Iltalehti
A live, free-to-play fantasy game for one of Finland's biggest media brands, built on Scout's white-label platform and themed to feel entirely their own.
A media brand's own fantasy game
Iltalehti is one of Finland's biggest news and media brands. The product is a live, free-to-play fantasy game running on Scout's white-label platform, launched around the Ice Hockey World Championship, a huge event in Finland, and since carried into other major tournaments like the football World Cup. It has been live in production ever since, played by real users through each tournament.
Native to Iltalehti, on a shared platform
Take one shared, multi-brand platform and make it feel like it was built for Iltalehti and their readers, not adapted onto them.
It also had to live natively inside Iltalehti's own news site, right next to the editorial content, not on a separate destination. So it meant honoring their brand and audience while keeping the foundation that lets the platform scale across every other client.
The screens, mine to drive
I designed the bulk of the screens myself, working from Iltalehti's brand with input and feedback from their in-house team along the way. This was hands-on product design, not just theming an existing product, and the craft was mine to drive.
- Mapped their brand into the platform, so the product reads as Iltalehti from the first screen.
- Designed the core flows, from the landing and team building to the player market, leagues, and entry.
- Built it for both dark and light, so the game fits however their readers browse.
It starts with their brand
Iltalehti's identity is bold and unmistakably theirs, a family of reds and a bright yellow. I translated it into the platform's token system so the product feels native rather than adapted. The four reds and the orange stay fixed across modes, while the yellow and the whole surface flip between light and dark.
Themed, end to end
The same platform every other brand runs on, wearing a completely different face. Here it is on mobile, where most readers play.
One screen, two modes
The whole product ships in both dark and light, from a single themed system. Same landing, two moods.
Same product, bigger canvas
The platform scales up to desktop on the same foundation, still unmistakably Iltalehti, in both light and dark.
Shipped, and running
The game runs in production inside Iltalehti's own site, at iltalehti.fi/futismanageri. Shown here in its current state, between tournaments and ready for the next one.
One system, many brands
Iltalehti pushed the platform in a new direction: a live, free-to-play audience gathered around Finland's biggest sporting moments, on the same foundation behind every other white-label brand. Where my Bet365 build was about meeting an enterprise's bar inside their own design system, this was a live product I designed and shipped end to end, native inside a media brand. It was also one of the first white-label clients to ship in both light and dark, so a lot of the theming groundwork started here. Making one system feel truly native to each client, in both modes, is the kind of work I like most.
The same platform thinking runs through my Bet365 white-label build and my wider work.