Sega Announces Record Sales For Football Manager 2005

Sports Interactive's football management simulation enjoys record-breaking first weekend of sales

LONDON, UK – November 11, 2004 - SEGA® Europe Ltd, today announced that Football Manager 2005, the latest football management simulation from Sports Interactive, has become SEGA Europe's fastest-selling release, enjoying extraordinary sales across the continent on its first weekend of availability.

In addition to topping SEGA's fastest-seller list, FM 2005 has also joined three of Sports Interactive's other games in the top five of the UK's fastest selling PC titles, as compiled by Chart-Track (www.chart-track.co.uk).

"This is tremendous news and a fantastic reward for all of the hard work which has gone into creating this game," says Miles Jacobson, managing director of Sports Interactive. "As far as I'm concerned, there are three groups of people who are responsible for this extraordinary performance – the team here at SI who have worked harder than ever to make sure we produced our best game to date, everyone at SEGA Europe (and their partners) and our dedicated fanbase, which has stayed loyal, active and patient throughout the whole process. Now... let's see about doing even better with the next one."

"It took a great deal of hard and inspirational work from the very talented team here at SEGA Europe and Sports Interactive to ensure that FM 2005 achieved its full potential – and while it's very nice to be up there in the 'fastest-selling' charts, we plan to keep working on this title until we top the best-selling charts too. We're only just getting started," adds Mike Hayes, Managing Director of SEGA Europe

Football Manager 2005 has been backed by a seven-figure marketing campaign that will continue throughout the first four weeks of release. Highlights of this campaign include a four-week radio advertising campaign (taking in 35 commercial stations), a national press advertising campaign, and a 'demo giveaway' promotion with the Sunday Mirror. In addition to this, an ongoing mainstream PR campaign and a massive online advertising campaign (which has generated in excess of 10 million impressions to date) and a nationwide 96-sheet billboard campaign will also continue to run.

Further information on Football Manager 2005 is available online at www.footballmanager.net

About Sports Interactive
Sports Interactive (SI), the creator of the Championship Manager series, is the world's leading developer of sports management simulations. Founded in 1994 and based in Islington, North London, SI has a full-time staff of 34 and employs the services of more than 2,500 part-time researchers across the globe. Six of SI's creations are among the UK's Top 20 best-selling PC games of all time. The company's future games will be published by the global computer and video games giant, SEGA. Further information on the company is available from its website, www.sigames.com.

About SEGA®
SEGA Europe Ltd. is the European Publishing arm of Tokyo, Japan-based SEGA Corporation, a worldwide leader in interactive entertainment both inside and outside the home. The company develops, publishes and distributes interactive entertainment software products for a variety of hardware platforms including PC, wireless devices, and those manufactured by Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. SEGA Europe's web site is located at www.sega-europe.com

SEGA is a registered trademark of SEGA Corporation. Football Manager and Sports Interactive are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sports Interactive in the UK or other countries.

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