Guest article
EA Sports Ultimate Team in Madden NFL and FIFA are making a lot of money for game maker EA.
What the management are now trying to do is figure out how to make more money from Ultimate Team. Esports is probably the answer that they’ve been looking for. And it’s going to be starting this off with the Madden Championship Series esports tournament.
This esports tournament is meant for EA’s top franchise: Madden NFL. The series has a couple of events: Madden Challenge and Madden Classic. Now, the NFL and EA are creating a third tournament called the Madden NFL Club Championship.
This event is just as unique as a bitcoin wallet from the point of view that there are very few of them out there. All of the 32 NFL teams are going to be a part of this tournament with every player representing one of the teams in the finals. The finals begin in Orlando at the Pro Bowl and the championship match will be held at the Super Bowl in Minneapolis. This is one of the biggest ever commitments in esports.
This partnership between the two follows a similar one that was struck between Take-Two Interactive and the NBA on the NBA 2K eLeague.
There’s no denying the fact that esports is developing a pretty large fan base. Revenues from esports are growing at the rate of 35% per year and should be at $1.5 billion by 2020. This amount mainly consists of brand investment in sponsorship, advertising and media rights. The main reason so many large brands are interested in esports is because it targets millennials, their main target audience.
Lately, team owners from the NFL and the NBA have started getting more and more involved with video games through esports. As for this announcement from EA, the commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell, said that esports and competitive gaming were exciting ways of engaging younger, larger, and digitally savvy NFL audiences.
He said that in collaboration with EA they now had a unique opportunity for capturing all the excitement of the NFL, as well as the passion of NFL fans within a competition which anybody can take part in.
EA has designed the online gaming mode for both Madden NFL and FIFA using the Ultimate Team card game. Here, players will purchase card packs in-game which unlock real life stars, which players can then use for building up their fantasy team. This can then be used to play against others. It is very addicting and helps EA increase engagement with players, since it taps into the competitiveness of online gaming. A cash purse of $1.1 million doesn’t do them any harm either.
Ultimate Team was responsible for 17% of EA’s income in 2016 and this number is only going to go up this year. It’s a great way of getting more players on board while encouraging greater engagement among players and growing in-game revenues. We don’t see this slowing down anytime soon.
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