NEW YORK — When the NFL and Electronic Arts earlier this year did an esports pilot with eight NFL teams each conducting a competition to crown the best Madden player among its fans, the reaction to it was positive — for the most part.
“The feedback we got was, ‘Wait, my favorite team isn’t in this. Why can’t I sign up for it?” Chris Halpin, the NFL’s chief strategy officer and senior vice president for consumer products, said at the XLIVE Esports Summit.
“You try to tell the world something’s a test, and that doesn’t really work well on social media. So the answer was we are rolling out to 32 teams. That’s bigger. It makes sense to fans.”
Last week, gamers representing every NFL team were able to begin taking part in the Madden NFL Club Championship. They can select an NFL team and over the months leading up to the Super Bowl climb the leaderboard in an attempt to earn their way to an on-site competition hosted by that team. The 32 club champions then can compete at the Pro Bowl, with the best of those advancing to Minneapolis to play at the site of the Super Bowl.
And instead of signing professional esports players, the NFL is engaging casual, everyday Madden players.
“It has been a dream of tens of millions of people, fans of the NFL to represent their teams,” said Todd Sitrin, SVP and general manager of EA’s competitive gaming division. “Somebody is going to make it all the way to the very top, be crowned the champion, take home a lot of money and get to go to the Super Bowl. And that person probably right now this week is playing Madden on their couch not knowing that in a few short months, they’re going to be world famous.”
There are plenty of reasons why the NFL is getting involved in esports. According to Halpin, the league for the past few years saw that the massive size of the esports fan base, the young demographics that was attracted, and the different ways they can be engaged on video platforms like Facebook, Twitch and YouTube.
“We are laser-focused as a sports league on maintaining reach and engagement across audience profiles, demos, segments, and we benefit from a very a large, avid, young audience at the NFL,” Halpin said. “So we have to keep engaging them.”
When the NFL Club Series Championship was streamed on those platforms and also broadcast on NFL Network in April, the league could instantly see growth in the 12-17, 18-34 demographics that “was off the charts,” according to Halpin, adding that sponsors noticed as well.
The Buffalo Bills, Jacksonville Jaguars, Kansas City Chiefs, Minnesota Vikings, New England Patriots, Pittsburgh Steelers, San Francisco 49ers and Seattle Seahawks were the first teams to hold competitions. Streaming at the Jaguars’ four-hour event at EverBank Field drew about 750,000 unique viewers, according to the Jacksonville Business Journal.
Like NFL fans, esports fans are passionate when attending events and following players. Like football, the video games are predicated on skill and glory with high stakes involved. And it just so happens that with Madden, the NFL already has a game that its fans can understand. The characters in Madden are real people who can even show up to an event to hang out.
“All the esports games to date are quite hardcore,” Sitrin said. “They require a lot of information to even make sense of it. What a partnership with the NFL and Madden are and what we’re doing in competitive gaming is really about making competition accessible.
“EA is frankly in a very unique position in this new industry. People already understand the rules of the game. They already have affiliations and emotional ties to the league. They have emotional ties to teams. They understand the players, and there’s a real world connection that is quite strong. So when you take that and you bring in what we’re doing, it creates a much more accessible type of experience. And that’s why you’re seeing broadcasters jump in so strongly with what we’re doing because they understand the viewers are going to understand what’s going on, and frankly, it’s why brands are so excited to be partnering with us as well.”
To go from the couch to becoming a champion at Madden is something that excites the NFL, as esports is about elevating the status of the gamer and generating a connection to gamers for fans.
“For what we’ve seen from the Madden community, the ability to make stars out of the (video game) players and give teams a star Madden player and down the road multiple Madden players to activate around and to highlight to the fans is a great back-and-forth connection between the NFL and its teams and its gamers,” Halpin said.