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Why NFL Teams Should Sign Professional eSports Players

This year, English Premier League teams have been venturing into burgeoning eSports industry by signing professional gamers to represent their respective teams during FIFA tournaments. Next in line looks to be teams in the NFL, where, according to Bloomberg, three have mentioned the possibility of signing top gamers from EA’s Madden NFL video game.

eSports is a booming industry with revenue predicted to be about $1.1 billion by the year 2019, so why wouldn’t professional sports want to get involved?

A majority of video gamers are between the ages of 18 to 34. This millennial audience is watching fewer sports on TV and playing more on consoles. But one thing that usually stays the same is the fact that the gamers make a connection to a specific player or team. Now gamers will have other gamers who are associated to the professional teams to “look up to” and can relate to with their team affiliation and support.

“I don’t know why teams wouldn’t pursue this. It feels like a very small expense for what seems to get a large amount of publicity,” says Peter Moore, head of EA Sports’ competitive-gaming division.

EA’s Madden NFL 2016 Championship was broadcast on ESPN2 last month, which had a total of 197,000 viewers, 133,000 of those being between the ages of 18 and 49. With the announcement of the broadcast only being a few days before it aired, those numbers strong.

It’s clear that eSports is and will continue to grow each year for the foreseeable future as the gaming technology and amount of participants continues to grow. Perhaps once all of the NFL teams hop on the eSports train, they can create a draft of their own for signing gamers? Bottomline, it’s a vast world out there in the eSports community and professional sports team are only just starting to scratch the surface with ideas for how to engage this new realm in the sports industry.

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