Stakes soar as esports like ‘Madden NFL 19’ go mainstream
The fatal shooting Sunday at a “Madden NFL 19” tournament in Jacksonville, Fla., cast a pall over a sport that has players battling for ever-larger prizes and has ascended so rapidly that it has piqued the interest of Olympic organizers.
Competitive video gaming is expected to grow 38 percent this year into a $900 million global industry with a worldwide audience of 380 million, according to Newzoo, an Amsterdam-based market research company.
It’s a pursuit that’s increasingly gaining legitimacy, with fans all over the world filling arenas to cheer and watch their favorite players. Dozens of universities offer varsity collegiate esports programs. And esports are debuting at the Asian Games this week as an exhibition sport, a potential precursor to one day being included in the Olympic Games.
Last weekend, almost 20,000 people filled Vancouver’s Rogers Arena (with 15 million watching online) to see 18 teams compete in the final rounds of the “Defense of the Ancients 2” league, better known as “Dota 2.” The tournament featured a $25.5 million pool. OG, the top team in the multiplayer fantasy battle game, split $11.2 million in winnings after placing first at the tournament, according to e-Sports Earnings.
Those prizes are raised by the players themselves by purchasing ingame upgrades to make their characters more competitive. That belies the corporate money pouring into the industry in recent years.
“Overwatch,” a team-based firstperson shooter game made by Blizzard, is leading the trend toward citybased esports franchises. L.A.’s home team, L.A. Valiant, is a subsidiary of The Immortals, an umbrella organization that manages L.A.-based esports teams in a variety of games. Based on recent investments, the Immortals is valued at $100 million, counts former HewlettPackard CEO Meg Whitman as a board member, and has a deal with AEG to host its home games at L.A. Live.
Madden, named after the famed football coach John Madden, serves something more of a niche audience. Unlike “Dota” and other more popular esports titles such as “League of Legends,” it doesn’t require a team. It also doesn’t have the same mass appeal as fighting games.
Yet Madden has been heavily promoted by stakeholders such as the NFL, ESPN and Electronic Arts, the publisher of the game. The competition is a way to engage a new crop of young fans to football at a time when the sport has seen its dominance in American culture challenged by politics and fear of injuries among school-aged athletes.
"Competitive gaming and esports are one of the most exciting ways to engage a larger, younger and digitally savvy NFL audience,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said last year.
The NFL, ESPN and EA collectively run an annual competitive circuit that brings the best players together for tournaments that are livestreamed for global audiences. The attack in Jacksonville was a regional qualifier for a tournament on the “Madden NFL 19” Championship Series circuit that offered a $165,000 pot. Three million players competed in the Madden Championship Series last year. Even more are expected this year. One tournament, EA’s Club Championship, is offering a record $700,000 prize pool that could significantly raise the game’s profile.
“’Madden NFL’ is a small esports game in terms of viewers,” said Jurre Pannekeet, an analyst for Newzoo. “Games such as ‘League of Legends,’ ‘Counter-Strike: Global Offensive,’ ‘Overwatch,’ and ‘Dota 2’ attract many more millions of esports viewers at the moment.”