News flash football fans: get ready to add another day of the NFL to your weekly calendar. The NFL is not adding another game to the week, or another team to the league, but they are rolling the dice with a new partnership with Twitch, a live streaming video platform owned by Amazon, and EA Sports to generate a virtual gridiron. Just last week, the NFL announced that Twitch, an online broadcasting site dedicated to e-game streaming, will be working with EA Sports to launch, “EA Sports Madden NFL Live.”
Streaming on Friday afternoons, the live cast will feature NFL Network’s Adam Rank and retired Jaguars and Raiders running back Maurice Jones Drew. The broadcasting site will cover plays of the week, player ratings in the video game, in-game content, tips, tricks and an endless supply of e-sports information relative to Madden. The hype between Twitch and the NFL arose this past January when Twitch and Duracell teamed up to create a 26-hour Madden 15 gaming tournament. The player with the longest win streak at the end of the competition was awarded two Super Bowl XLIX tickets valued at $3,715 each.
With an objective to amplify the synergy between gamers and NFL super fans, a surge in the e-sports and gaming world has directly fueled this broadcast. Twitch and the NFL are not the first ones to kick off this online broadcast. Just last week, “Turner Broadcasting and WME/IMG announced the formation of new e-sports gaming league centered on Valve’s “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive” first-person shooter.
Under the pact, TBS is set to broadcast 20 live events over the course of 2016. Meanwhile, Activision Blizzard announced its own e-sports league for the forthcoming “Call of Duty: Black Ops III” futuristic battle title, with a pool of more than $3 million in cash prizes for contestants.”
Nevertheless, it is evident that the e-gaming world is a platform with limitless revenue generating possibilities. Not only is it a step in right direction for virtual reality sponsorship, this alternative reality gives fans an opportunity to develop their own NFL experience. Catering to two fanatical communities, the “EA Sports Madden NFL Live,” sets the stage for future competitions, experiences, and benchmarks for similar partnerships in the future. It will be interesting to see if the next stages of this e-sports partnership and gaming will be integrated into the game day venue.