When 205 million people a year are watching eSports events online, and 40,000 fill a stadium to watch one event live, there is viability to the concept of electronic sports as spectator entertainment.
While there is a debate that goes back to the 1970s about whether that entertainment qualifies as sport, that is a debate for another day. There is a second challenge that has been around for just as long on an aspect of sports video gaming that is of greater significance to the sports industry: Do
sports-based video games make people more interested in sports?
I studied this in the 1980s and several times since then in several different ways for a variety of reasons and clients. Not once did the research then suggest a meaningful connection between playing video games and increasing interest in the sport. Sports-based video games were not sports; they were video games. And a context was developing around gaming. Playing and, more importantly, winning video games had more to do with how the programs were developed than the sport you were playing, the war context you were fighting, the farm you were growing, or whatever Mario was up to at the moment.
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ESports events, like the Major League Gaming championships in June, are filling arenas with spectators.
Photo by: AP IMAGES
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Players were beating the system by figuring out weaknesses in the programming. In a football-based video game, the most advanced players would understand, illogically, that a flea-flicker worked best against a blitz because programming hadn’t been written to cover that option, because who is going to run a flea-flicker when they see a blitz coming?
More years, more research, same answer. Video games had nothing to do with developing a love of the underlying sport.
Then, in 2011, a significant portion of American soccer fans said they became fans by playing soccer video games, skipping right over the phase of enhancing interest by playing video games to causing people to become fans by playing video games. Since then, as opportunity has allowed, I’ve tested that development to see if the new findings persist, and they do.
■ Did EA Sports design “FIFA” to attract new fans to soccer, or is it a happy byproduct?
“EA Sports FIFA” attracts both soccer and non-soccer fans because, at the end of the day, people want to play a high-quality video game. "EA Sports FIFA” delivers a compelling experience for the core “FIFA” gamer and is instantly accessible for someone who has never played a game of “FIFA” before. The icing on the cake is that "EA Sports FIFA” is also a great way to educate people about soccer. They get to have fun with their friends and, at the same time, learn about the clubs, the players and the tactics that make the beautiful game the single most popular sport in the world.
■ Now that you know your games make fans, how does that change your strategies?
What this data has done is lead us to put more emphasis on certain strategies that we already had in place. We want to take advantage of the fact that our game is very culturally relevant in the United States. We make a conscious effort to market to gamers who may have only been exposed to soccer through the World Cup, watching Premier League on TV, or [who] attended an MLS game for the first time. We are lucky to have so many celebrity and professional athletes that play and are evangelists for the game. When we work directly with people like Drake, they can tell their stories about how they became fans of the sport through “FIFA” and instantly relate to gamers who are just entering the world of soccer.
In 2014, EA Sports became a client of the ESPN Sports Poll. In nine consecutive waves of research, essentially nine separate studies, the findings came back consistently the same. Thirty-four percent of those who play "EA Sports FIFA” soccer game said they played the game before becoming a soccer fan, and 50 percent said they are more interested in soccer now because of the game.
Again, in full disclosure: We did this research for EA Sports, and the company is a client.
I have studied the issue, with and without clients, on other sports, and the same findings persist, though not as powerfully as for soccer. In the United States, soccer is more powerful because there still is less of a cultural context for the highest level of play. The best leagues are in other parts of the world. As people started playing the “FIFA” game, they came to know the teams, the players and the game. It became the front door to fandom.
What happened less than five years ago to change the dynamics? The video game industry had changed and matured. Improved technology makes it easier to develop games that are more realistic, more complete, more authentic, closer to being the actual sport — so it really does feel like you are playing the sport. And in the case of “FIFA,” EA was introducing a lot of new information not readily available to American sports fans.
What is the impact?
We know from our tracking that four dynamics are most associated with being a fan: playing the sport, attending games and events, watching on TV, and following the sport. The younger you are, the more play is important to becoming a fan and being in a position to be a lifelong highly engaged fan. It used to be the only way you could play was to … well … play. Now, with the power of video games, there is a new and increasingly powerful tool for developing new fans.
Rich Luker (rich@lukerco.com) is the founder of Luker on Trends and the ESPN Sports Poll.
