Call of Duty is pursuing greater ties to sports because of the crossover of fans and athletes with the long-lived game series. But also, it's a potential marketing outlet as well. Also: MLB Network and Netflix's Matt Vasgersian recounts his days on MLB: The Show on the SBJ Sports Media Podcast.

Matt Vasgersian recently dropped by the SBJ Sports Media Podcast, and my video game-loving colleague Austin Karp just had to talk with him about his time as the voice for MLB’s The Show.

I was a bit surprised when I got the call from Activision last week wanting to discuss Call of Duty’s first appearance at Fanatics Fest. The event is already hotbed of sports culture, and I knew organizers have ambitions for it to break out of its sports confines and become a bigger cultural event c...

The X Games are returning to video games, at least for a limited time in EA Sports’ Skate, the publisher’s skateboarding sim. This is the first time the X Games have appeared in a video game since Jeremy Bloom was named its CEO.

Call of Duty is showing up to Fanatics Fest for the first time, showing more of this fall’s Modern Warfare 4 video game and boosting Fanatics’ quest to make the festival a larger cultural event that’s breaking outside sports.

Chipotle is taking a swing at video game golf, tabbing 2K Sports’ PGA Tour 2K25 for a promotion in which players can net food rewards at the chain from their gameplay performances. This is the first food brand to work with 2K Sports in this manner, and its agency for gaming deals, RevXP, played a ro...

Anime and sports go hand-and-hand in Japan. For the World Cup, Crunchyroll is using the biggest soccer event to promote its soccer anime. Also: MLB: The Show 26 and Forza Horizon 6 sales and an outlook for sports games in a world where console prices rise and their sales decline.

Anime isn’t just about mechs, ninjas and horse girls. Sports has been a thriving niche in the Japanese animation for decades, some original works and others adaptations of manga (that’s a form of comic/graphic novel in Japan).

MLB: The Show 26 is performing better than, well, most of the American League at this point, finishing sixth in unit sales among games in the U.S., with Forza Horizon 6 at No. 2 for Microsoft in tracking firm Circana’s monthly report for May.

The Evolution Championship Series, the largest fighting-game circuit in esports, signed a multiyear deal with Visa for global events through early 2028. This marks the first deal with a major non-endemic brand for Evo since RTS, with backing from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, acquired full ...