Rank launches X Factor mobile game
Comes one year on from exclusive three-year deal signing - product will be available across group's online brands including meccabingo.com, grosvenorcasinos.com and bluesq.com.
Rank Group has gone live with a mobile version of its exclusively licensed X Factor online slot game, the operator has said.
The game, based on the popular UK television singing contest, will be available across the group’s online brands from today. This includes meccabingo.com, grosvenorcasinos.com and bluesq.com and is exclusive to the listed company’s online brands.
The HTML5 game will sit in the mobile games portals for all three Rank Group brands and will be accessible on iOS, most Android and some Blackberry devices, the company said.
Simon Woolf, head of mobile at Rank Interactive, the group’s online arm, said: “The X Factor brand has resonance across a wide age and demographic profile so is relevant to all our online businesses. We are launching the exclusive mobile version now to run in parallel with this year’s X Factor TV competition, taking advantage of the high brand awareness and extensive media coverage the TV show generates.
“Producing these games exclusively in the mobile environment gives customers the chance to interact with our brand across multiple channels.”
The Rank Group is planning to launch further exclusive X Factor products in the next few months, a statement added.
As part of the agreement, the operator’s brands, including Mecca Bingo, Grosvenor Casinos and Bluesquare.com, would all have the rights to create and distribute an exclusive X Factor branded online bingo game, as well as a series of slots and mini games.
At the time of the announcement Mecca said it was working with its bingo supplier VirtueFusion to build an online variant with the first phase of the game out in the first quarter of next year and a second phase in Q2.
The operator, that has worked closely with FME and SyCo in the last few years on the Britain’s Got Talent (BGT) brand, has the rights to use X Factor branding, including title graphics, theme music, logo and imagery in all marketing, communications and promotions across its retail businesses, websites, mobile products and social media channels.
The agreement also allows for Rank to use the UK X Factor brand socially with plans at the time being being discussed between Rank, FME and SyCo, to take the brand and its games onto Facebook between now and 2013. This, however has failed to materialise for unknown reasons at this stage.