Wayne Rooney could feature in new Angry Birds game as Everton sleeve sponsor seek exposure
Former England captain has been tipped to be part of the vastly-popular smartphone app's latest game
WAYNE ROONEY could be the latest character on Angry Birds - after the mobile app was unveiled as the club's sleeve sponsor.
The Premier League began allowing sleeve sponsors this season and the Merseyside club struck a deal with the creators of the vastly-popular app over the summer.
And Rovio, the game's developers, have reportedly decided to make former Manchester United striker Rooney a character in their game.
According to the Press Association, Everton could feature in a new version of Angry Birds in the future.
Ville Heijari, Rovio Entertainment's chief marketing officer said: “We have a history of doing Angry Bird homages of real-life characters so obviously now we are in collaboration (with Everton) we can work together to bring interesting characters and profiles into the games.
“Potentially Wayne Rooney would be involved.
“It is not just enough that we reach mobile players; we want to reach sports fans, television spectators, so it is a big audience we are going after.”
Everton's partnership with the Finnish company may have brought howls of derision from certain sections of the fanbase due to the game's main character being a red bird - the colour of cross-city rivals Liverpool - but Premier League boardrooms up and down the country the club have been privately congratulated for securing such an innovative deal.
Everton's head of commercial Alan McTavish added: “For us this is a real plus in that we have been able to secure a brand of the level of Rovio with the level of brand awareness they have and the undoubted market-leading following they have.
“It (shirt sleeve sponsorship) has been a really competitive marketplace and there have been deals done across the league at different levels but we are confident we have done the best of them all.”
Five versions of the Angry Birds game - which has had 3.7billion downloads since 2009, three billion YouTube views and has 25million Facebook followers - are in the top 100-grossing games on the Apple platform in the United States.
Everton hope a similar sort of exposure can do wonders for them with Rovio's history of global collaborations including Apple, Sony, Fox, NASA and McDonald's.
The deal is the latest in a string - from the training ground to a new shirt sponsor - which has brought in between £80million to £90m to the Toffees over the last two years, which is significant even in an era of huge television contracts and the arrival of billionaire owner Farhad Moshiri.
Rooney was furious over the weekend after being elbowed by Bournemouth defender Simon Francis.
He then had blood streaming from his left eye as a result and was taken off after 55 minutes.