new ‘Big Bash Cricket’ game, leveraging its popular mobile cricket gaming platform.
The KFC Big Bash League (BBL) and Rebel Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) are professional Twenty20 cricket leagues in Australia, which Nextwave will replicate on the mobile platform. These will be launched by mid-November.
The partnership comes at a time when IPO-bound Nazara is looking to expand its cricket gaming portfolio and stepping up investments in sports gaming organically and across subsidiaries, including Nextwave and e-sports gaming firm NODWIN.
The Big Bash leagues, first established in 2011, are played annually throughout the Australian summer between teams representing Australian cities, with the Adelaide Strikers and the Sydney Sixers being the reigning champions.
Nextwave develops casual and multi-player games in the sports genre and owns the IP for one of the most popular cricket games based out of India–the World Cricket Championship. The partnership with Cricket Australia is a significant step for Nextwave Multimedia in its quest to expand its mobile cricket gaming platform globally.
“At annual revenues of about $3.2 billion, Australia is a very mature market in terms of cricket gaming. To enter such a market with an established player like Cricket Australia helps us control our costs on customer acquisition even as it opens up the doors to take our WCC games to other international markets,” said PR Rajendran, CEO, Nextwave Multimedia, which has over 15 million monthly active users across its games.
By the end of FY 2018-19, sports gaming across genres of e-sports, mobile sports gaming and sports betting is expected to form about 20-25% of Nazara’s revenue pie.
“Cricket fans around the globe have been missing a high-quality gaming experience on their mobile devices, unlike their counterpart soccer fans, which this partnership with Cricket Australia will fix for Nextwave Multimedia,” said Manish Agarwal, CEO, Nazara Technologies. “A large part of the revenues in this genre have been ad-based but we will see more in-app purchase (paid model) based games and that will catapult this category for us significantly.”
Nazara, which has also invested in mobile gaming companies in the sports genre such as Mastermind Sports Ltd, Moonglabs Technologies and HalaPlay Technologies, offers gaming subscription services in over 60 countries globally.
With Nazara’s cricket pedigree that includes work with Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli, Nextwave’s World Cricket Championship, and now Cricket Australia’s Big Bash Leagues, it is now in a position to further strengthen its foothold in the cricket gaming space.
