The co-CEO of Scopely has stated that Monopoly Go has earned £1.57 billion, after investing nearly £400 million in promotional expenses.
Developer Scopely understood the lucrative potential of creating a mobile Monopoly game, and they have fully embraced the idea that you need to spend money in order to make money.
The free-to-play mobile game was released in April 2023, and had generated $1 billion (£800 million) in revenue by November. That figure has now risen to $2 billion (£1.57 billion) this week, according to Scopely co-CEO Javier Ferreira.
Ferreira also disclosed that the developer has allocated about $500 million (£393 million) for advertising and user acquisition, which surpasses the production cost of PlayStation 5 exclusives Spider-Man 2 and The Last Of Us Part 2.
Ferreira discussed Scopely’s advertising approach in a previous blog post on the developer’s website, emphasizing the importance of localization, stating:
‘Even with a title based on the most played board game in the world, we spent many late nights debating how we could break through to a truly global audience.
‘Our marketing team was a fierce advocate for taking a hyperlocal approach, and in turn, much of our upfront marketing investment went to developing individualised creative that reflected the language and culture of every country where the game is available,’ Ferreira said in the blog.
Ferreira disclosed the advertising expense of Monopoly Go in an interview with Game File, but highlighted that the substantial amounts were built up over time, rather than being a single massive expense when the game launched.
‘Our goal for Monopoly Go was always to optimize our spending – meaning we were only investing our net profit into incremental marketing activities. We didn’t set out to create a blitz campaign, but as the game rapidly grew, so did our marketing efforts,’ said Ferreira.
‘Combining our marketing efforts with Monopoly Go’s highly social and community-driven experience has a flywheel effect that has allowed us to build a very large audience.’
Monopoly Go has spent more money on advertising and user acquisition in one year than most AAA games spend on developing a game over several years.
Normally video game companies don’t discuss the budgets of their games but Sony accidentally revealed the $210+ million cost of making Horizon Forbidden West and The Last Of Us Part 2 last year, during Microsoft’s legal battle with the Federal Trade Commission.
Even that is dwarfed by the budget of Spider-Man 2, which the recent Insomniac Games hack revealed to have cost over $315 million. That’s not necessarily the biggest ever though and will undoubtedly be surpassed by Grand Theft Auto 6.
