More millions for Beckham - but can he beat Harry Potter?

David Beckham, already one of the richest men in football, has found yet another way to squeeze cash out of his adoring fans and their parents. Not content with selling Brylcreem, sunglasses, and an autobiography, the England captain is about to make £1m from a new video game, David Beckham Soccer.

The publishers said yesterday they expect to sell 200,000 in the next few weeks and, while they wouldn't comment on his earnings, it is understood Beckham will get at least £2 per copy. The Manchester United star already earns an estimated £12m a year.

The game allows the nation's teenage boys to "be" David Beckham, manoeuvring a "lifelike" version of the England captain around the electronic football field.

It puts Beckham at the cutting edge of an expanding market – already worth £1bn a year – which Tiger Woods, Lennox Lewis and even actors like Sylvester Stallone are already attempting to exploit.

Industry analysts have described the deal with Liverpool based Rage Software plc as "extraordinarily good", predicting he will make at least £1m from the contract. Technological advances mean the crude animations of the mid-1990s have been replaced with "motion capture", a realistic style of computer image expected to approach television standards in two or three years' time. Rage analysed 300 hours of Beckham on videotape in their Liverpool workshop, pinning down characteristic movements, and plotting 10,000 key "points" of his appearance on screen. His moves are accompanied by commentary from Ron Atkinson and Jonathan Pearce, the voice of the Channel 5 football coverage. It cost £1m to make and a further £1m to market.

Beckham's cut looks small when set against the £3.75m which the US based Electronic Arts (EA) is understood to have paid for the rights to use the Harry Potter image, but huge compared to the sums that other British sports people could command – the reward for being one of the three or four most recognised faces in the world.

The electronic games industry is expecting a surge ofinterest with the launch of new technology from the big manufacturers Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft, while next summer's World Cup in Japan and South Korea is particularly good news for soccer-based games.

The deal is a coup for the British firm, stealing Beckham from under the nose of the EA, the biggest player in the market. Aside from running the Harry Potter animated game, EA controls animated versions of Lennox Lewis, Tiger Woods, and the drivers from Formula 1, as well as hundreds of international players from its top-selling Fifa Soccer.

It makes Beckham the only serious challenger to Harry Potter's grip on screen entertainment this Christmas. However, it looks as though JK Rowling's magic will prove more effective: Potter is available in four well-known games formats, while Beckham only stretches to Playstation 1 and the Gameboy.

Last week Ladbrokes tipped the Potter game as the number one bestseller with Beckham close behind. In this particular match, the England captain must be content to come a lucrative second to the all-conquering wizard.