From side project to flourishing fantasy football start-up
In 2011, Mon Petit Gazon (MPG) began as a “buddy project” for Martin Jaglin, Grégory Rota, and Benjamin Fouquet and has since become a promising startup with over 21 employees. Since then, Mon Petit Gazon received funding from business angels like Martin Solveig in 2018 and was bought by the Professional Football League (LFP Media) in 2022.
Martin Jaglin explains how the team decided to create a game to allow users to experience being in the shoes of virtual coaches and play a league with their friends or colleagues. “The fantasy football market is not as big in France as it is in England or the US. So the idea we had with MPG was to liven up our players’ week. We wanted them to joke every Monday morning with their friends on WhatsApp about the winners and losers of their MPG league,” says Martin.
MPG’s popularity grew during the 2018 World Cup thanks to another free prediction app they developed called Mon Petit Prono (MPP), which gained 850,000 users in just one month. The number of users skyrocketed again during the Euro 2024, reaching 2.3 million users. “Our main source of acquisition has been the product experience. We’ve been growing organically for years without having spent on advertising in France, our 3.5 million users come to us from word of mouth,” adds the President. If a user is convinced by the concept, they become an ambassador at their next dinner party and create a league with 7 opponents,” adds the co-founder.
Ensuring deliverability to maintain contact with a growing fan base
Communicating to a growing fan base started becoming a challenge for the team, especially in terms of deliverability. To make the most of their various channels, they started segmenting their contact list by championship and language, and narrowed each channel’s positioning.
“We needed to segment our communication with very different positioning per channel in order not to be redundant, whether it’s email, push notification, in-app alerts, or social media. We use Facebook for big announcements, X for delivering news, Instagram for the nice visuals, push notifications for in-game reminders, in-app alerts for product information,” details Martin.
Leveraging automation to reinforce close relationships with their audience
Shortly after they started using the Brevo platform, MPG started making the most of its automation features. With the international expansion of MPG, the team needed to ensure that their specific humorous tone of voice would be maintained across all markets.
“Automation has allowed us to be in touch at all key moments in a player’s life cycle. This is very important for us since the game is full of stages: account creation, joining a league, composing a team, activating options, seeing your results, etc… “ adds Jaglin. “
And even if these messages are automated, we can keep the same warm tone, that characteristic familiarity… we avoid those unnecessary 2-line intros or ready-made formulas. Same for the subject lines, we write our users the same way we would write to our friends so that they want to read what is inside,” concludes Martin.
Their weekly newsletter has become a real tradition for their 450,000 most active subscribers
As of today, the team is proud to have around 450,000 active readers in France.
The team at MPG leverages the power of email marketing by making their newsletters a real tradition for their target audience. Their Thursday newsletter is particularly popular and has an average open rate exceeding 25%. In addition, their newsletters have a high rate of multiple openings, often a sign that the email has been forwarded.
The closeness created generates a large number of responses: “between 500 and 1,000 every week. We answer every one of these emails, even if it takes up a lot of our time. It’s part of the MPG experience, fans like to chat with the team behind it.”

About Company
A personal project launched on a whim by 3 friends in 2011, MPG became a company in 2016 following successful crowdfunding, before raising funds in 2018 and being acquired by the Ligue de Football Professionnel at the end of 2022. With a community of 4 million users, MPG is part of soccer fans' everyday lives, thanks to its free games for friends; Mon Petit Gazon (fantasy soccer) and Mon Petit Prono.
- Industry: Online Gaming
- Company Size: 21 employees
- Location: Paris, France
- Website: mpg.football
Martin Jaglin, Co-founder and President of Mon Petit Gazon
"The death of emailing has been predicted several times, but it's still here, despite the wave of social networks, despite the wave of instant messaging. Open rates are even holding steady, where the organic reach of branded social pages tends to decline as GAFAs seek to monetize."
