Business of Esports TV: NFL Game Contest

(Livestream #132)

In this segment, we discuss the NFL running a contest for game developers to make a new mobile game before the 2022 season.

The Business Of Esports brings you news, debates, and all the information you need to know about the gaming sector, the world’s fastest-growing market. With Paul “The Profit” Dawalibi leading the charge, and a variety of special guests, BoE TV is the only place to find insider information on the esports industry!

Check out the full livestream here:

Paul Dawalibi 33:03
I just want to stay on the on the betting piece was the the segue I wanted to make here. With with skills in the news. And, and this, I thought, you know, skill stock has been beaten up pretty badly. And I think we talked about it two weeks ago, Jeff, or last week, maybe, and some of the numbers around it. And, and this this headline, I thought was interesting. This initiative, at least from them was interesting. And the headline here is NFL begins accepting submissions for mobile eSports game to launch before 2022 season. And basically what they’re doing, it’s very clever. I’ve not seen this before. So skills is partnering with the NFL, okay. And basically, they’re taking applications for something called the game developer challenge, okay, where a bunch of developers have until the end of the month to submit a concept for an NFL inspired game that will launch on skills. And the winner of this challenge that designs the best game will will get access to NFL and team logos. And the game will be launched on the skills app. And they’re gonna skills will give them $50,000 towards user acquisition, and promotion via the NFL. And this was very cool. I don’t know. It’s awesome.

Jeff Cohen 34:25
It’s a great idea. I mean, this is, honestly, so when this news hit, that was actually what pushed their stock nit. You know what, whenever it went to $45, like that, it was kind of on this news. And you could see why people would get excited about it. I mean, the big knock on skills is that they don’t have enough developers on the platform. It’s very, you know, like 8020 rule 80% of the revenue comes from actually not even 20%. It comes from like two of the developers. So getting more developers on the platform and getting more kind of higher fidelity, AAA Type games is a big push for them and a big thing that investors have pushed back on. So it makes a ton of sense to use this initiative. To get developers and it’s going to a trade, it probably will attract some some interesting, you know, folks to try to, because, you know, the juice is sort of worth the squeeze, if you’re the one who wins, you get the marketing, support of skills, and the NFL, that could really be a nice little thing for your company, depending on the scale of your of your company that you’re talking about. The question though, becomes, what kind of game Are you really going to see someone be able to build in a month, that’s a, it’s not going to be a simulation style game,

Paul Dawalibi 35:42
clear, they have to submit their concept by May 31. Okay. And fit and the winner, the final submission is due by December 3.

Jeff Cohen 35:53
So they do have a bit more time, but I still think you’re gonna see, it’s tough to see that you’re going to get like, you’re not going to get mad and for mobile, like, there’s just, I don’t think you’re gonna be able to execute against that. So what kind of game is someone gonna be able to build that skill based, and can have a betting component that’s NFL oriented? Like, maybe you get some sort of CCG, kind of like in? What’s the collectible card game that NBA has with take to, like I forget what it’s called. But But something along those lines, almost like a daily fantasy, but with gambling, again, that’s kind of the only thing I can think of, which maybe that resonates, maybe that that works. But one of the things that a lot of the bears on skills have said is this isn’t the first time that they’ve kind of had a initiative like this. And they tend to sort of fizzle out and not, you know, they’ve announced kind of similar things in the past that haven’t really led to much. So it’ll be an interesting one to follow. It certainly. It certainly has potential.

Paul Dawalibi 36:57
Of course, like, it’s all in the execution, right? You can announce anything you want, if you don’t execute on it. Well, it’s not gonna matter. Lindsay, do you love this dude? Like,

Lindsay Poss 37:08
oh, yeah, this is great. I think it’s really cool. It because Well, honestly, just getting access to the logos is so expensive. So whatever app developer went with this, I hope can make it into something really cool. to just point though, I do think it’s hard to be really creative and original, like six month time span. By mobile,

Paul Dawalibi 37:27
though, so it’s like, you know, you don’t need to build the same kind of graphics as a full blown PC game or you know, stuff that takes up very time consuming. Really, do you guys know actually, I only discovered it from this article. Did you know The NFL was an investor in skills?

Lindsay Poss 37:44
I did not.

Paul Dawalibi 37:46
Because that was news to me. In November 2019, the NFL actually invested in skills through there. I didn’t even know the NFL had this the league’s strategic investment arm called 32 equity which I did like I said I didn’t even know existed. But it’s interesting because they they’ve been in bed together since 2019.

Jeff Cohen 38:09
It’s interesting yeah, the NFL has a lot of different you know venture and initiative arms like I know the Players Association has their own like little venture fund that does a lot of investments in gaming. So

Paul Dawalibi 38:23
Christian says first lol stadia yes lol See how I feel about stadia enough time to build a second screen experience game? Yeah, I mean, I definitely Christian, the question is, can you it’s skill for it to be on skills, it has to be skill based. And you have to be able to bet on it. Right. So I don’t know if a second screen experience would

Jeff Cohen 38:45
be basically describing DraftKings. Like daily fantasy.

Paul Dawalibi 38:50
But But I did think this was a very clever way to sort of extend this partnership and do something interesting, because what they don’t mention, by the way, is from that what they do mention is from that group that applies with a concept by May 31. They pick 15, who then develop a game, right? So there’s one winner, but you have 14 other games that then have been developed. And I’m sure if some of them are good enough, you know, skills, maybe does something with them, I don’t know. But it’s a clever way to bring more more good options in terms of games to their platform and, and do it in a way that generates quite a bit of buzz. I liked I liked it a lot.