SBJ Power Up: Chiefs-Texans getting Madden Cast on Peacock

NBC Sports is preparing its first live sports alt-cast, offering a Madden-themed viewing option on Peacock of the Chiefs-Texans Saturday matinee. The production is a joint effort from NBC, the NFL, EA Sports and Genius Sports, whose data and graphics will help annotate the action in the spirt of the popular video game.

“This project, to me, is the perfect merger between technology and creativity,” said Geoff Butler, who will serve as director of the Madden Cast.

Whereas ESPN have produced alt-casts as fully reimagined animations in their Toy Story and Simpsons NFL games, the Madden Cast on Peacock will blend live action with video game elements with help from Next Gen Stats and EA Sports’ game engine.

Often that will be the use of Madden brand elements — passing route trees, player ratings, X-Factor denotations — augmenting the traditional broadcast feed, and at other times the video game renderings will supplant the live action. For example, if Travis Kelce scores a touchdown, Peacock might show his Madden celebration animation instead of or alongside his real one.

“We’re going to produce this alt-cast for the avid Madden game player,” said NBC Sports executive producer Fred Gaudelli, who produced John Madden’s games for seven years. “Over on NBC, we’ve got a traditional football broadcast that will be done exceptionally well, but it really didn’t make a lot of sense to do something akin to that. There are millions and millions of Madden fans, and I think we have to really serve them in this game and try to find that perfect blend between the video game and the real game and merge them together.”

Madden Cast producer Steve Greenberg noted that “there's a whole group of people that experience the NFL and football through Madden video games,” so the goal is to meet them where they are. That’s a robust demographic as it is, but the hope is that non-gamers might be interested in the teaching and data-driven elements of the Madden Cast.

“We hope that this is going to really appeal to average football fans in general,” said Evan Dexter, EA Sports’ VP overseeing the Madden NFL brand. “Rather than present this as an alternative broadcast, as the NFL has done in previous instances with partners like Disney and reimagine football in the lens of different IP, I think part of what we’re doing here is augmenting existing football for all football fans.”

NFL VP of media strategy and business development Grace Sensko added that this is part of an effort “to personalize these experiences for our fans on top of and amplifying what we’re already doing through the primary game telecast,” with the audience on Peacock and other digital platforms typically younger than the main broadcast.

Paul Burmeister will lead the broadcast as host, which is the most apt descriptor because he won’t be calling traditional play by play. He’ll be joined by NFL quarterback-turned-Madden YouTuber Kurt Benkert — whom Greenberg labeled “the driving voice of the broadcast” — as well as Pro Bowl receiver Chad Ochocinco and reigning Ultimate Madden Bowl champion Henry Leverette. At times, Benkert and Leverette will use an Xbox to replay game scenarios that just took place live.

“I’m really excited to toe that line and weave this in and out to show much parallel [Madden] has to the real game itself,” Benkert said. “I’m also really excited to see the tech overlays and all the data behind the scenes that will come to life on the screen and the viewing experience that people haven’t seen before that I think will resonate really well with the younger audience and with people that are used to seeing it in the video game that way.”

During one of the rehearsals, Benkert reacted to a play by saying, “Man, that’s a bad call on that defense, and if you played Madden all the time, you would know that.” Greenberg remembered thinking how much deep football knowledge can be gleaned from video game experience.

“These professional gamers play the game 8-to-10 hours a day, and so if you think about it, they've run more games than Bill Belichick,” Greenberg said.

Though most Madden game play is shown from an overhead angle above the quarterback, the default for Peacock will be a sideline view just like a normal broadcast because that’s also how Madden simulates action when gamers aren’t actively participating. Greenberg noted there will be a high SkyCam used regularly, however, to give that classic Madden view and be the primary source of replays.

Butler added that Genius, EA and NBC worked hard to preserve the look of Madden NFL 25, down to the colors, fonts and artwork so loyal players will recognize what they see.

“We’re blurring the lines between real and virtual as it’s happening on the field,” Dexter said, “and our opportunity to take that deeper as we go through future partnerships and future augmented broadcasts is really kind of limitless.”

As part of the promotion for its 2024-25 City Edition uniforms, the 76ers will on Sunday launch an arcade-style mobile minigame called “Spectrum Sprint.”

This is the second in a two-game series tied to the unis, which pay homage to the Spectrum Center, where the 76ers played home games from 1967-96. The first game, called “Buckets on Broad,” released in November and has garnered “tens of thousands of users” so far, according to 76ers Creative Dir Tommy Beebe.

“This is year four of our [jersey patch] partnership with Crypto.com, and every single year, we’re looking for new, better ways to engage our fans,” Beebe told SBJ. “We thought this could be the perfect medium.”

In the Spectrum Sprint game, users must jump to dodge city-specific obstacles across the streets of Philadelphia, such as animated Water Ice or pretzel carts on the Schuylkill River. Crypto.com will provide Web3 wallets to users who register for an account to store digital collectibles earned through gameplay, some of which will provide boosts in the game itself.

Fans can also, depending on their level of play, earn entry into raffles for physical rewards, ranging from courtside seats to a 2025-26 76ers home game in the “Legend Tier,” to an autographed Joel Embiid jersey in the “Rookie Tier.”

Both minigames in the series were developed in partnership with the creative agency Impossible Brief.

In addition to the digital activation, the 76ers will also stage live recreations of the game for fans to play on the concourse of Wells Fargo Center during six upcoming games, starting with their Dec. 23 game against the Spurs.

“It’s really to deepen the connection and brand loyalty,” Beebe said of the initiative. “We want to hear people talk about this. We want to see those people nod and understand a lot of local love was put into this, in terms of Easter eggs and in the storytelling. But it really is about connecting with our fans in a new and creative way – and speaking through the lens of our uniform platform.”

Spiideo, maker of automated cameras and video production, has acquired optical tracking data company Signality to enrich the analysis offered to team and league clients.

IMG Arena acquired Signality in 2022, but the Swedish startup was spun out as an independent company again last year. Terms of the sale to Spiideo, which raised a $20 million funding round in June, were not disclosed.

“Adding Signality to the Spiideo portfolio is really the next natural step in a journey like [ours],” Spiideo CEO Patrik Olsson told SBJ. “It’s basically more fuel for great sports experiences in these three areas for sports performance, officiating and automatic production.”

Spiideo (rhymes with “video”) is installed in more than 6,000 venues across 60 countries, including at clubs in every major pro soccer league. About half its revenue comes from North America where there is significant usage by college teams, as well as a league-wide deal with the NWSL. Cameras have been installed across the women’s pro circuit since 2021, and the Spiideo Perform product has provided teams with video analysis.

Signality, which participated in UEFA’s first innovation cohort in 2019, has provided league-wide tracking data for MLS Next Pro and, in collaboration with Spiideo, for the top two leagues in Sweden. The two companies, both headquartered in Sweden, have been integration partners for several years.

The NWSL does not currently have a league-wide tracking data partner, and when asked about the prospect of being the vendor of that solution, Olsson demurred, saying only, “That's to be determined, but it is a perfect league for this type of technology.” (NWSL reps did not respond to an inquiry prior to publication.)

Though best known for its work in soccer, Signality has done projects in Australian football, baseball, wave pool surfing and other sports, Olsson noted. Spiideo supports 20 different sports, and the plan is to incorporate tracking data across them. To start with, the Signality analytics will be an add-on package for Spiideo clients, “but we do believe, long-term, this is a foundational technology that probably needs to be part of more or less every recording that is made on our platform,” Olsson said.

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