Young fans will increasingly get hooked on soccer and other sports through video games rather than attending matches, according to an EA executive.
The difficulty and cost of obtaining tickets for top-level European soccer means that many enthusiasts first access the game through games and live events, according to Monica Dinsmore, senior director of egames at Electronic Arts.
“With FC Pro and our EA FC title, it’s so closely connected to European football and it’s such a great introduction for fans in that region, especially young fans, to get exposed to the sport,” she said during an exclusive interview at CES 2025.
“If you’re a fan of [the English Premier League’s] Chelsea, for example, you’ll never be able to attend a game unless you’ve had tickets for generations, and you can’t possibly watch a game because it’s a paywall,” Dinsmore said.
“But you can interact with your favorite players, your favorite teams, as a Chelsea fan through EA FC. And you will also be able to see a player playing who represents Chelsea, who is one of the best in the world. So there are many other tactics to apply.
Traditionally, young people came to sports like football thanks to their parents taking them to games. However, Dinsmore said the opposite may soon happen.
“We’re meeting these kids where they are,” she said. “They’re playing games, they’re interacting digitally and EA is very well positioned with these sports titles to be an initial touch point. And maybe it’s the reverse, where the kids are bringing the dads down and starting to learn about a different way of becoming a fan.”
That’s not to say that live sporting events are absolutely out of reach for young fans. Dinsmore is referring to a crossover event with the European Football Champions League, where the esports champion was crowned the day before the Champions League final.
“We present the trophy on the field to the winner of the eChampions League. So it’s a cool crossover where I think all generations can start to feel connected no matter how they need to consume content.
Dinsmore said she also expects to see further blurring of the boundaries between video games and live sports worlds. For example, last December, the NFL game between the Houston Texans and the Kansas City Chiefs was streamed from inside EA’s Madden NFL game.
The internal game broadcast combined elements of the video game into the coverage, with steering trees, player cards, and other graphic elements used in the broadcast. The occasion was designed in part to introduce young enthusiasts to the sport, in the same way that Netflix’s Drive To Survive series attracted millions of young new enthusiasts to F1 racing.
“It was a cool type of crossover and very unique to EA,” he said. “We’re starting to see more and more this crossover between genuine life and digital. “
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