Electronic Arts plans to award $1M over the next year to "top players of its latest 'Madden NFL' title," and the prize money is a "selling point for a new, four-tournament series beginning this fall, marking the first e-sports initiative from the nation’s second-most-profitable gamemaker since it launched a competitive gaming division in December," according to Paresh Dave of the L.A. TIMES. EA is "committing to a three-year plan, hoping to slowly build up amateur, mid-level and professional tournaments." It is a "more cautious approach than the ambitious media strategy" of rival Activision Blizzard, which boasted a pair of $1M prize pools last fall and has among its goals "becoming the ESPN of e-sports." At the base of EA's setup are "plans to provide resources such as scheduling software to college students and other gaming enthusiasts that would make it easier for them to organize tournaments." At the mid-level, EA said that it "will work with events promoters like ESL and Gfinity to run what the company calls premiere tournaments." However, what EA truly considers e-sports "are global, top-tier tournaments known as Majors." EA's "Madden" is "getting the Majors treatment," and so will the "FIFA" soccer franchise (L.A. TIMES, 6/12). Gaming site Polygon Senior Editor Phil Kollar tweeted, "Good luck and godspeed to EA in attempting to make esports fit with their lineup, but let's say I'm ~skeptical~."
BREAKING OUT: EA Chief Competition Officer Peter Moore laid out the strategy for EA's e-sports venture ahead of the E3 conference this week in L.A., saying, "Our vision for competitive gaming is pretty unique. We want to make stars out of all our players. ... We feel an obligation to help facilitate a smoother tournament structure." Moore added, "The analogy we’re using is tennis or golf, where you have these major events, each of which is a stand-alone event. The Madden Classic is this fall. The Madden Bowl will be played over the winter. The Madden Challenge will be played next spring. Next summer will be the Madden Championship. These will be high-end events. ... We’ll be able to broadcast them, both on a streaming platform and a traditional media platform. We’ll bring sponsors in to allow the big brands to get a taste of what competitive gaming is about." Moore also discussed how he envisions the spread of e-sports across different types of games. He said, "There’s a huge opportunity in the racing genre. UFC will be interesting. ... We’ll be working with them to see what we can do as far as finding the best UFC players." However, Moore pointed out that "Madden" and "FIFA" have a high potential for drawing larger audiences. Moore: "The benefit is that, unlike a MOBA, a League of Legends or DOTA 2, everybody can watch a soccer game or an NFL game and understand what’s going on for the most part" (VENTUREBEAT.com, 6/12).
VIRTUALLY CERTAIN: USA TODAY's Brett Molina notes video game and software makers at E3 this year are "expected to reveal more experiences suited for virtual reality." Sony's PlayStation VR is "among the big names heralding this push toward virtual reality, along with Facebook-owned Oculus and its Rift headset and HTC's Vive." Consumer spending on video games is "expected to continue a slow climb." Data from PricewaterhouseCoopers shows that consumers in the U.S. spent $16.97B on video games (not including consoles or other game hardware) in '15. That revenue is projected to rise to $17.7B this year and, in '20, be at about $20.3B (USA TODAY, 6/13).
STREAM ON: ESPN.com's Jacob Wolf cites data from market intelligence firm Newzoo noting that more than 800 million hours of e-sports content "was watched on the steaming platform Twitch in the past 10 months." Of that, 231 million hours "was rebroadcast content." Just over 71% of that content "comes from tournament organizers, with League of Legends developer Riot Games and third-party organizer ESL accounting for a majority of that number" (ESPN.com, 6/10).
