LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Video games developer and publisher Frontier Developments announced a multi-year exclusive licence with Formula One Management (FOM) to develop and publish management games annually for the FIA Formula One World Championship, which it described as "the world's most prestigious" motor racing competition.
The AIM-traded firm said that, under the terms of the licence, Frontier had exclusive rights to develop and publish F1 management games worldwide for PC and console platforms, together with the rights for streaming services, with the first game expected to release for the 2022 F1 season.

It said the licence provided Frontier with the rights for four F1 seasons - 2022 to 2025 inclusive - subject to the achievement of certain financial performance thresholds.

Frontier explained that it had "extensive experience" of developing "deeply engaging, high-fidelity" simulation games which also achieved widespread global adoption.

The partnership with F1 created an opportunity to bring together its experience and capability, including its Cobra game engine, to the management-rich environment of the globally popular F1 motor racing brand.

Following the signing of the F1 licence and the intellectual property (IP) licence previously announced in March 2019, Frontier said it could now confirm that both of the major new internally-developed releases in the financial year ending 31 May 2022 would benefit from major global IP licences, and both will be released on multiple platforms.

The addition of a multi-year, multi-platform sports management licence was a "strategic milestone" for Frontier, the board said, which was expected to provide "significant" annual incremental benefit to its financial performance from the release of the first game in 2022 onwards.

Additionally, Frontier confirmed the signing of another two publishing deals, taking the number of signed deals to five for its third-party publishing initiative.

A number of additional opportunities were in discussion, and the board said it expected to start earning revenue in the next financial year.

As a result of the "significant" incremental benefit of the F1 licence and the progress of Frontier Publishing, the board said its confidence in the outlook for the 2022 financial year and beyond had been further strengthened.

It said 2022 would now benefit from two major licenced IP multi-platform releases planned for that year, the anticipated ongoing performance of the existing titles supported by additional content, and a "strong pipeline" of releases from Frontier Publishing partnerships.

"We are delighted to announce this multi-year licence deal with F1," said chief executive officer David Braben.

"F1 is one of the most popular global sporting franchises in the world, and we believe the combination of the F1 brand together with our extensive experience in management games will deliver fantastic game experiences to a wide and varied audience around the world."

Braben said Frontier had achieved "great success" with its own IP, and were "proven" development and publishing partners for high profile third party IP.

"Both original and licensed IP will continue to be important as we grow and nurture our portfolio."

At 1541 GMT, shares in Frontier Developments were up 7.43% at 1,214p.

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