LANDOVER, Md. – Even with another season ending shy of the playoffs in Washington, there was still plenty of gridiron action at FedEx Field last weekend.
The stadium played host Saturday to the Madden 18 Club Championship Series, where the four top Madden players qualifying in the Burgundy and Gold gathered to play down to a winner who will represent the team against finalists from the other 31 NFL clubs this weekend in Orlando. Taking place in the Owner’s Club, there were representatives from the team, the NFL and EA Sports on hand, along with a live broadcasting crew. The games themselves were broadcast on the stadium videoboards and across the web to thousands of viewers.
This is where professional sports and esports meet in 2018. Just as the NBA has invested in its own NBA 2K league, the NFL and EA Sports are ponying up not only to fly gamers from all around the country to these club championship matchups, but for a prize pool of over $400,000, with $35,000 going to the champion. That’s part of an overall prize pool of over $1.15 million for all Madden 18 tournaments EA is hosting this year.
It’s a lot of money, but it’s not that much money, all things considered. The whole affair begs the bigger question of whether or not this is a viable career for those gamers who choose to invest their time mastering their craft. League of Legends instituted a $75,000 minimum player salary last year. But as a recent Value Penguin study showed, a vast majority of Dota 2 players made less than $20,000 in 2017. For sports games still looking to make their mark in the esports world, prize money requires league investment.
But sports leagues carry advantages, as well. As of Tuesday, the Twitch stream of Saturday’s action at FedEx Field had only a couple hundred views. But the EA Sports stream had almost 18,000 views, and the Facebook Live stream had 187,000. That’s a reverse ecosystem to many established esports, which lean on Twitch and YouTube traffic, but highlights the massive reach that professional sports teams enjoy on Facebook and how that can bring eyes to such events.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQv3fKW7DqQ
As for the games themselves, they featured players ranging in age from 20 to 34 and hailing from California, Florida, New Jersey and Richmond, Virginia. Each played as the Burgundy and Gold, but with curated rosters selected by each user to fit under a salary cap.
Hassan Spall, who is recognized as one of the top 5 to 10 players in the overall Madden pool, came in as the heavy favorite and he did not disappoint. The 20-year-old Rutgers University student originally from Hagerstown, Maryland, goes by GOS (an acronym for Gaming of Spall) and rode his impressive, shutdown defense to victory in his first match, using a blocked field goal return for a touchdown to spark a 38-6 victory. For Spall, choosing to compete in his team’s colors was an easy one, even though he knew the competition pool might be tougher to wade through than for some other clubs.
“I did it because it’s my team; it’s my favorite team,” he said. “This is one of the hardest roads to get here.”
After fumbling the opening kickoff in the final, the dream looked like it might be in peril. But Spall’s vaunted defense shone through once again, limiting his opponent to a mere three points en route to a 21-3 victory. In the end, he didn’t allow a touchdown on the day.
Spall isn’t shy about his aspirations in Orlando, where he’ll start his next journey against the champion from the Dallas Cowboys’ player pool. If he makes the final eight, he’ll earn a trip to Minneapolis to try to win the whole thing a few days before the Super Bowl.
“It’s win or bust for me always,” he said. “The money’s nice, but I also want the title. I want to be the champion.”
But Spall also has aspirations to maybe find his way into the esports world more permanently. He took the semester off school to be able to compete in this tournament. The rise in popularity and prize money for some of esports events is evocative of the poker boom in the early 2000s, when scores of college students dropped out of school for the promise of riches on tour. Could this be the next boom?
“Of course I’m going to have backup plans with school and stuff,” said Spall. “But esports is growing. It’s big. The top 10 players are averaging 50, 60, 70K salaries a year, and it’s just going to keep getting bigger and bigger as the viewership goes up. It’s something that anybody, everybody should be getting into.”
