Bwin.party forms social sports betting partnership with Nordeus

“Having launched a new business unit called Win to drive our social gaming initiatives in May 2012, finding the right partner to help us exploit our strong presence in real money sports betting has been a key area of focus,” communicated bwin.party sources. 

Founded in March 2010 by ex-Microsoft engineers Branko Milutinovic, Ivan Stojisavljevic and Milan Jovovic, Nordeus has established itself as the market leader in social sports games. The company’s Top Eleven football management social game consistently features in the Top 25 list of games by daily average users on Facebook.

Top Eleven is the most-played online sports game in the World with more than 6 million monthly active users and 2 million daily active users on Web, Android and iOS devices. In addition to its popularity on Facebook, the Top Eleven game is available on Odnoklassniki, a Russian social network with more than 100 million users.

Nordeus was voted The Best Gaming Startup at the Europas Awards 2011 and was chosen as one of the 25 hi-tech European companies with ‘most potential and successful outcome’ by the European Tech Tour Association.

Norbert Teufelberger, Co-CEO of bwin.party, said: “Nordeus has demonstrated that there is great demand for social sports games around the world through its Top Eleven game.  We will leverage our unrivalled sports brand and products as well as our online betting and gaming expertise. Nordeus and bwin.party are two European companies with global footprints and share an aspiration to become clear leaders in social sports gaming.”

Branko Milutinovic, CEO of Nordeus, said: “Following the successful release of Top Eleven, we recognised a huge opportunity for social sports betting games based on the feedback from millions of our customers. Since then, we have been seeking the right partner and we are thrilled to have an opportunity to work with bwin.party, market leader in online sports betting and one of the most known brands in sports.

“With Top Eleven, we have proven that our unique approach in social games design is highly engaging and successful. With that in mind, we are convinced that leveraging our development experience in combination with bwin.party’s expertise in real-money betting will lead to a highly successful title and establish our companies as the leaders in social sports gaming.”