Case study: How Dagens industri uses Norkon's Fantasy Funds game

Introduction
Founded in 1976, Dagens industri (Di) is Sweden’s primary media outlet for financial news and part of Bonnier AB. With 288,000 daily readers, 700,000 unique visitors every week via desktop and 500,000+ via mobile to its online site, Di is one of Sweden’s largest media sites overall.

The challenge
Looking for new ways to attract and engage new readers, retain subscribers as well as provide hands-on but risk-free stock market trading experience, Sweden’s Dagens industri (Di) turned to Norkon and its stock market trading gamification platform, Fantasy Funds.

The solution: Gaming as a lead-gen strategy

Johan Östberg, a Di business developer and project manager for the Fantasy Funds project, explained, “We have known for a long time that our readers are deeply interested in the stock market. We wanted to capitalize on this interest to engage with users and potentially gain new subscribers as well as advertisers.”

Di launched Drömportföljen, a seasonal online trading game powered by the Fantasy Funds platform. Using real-world stock market data, gamified trading provided not only the engagement and educational opportunity DI’s readers wanted but also a risk-free way to learn firsthand how trading works and test investment strategies.

Di launched their first Fantasy Funds-based game in April of 2022. Based on the success of the first gaming round, Di launched their second Drömportföljen game in October 2022, with the platform opening for registration two weeks earlier.

According to Johan, Fantasy Funds has delivered a tool that Di can use in its growth strategy going forward, providing the basis for expansion and testing. For example, Di may be able to engage more game sponsors based on the success of their previous game. It’s also possible to expand the reach of the game to, for example, some countries in the same media group as Di where stock market trading isn’t as common as it is in Sweden, testing stock market gamification in different cultural contexts.

Drömportföljen was Di’s first foray into gamification as a means of reaching current and potential readers. They tempered their expectations in terms of how many players would register, as the game launched in a volatile period during which the stock market was declining and war in Ukraine created further instability.

Nevertheless, even starting from scratch, both with branding/promotion and with educating and attracting players, more than 17,000 players eventually registered to play, creating more than 21,000 portfolios.

For Di, this success created stickiness for their website, leading to an increase in readers and subscribers.

Invest like a millionaire, risk-free

“Ultimately, in the long run, making Drömportföljen more aspirational, giving players the possibility for something that would otherwise be unachievable, such as playing with millions, rather than just 100,000, would be a real incentive to play. People compete in games like this to enter a new world and expand horizons, not to play it safe as in daily life,” Johan explained. “After all, it is called dream portfolio for a reason, and players should be given a reason to dream.”

And this is the perfect environment to dream big. How would you manage your capital, and where would you invest? Survey results have indicated that Fantasy Funds gives players the needed confidence to make real-life investment decisions on the back of playing the game.

Let the games begin.

Dagens industri attracts 17K+ players
with Norkon's Fantasy Funds

Sweden’s main financial newspaper chose to make its readers dream with a "dream portfolio" investing game

Dagens industri attracts 17K+ players with Norkon's Fantasy Funds

Sweden’s main financial newspaper chose to make its readers dream with a "dream portfolio" investing game

Dagens industri attracts 17K+ players
with Norkon's Fantasy Funds