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.