Ozuna is answering the call (of duty)…
The 29-year-old Puerto Rican singer has become the first artist to score a large-scale partnership with the Call of Duty mobile game.
Ozuna’s partnership with Call of Duty: Mobile includes an official skin (an outfit for player avatars) and other in-game content, timed to the release of the game’s seventh season, “Elite of the Elite,” out August 25.
That day, he’s also releasing an original song, titled “A La Buena El Mejor,” to serve as the season’s official theme. While the first-person shooter game has collaborated with musicians in the past, it has never signed up an artist to a partnership this extensive.
“It’s a dream opportunity for my brand, for my name, to step up my career,” Ozuna tells Billboard. “I want to do something different for the culture.”
The collaboration gives Ozuna access to the vast audience of players on Call of Duty: Mobile, which launched in October 2019 and has since crossed 500 million worldwide downloads. Ozuna says that the game’s global reach is an exposure opportunity not just for his music, but for reggaeton and Latin music as a whole. “A La Buena El Mejor” is sung entirely in Spanish.
“My music culture goes up, reggaeton goes up,” thanks to the partnership, he says. “Call of Duty is an opportunity for my culture.”
Call of Duty: Mobile vice president of product and GM Matt Lewis adds that the partnership allows for the “cross-pollination” of fanbases, helping Ozuna’s fans discover the game just as much as it helps players discover Ozuna. The fact that Ozuna is already a frequent Call of Duty player sealed the deal.
“When we learned that Ozuna was a player, we thought this would be a great opportunity to celebrate that,” Lewis says. “[He] didn’t just want to give players the basics. He wanted to go deep with this collaboration and provide an experience for the players.”