Amateur Developer Tops UK App Store with Football Game 38-0-0
The football drafting game 38-0-0 has surged to the top of the UK App Store, surpassing even Fortnite, and it was created overnight by Deniz Sancar, a solo developer with no formal coding background. Sancar, who runs the marketing firm Virlo.ai, was inspired by a basketball drafting game called 82-0, which he aimed to replicate for the Premier League. The title 38-0-0 alludes to a flawless Premier League season: 38 wins, no draws, and no losses.
In the game, players draft teams from randomly selected Premier League clubs across various seasons. After filling all eleven roster spots, the app calculates the team's match record, determining if they qualify for Europe or win domestic cups. Additionally, there's an international mode where users can draft teams from past World Cup years to compete for the title.
Despite lacking coding experience, Sancar previously released an app called Kaizen using the same Claude Code tool he employed for 38-0-0. He stated, "I don’t have a software engineering degree or anything along those lines. I have a civil engineering degree, but I didn’t do well in coding assignments." His aim with 38-0-0 was to capture the viral success seen with the NBA version, noting that NBA players shared their gaming experiences on social media, highlighting a significant opportunity in the Premier League market.
In its first week, the game's website attracted 1.8 million visitors, and the app has achieved around 100,000 downloads, ranking first in the UK free games chart and entering the top 20 in the US and other regions. The app took four days for Apple to approve, significantly longer than the time it took Sancar to create it. He reports that the UK leads in downloads, followed by the USA, Ireland, and several European countries. The game is currently awaiting approval for release on the Google Play Store.
Why it matters
38-0-0 monetizes through in-app ads displayed between rounds and offers a $9.99 in-app purchase to remove ads. Its virality can be attributed to the ease of sharing results on social media, reminiscent of the Wordle phenomenon. Sancar did not employ influencers for promotion; instead, he utilized his marketing tool, Virlo, to analyze trends on platforms like YouTube Shorts, Instagram, and TikTok to inform his social media marketing strategies. He noted that organic sharing features, including results sharing on iMessage and Instagram Stories, contributed to the rapid spread of the game, stating, "I woke up the next morning and it already had 30,000 users." Since then, the game's popularity has continued to grow without any paid promotions.
Original source
MobileGamer.biz
