YuuZoo hopes to score big with Swedish tie-up

Singapore

BARELY three weeks since YuuZoo Corp armed itself with a data base of 31 million mobile gamers largely across China, the Singapore-listed social e-commerce firm is ready to work it.

YuuZoo has tied up with Sweden-based Circle of Champions Inc (CoC) to distribute and market the highly popular "Powershot Challenge" and "Striker Challenge" mobile games that were developed for the world's top football clubs namely FC Barcelona, Chelsea FC, Real Madrid, Manchester City FC, AC Milan, Liverpool FC and Arsenal FC.

These clubs have a global fan base of more than one billion while these games fetch an average revenue per paying user of as high as US$295, said the firm in an announcement to the Singapore Exchange.

Under the agreement, YuuZoo will build online "virtual clubhouses" for the football teams; this will facilitate downloading the games and enabling fans to purchase merchandise, interact with other fans and club representatives, and where YuuZoo has the relevant rights, engage in online gaming.

The revenue from all activities - in-app purchases, e-commerce, advertising and gaming - will be shared between CoC and YuuZoo.

CoC is a recently formed 50-50 joint venture between Swedish interactive marketing firm ICYOU AB and Mobile FutureWorks, a controlling shareholder of YuuZoo.

YuuZoo, which made its debut on Singapore Exchange almost a year ago after a S$490 million reverse takeover of components trader W Corp, said it was talking to TV network partners in China and Africa to launch shows to market the games to viewers.

"We already have had very favourable initial response to the idea of TV shows for the promotion of the games from some of the largest TV networks in Asia and Africa," said YuuZoo chairman and chief executive Thomas Zilliacus.

It also plans to pitch the games' appeal to a user base of over 30 million users in China and some Asian countries, an asset it acquired from a leading Shanghai-based mobile game developer last month.

On Monday, the firm said it has secured a S$30 million funding facility for the next three years from New York-based private alternative investment group GEM Global Yield Fund.

The facility, in the form of a capital commitment, will provide YuuZoo with "options and alternatives" in terms of capital requirements for expansion over the next three years, the firm said.

On the market on Tuesday, YuuZoo shares closed trading at S$0.169, up 2.5 cents.