Lock in a year of Digiday+ for 35% less. Ends June 5.
For every soccer fan who has ever wanted to follow in Pelé’s nimble footsteps, here’s your chance. The iconic forward, still looking spry and wily at 73, is taking his formidable legacy off the pitch and into the digital realm with a new “flick-to-shoot” gaming app, “Pelé, The King of Football.”
“This is the fourth generation since I first started playing years ago,” Pelé, née Edson Arantes do Nascimento, said at his app launch yesterday evening at the Soho Apple store in Manhattan. “The technology since then has changed so much. I’m very happy because it’s been a long time since I started playing, and to have a new generation play me, it’s a good precedent.”
The game is a semi-autobiographical look at Pelé’s life — each level is set at a different setting of his career, from the backstreets of Brazil to the world stage. The avatar (which is customizable by skin color, team uniform, and hairstyle) is a body-scanned version of the king himself, and its style of play matches that of Pelé’s.
Level one starts out in the back alleys of his hometown, and eventually leads to the World Cup, and features some 250 soundbites of Pelé’s voice as he coaches the player through different kicks and stages. Each time players advance, they are automatically entered into a drawing for a pair of tickets to the real-life World Cup Brazil this July. Their progress can also unlock 25 original videos of Pelé.
The free app, available now at the iTunes store, doesn’t have a desktop version, and lives solely on your phone. Josh Blitz and Kane Swerner, founders of Cosi Productions, the app company that worked with Pelé on the game, isn’t sure how they’ll monetize the app, but there may eventually be micro-transactions or a pay-to-play the ad-free version. They’re hoping, at least, that the app will become popular through Pelé’s devoted fans online, a base of more than 3 million on Facebook and Twitter.
More in Marketing
Overheard at IAB Tech Lab Summit: Tim Berners-Lee on the agentic web
The father of the web urges social platforms to stop building addictive products and to embrace an agentic future that values individuals over outcomes.
OpenAI turns on cost-per-action ads inside ChatGPT
Cost-per-action (CPA) is the first real sign that the platform is now embracing performance advertising.
Premier League gambling ban gives brand sponsors an open goal, but CMOs must still prove value
An exodus of betting brands from the Premier League means there’s a chance for marketers to bag cut-price soccer partnerships. But proving the worth of that investment is another concern.