Gossip mag OK! enters scratchcard market with NeoGames
OK! magazine has launched a new online scratch card website with NeoGames, marking the first consumer partnership for NeoGames Partners, the marketing arm of the NeoGames and Hopa scratch card brands, and bringing it access to OK's nearly 600,000 readers...
OK! MAGAZINE has launched a new online scratch card website with NeoGames, marking the first consumer partnership for NeoGames Partners, the marketing arm of the NeoGames and Hopa scratch card brands, and bringing it access to OK’s nearly 600,000 readers.
The celebrity gossip magazine’s OkScratchcards.co.uk site will offer 50 NeoGames scratch games with jackpots of up to £200,000, and will be promoted in the magazine, and on its website, OK.co.uk.
OK! is published by Northern & Shell, which is owned by British tycoon Richard Desmond, and runs four national newspapers including the UK’s Daily Express and Daily Star newspapers, as well as consumer magazines including OK and a range of pornographic television channels, and holds 50% stakes in two newspapers in the Republic of Ireland.
The launch will be supported by a marketing, retention and customer services programme, with traffic directed to the new gaming site via links from OK.co.uk’s ‘Fun’ and ‘Competitions’ sections, and via advertisements for the new scratch cards site on the OK! website and in the magazine.
NeoGames Partners managing director Shay Bar-Joseph said: “Neogames believes that online scratch cards is the one vertical in the gaming industry that truly has a mass market appeal and as our partners begin to appreciate this more and more, it gives us a real opportunity not only to prove this but also to expand the reach of this new and innovative product.
“Our strategy is to support large brands that prefer to lean on their own brand equity; we support them in all aspects from creative and marketing to retention, to allow them to offer our product to their audience. Other media companies choose to offer one of the NeoGames Partners brands. Either way our message is simply to offer scratchcards as an easily available source of entertainment for everyone, everywhere.”
As reported on EGRmagazine.com, Northern & Shell signed a deal with auction game business Flutteroo to launch auction games on it Star and Express websites in October, making it just one of a number of print magazine brands to enter the egaming space.
These include Northern & Shell rival and the publisher behind UK newspapers the Daily Mail and Metro, Associated Newspapers, which signed a deal with Blue Square and mobile specialist Mkodo to lauch a Metro mobile betting product in September 2009 and formed a tie with online cash trivia business Amuso earlier in the year.
IPC Ignite-published UK ‘lads mag’ Nuts launched mobile betting with supplier Mfuse in September 2009, as did rival Dennis Publishing’s Monkey magazines the month before.