For veteran broadcasters, esports is a whole new game
Professional Fortnite gamers Nate Hill and Faze Sway — ages 25 and 16, respectively — laughed as their characters smashed walls with golf clubs and hopped on flying unicorns. Veteran broadcaster Joe Buck could only shake his head.
“I feel like I’m 140 (years old),” joked Buck.
The unlikely group teamed up earlier this week for Verizon’s Pay it Forward Live, a weekly stream that raises money for small businesses affected by COVID-19. Hill and Sway, two prominent members of professional gaming franchise Faze Clan, played Fortnite for an hour while Buck provided commentary.
Although Buck’s performance was relatively tongue in cheek, the event represented his first announcing gig in months. Buck is arguably the highest profile traditional broadcaster to dip his toe in the world of gaming — though he is certainly not the first. Even before COVID-19 struck, veteran sportscasters had been exploring esports as a viable career path.
Case in point: Josh Lewin. After spending more than 25 years calling thousands of professional sports games, the prominent broadcaster branched out last year to try a familiar, yet distinctly different, role: play-by-play man for EA Sports’ Madden Championship Series — his first foray into esports.
His pivot could not have come at a more opportune time.
“Just two months ago, I would have smirked and told you that esports was only an experiment for me,” said Lewin, who has served as a broadcaster for teams like the New York Mets, Boston Red Sox, San Diego Chargers and UCLA basketball. “Now, suddenly, it’s all my income.”
Lewin has been busy the past few weeks calling the Madden Bowl, which began in April and runs through the middle of May. To make the broadcast happen, EA Sports shipped Lewin thousands of dollars worth of video equipment. Nine hours and multiple calls with IT later, Lewin had assembled a makeshift studio in his living room, complete with a professional soundboard, lights, camera, and a massive backdrop resting across his Yamaha keyboard.
“I keep thinking my dog will knock something over, and this whole thing will go to hell,” he said.
Lewin’s transition to Madden highlights the unique challenges that traditional broadcasters face when making the switch to esports. Most notably, he had to study the nuances of the video game and learn the features that distinguish it from real NFL football. Lewin had not actually played a Madden game in six years — “I’m one of the only broadcasters here who doesn’t even own the console,” he said — so he spent hours watching YouTube tutorials and chatting with other Madden analysts to get up to speed on the game’s unique features, like “X-Factors” and “Superstar Abilities.”
“At first I was pretending like I was back in the saddle calling a Chargers game,” said Lewin. “But I had to remember that it wasn’t Lamar Jackson scoring the touchdown — it was Joker, the guy with the control stick, and he used cap space to give Jackson the ‘Escape Artist’ designation in order to score. But what exactly does that mean?”
Additionally, Lewin had to artfully segue from onscreen action to humaninterest stories focused on the gamers themselves — stories that were unlike anything he had previously related in a broadcast.
“You’ll be talking about
Patrick Mahomes one second, and then shift gears to talk about the guy pulling the marionette strings,” he said. “Many of these players are teenagers, so I’m telling stories about a guy who just broke up with his high school girlfriend, or another guy who’s still waiting on his college acceptance letter and now has to somehow focus on this big Madden match.”
The stories might be different, and the action virtual, but Lewin finds that the games themselves are just as compelling as the real deal.
“At the end of the day, anything competitive is fun to broadcast,” he said. “Whether that’s a team of 53 hardened athletes against another team of 53 hardened athletes, or one gamer from Queens against a guy from England, it’s still the spirit of competition. The more I did it, the more I got sucked into the vortex.”
Scott Cole is another traditional broadcaster who found new opportunities through esports. He currently serves as the lead play-byplay voice for NBA 2K League, but his journey to becoming an in-demand broadcaster was far from straightforward.
“Personally, there are doors that have opened for me that would not have opened had I stayed on the traditional route,” said Cole, who worked for the Dallas Mavericks and Dallas Stars in the early 2000s. Frustrated by the lack of opportunities, he quit broadcasting altogether to work in digital marketing for more than a decade.