Inside the NFL’s gaming strategy and how it’s bringing a virtual tailgate to the Super Bowl

With ticket prices ranging from four to five figures, attending the Super Bowl is no easy feat. Even during the regular season, attending an NFL game can cost hundreds of dollars—and that does not include travel costs for fans interested in watching their favorite team on the road. One way the league is trying to bridge that affordability gap for young fans is via a new initiative called “NFL 4 the Fans Live,” an event series that will see the league travel to different cities with interactive gaming challenges and creator-led content for both in-person attendees and livestream viewers. The program, which was announced late last year, kicks off Super Bowl week in New Orleans as part of Victory Fan Fest, a four-day series of gaming, fashion, music, skating and food activations beginning on Feb. 6. NFL 4 the Fans Live will feature two vs. two gaming matchups between attendees and famous NFL figures, a fitness challenge hosted by event sponsor U.S. Marines and other tailgate-inspired competitions. “The basic premise is to bring Gen Z and gaming culture and these gaming influencers into NFL tentpole events and really create this virtual tailgate environment,” said Ed Kiang, who joined the NFL as VP of video gaming three years ago after almost nine years with the WWE. “We’re trying to bring fans in through that experience, even if they’re watching from home, and create these interactive moments through the [livestream] chats that feel like you’re present at these major moments like the Super Bowl.” Super Bowl commercials Tracking the latest brand and agency plans Click here Creators Will Neff and Sydnee Goodman, the latter of whom hosts a “football for hotties” Instagram series breaking down the NFL for new audiences, will co-host the event from the ground on their YouTube and Twitch channels. Chatters will vote on team compositions for the two vs. two matchups, win the same prizes as in-person attendees through giveaways and converse with Neff and Goodman throughout the stream. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sydnee Goodman (@sydsogood) The NFL partnered with GameSquare on the event. The company, whose investors include Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, specializes in pairing brands with gamers and gaming creators. Its holdings include gaming organization FaZe Holdings (Faze Clan). NFL 4 the Fans Live is the latest in a string of gaming and creator investments the league has made to bring young fans into the fold since it launched “NFL Creator of the Week” in 2023. Throughout that season, the NFL gave 27 creators behind-the-scenes access at 24 games, including the Super Bowl. At the time, its efforts were largely focused on YouTube. Since then, it’s partnered with creators across platforms. It got more than 50 creators to film content for the opening week of the 2024 season and changed Creator of the Week programming to focus on the week leading up to game day rather than just the game itself. Read: Inside the NFL’s revamped influencer marketing strategy The league also has a long history in gaming, both through its association with EA Sports’ “Madden NFL” video game series that has players control teams in the league and on Roblox, where it has partnered with developer Gamefam to incorporate entertainment properties such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and SpongeBob SquarePants. It created a Roblox game tied to SpongeBob ahead of last year’s Super Bowl to drum up Gen Alpha’s interest in watching the Big Game on its first-ever alternate telecast hosted on Nickelodeon, where SpongeBob characters called the game alongside analysts. Last month, it ran a series of winter-themed football events on Roblox inspired by the NFL Christmas Day games that streamed live on Netflix. The NFL has pitted players against creators in gaming competitions before. In 2022, it partnered with media company Enthusiast Gaming to launch a weekly esports miniseries called NFL Tuesday Night Gaming. NFL 4 the Fans Live, however, is the league’s first attempt to create a virtual tailgating experience with leading gaming creators, Kiang said. Also: Watch Sunday’s NFL spot that will run in the Super Bowl Ad Age recently chatted with Kiang about the league’s gaming and creator strategy and its efforts to make young online fans feel connected through NFL 4 the Fans Live. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed. Given your prior investments in gaming, why did the NFL decide to create a virtual tailgate? What does NFL 4 the Fans being live and somewhat interactive do that other gaming and creator investments haven’t? Tuesday Night Gaming, that’s taking players and bringing them to gaming tournaments. NFL 4 the Fans, we’re taking gaming creators to NFL events and creating this tailgating experience. We’re capturing a moment in time and making people feel like they can be a part of that when it’s happening. We’re always striving to make fans feel involved. As a league, we’ve always done a good job of taking advantage of technologies available to us to make that happen and this is that next step for us. What is ultimately the goal and what are you hoping to get out of this? Driving youth audiences is a key priority for the league, as it is for a lot of other businesses. We hear a lot from our partners about how they struggle to appeal to Gen Z and Alpha audiences. One of the things that’s nice about working at the NFL is I have this good fortune of working with this massive existing fanbase that spans multiple generations. Part of the success we’ve had comes from how we tap into youth lifestyle and culture. We’ve had a lot of success building out a video gaming business and different types of programming in the past around video game culture. There’s a lot of crossover between sports fandom and video gaming. They’re both built on social experiences and shared moments with both friends and family and complete strangers. Finding these points of intersection between gamer lifestyle and culture and sports fandom, this is our way of continuing to build out to a broader audience. What hope do you have that NFL 4 the Fans drives Super Bowl viewership? We’re not looking for direct conversion. That’s something we’re looking at over a longer term because we’ll be able to track that better. As a new brand, I don’t think that’s a realistic expectation. For us, it’s about establishing this brand. What metrics are you going to be looking at to measure and determine if this was successful? How we look at the first one is probably a function of our audience reach and engagement. We’re tracking social sentiment and whether or not we see an increase in sentiment across that slice of youth. As we have more under our belt and there’s some seasonality to it, we’ll look at whether or not we’re bringing in the youth audience that we’re looking for and if there’s a halo effect around other core parts of our business, both in the conversions we see around people tuning into games and participation in our interactive products on the gaming and mobile front. How are you looking to evolve these events next season? When you look at the major moments on our calendar, we’re trying to capture what’s unique around those. As we talk to GameSquare, part of that is determining what’s unique about each particular event and the city we’re in. We can create a really bespoke content strategy around that particular moment in time. What we do for the Super Bowl will have a very different look and feel versus what the NFL does during the combine, the draft and the flag championship series. Loading…

Inside the NFL’s gaming strategy and how it’s bringing a virtual tailgate to the Super Bowl

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