EA Brings Madden Esports to the Mainstream With Virtual Pro Bowl, Madden Club Championship The Madden Club Championship will be released next week By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Friday, January 29, 2021 - 2:16 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
With the pandemic still wreaking havoc on the sports world, the NFL Pro Bowl is going to look just a bit different this year. The league has teamed up with EA Sports to deliver a transformed Pro Bowl, featuring celebrities, NFL Legends, and current Pro Bowlers competing in the Madden NFL 21 videogame. The event is part of an ultra-busy two weeks for EA's broadcast team, which is also producing the Madden Club Championship (the largest prize pool in Madden NFL esports history) and will cap it with the Semifinals and Finals on Feb. 5 in advance of the Super Bowl.
During the pandemic, esports and competitive gaming have made a jump into the mainstream and have had many more opportunities. I think this is one of the best examples of that, says EA Head of Broadcast Joe Lynch. The [Madden Club Championship] is one of our biggest and most exciting events of the year. And to be able to be a part of the Pro Bowl is truly a dream for everyone here. We're all NFL fans, and to be able to work with the NFL and their teams on this has been amazing.
Madden-izing the Pro Bowl: EA Deploys Kits, Relies on Cloud-Based Workflow Madden Studio Analyst Brian Armstrong (OneGreatUser) is in Belmont, NC
The Pro Bowl: The Madden NFL 21 Edition Presented by Verizon -a collaboration of the NFL, EA, OneTeam Partners, and esports-production outfit Find Your Battlefield - will stream on the NFL's YouTube, Twitter and Facebook channels and on EA Madden NFL Twitch on Sunday at 5 p.m. ET. The event will re-air at 8 p.m. on NFL Network and again at 12:30 a.m.
This is not just another Madden event, says Lynch. This is going to have a different look and feel than any other Madden events that we've done. We're excited about it, and I think it's going to be a lot of fun for fans.
Snoop Dogg, Deshaun Watson, Derrick Henry, and Keyshawn Johnson will compete for the AFC, with Bubba Wallace, Marshawn Lynch, Kyler Murray, and Jamal Adams playing for the NFC. The two teams will play in Madden NFL 21 from their homes, using the official Pro Bowl rosters with a new competitor tapping in to play each quarter. Michael Strahan and Charissa Thompson will host the Sunday event with popular streamers Ninja, FaZe Swagg, AustinShow, and AMP also hosting watch parties on their channels Sunday at 5 p.m.
Madden Club Championship host Katie Emmer's remote setup in Delano, MN.
The event was preproduced on Thursday via a cloud-based OBS workflow, and the EA team is now in the midst of tweaking and finalizing the show that will stream on Sunday. Each player and talent was provided with a full standardized kit consisting of a Sony mirrorless camera, Sennheiser lav mic, lighting kit, laptop, and Ethernet router. EA also upgraded competitors' internet where necessary.
We've been honing our kits with our Madden pros and talent for months, says Lynch, but it was definitely more of a challenge for the [celebrity competitors] for the Pro Bowl, especially when you're dealing with people that potentially aren't familiar with the technology. Also, the increased COVID restrictions make it tough because we can't even get into someone's house to set all the equipment up; we have to leave a present on their doorstep with directions. But all the credit goes to our production partners for simplifying that process and making it as easy as possible for the talent and players to set up.
Tyler Davis, EA's Madden Club Championship Color Commentator, is in Lynn, MA
To ensure video quality, each player and talent was recorded locally on the laptop provided. Immediately after the show was over, EA engineers remoted into each site's computer and transferred the recorded files (gameplay for players, their POV cameras, and, in some cases, roaming cameras) into frame.io folders with predefined destinations to allow the whole team to access them. The production team now has Friday and Saturday to handle graphics, any edits/fixes, color correction, and audio mixing for distribution to digital outlets and NFL Network on Sunday.
In terms of signal flow, EA deploys AWS Elemental Media Connect as the primary ingress/egress point for its virtual NOC, along with Zixi for low-latency/high-quality gameplay. This allows EA to transmit high-quality/low-latency signals from sites with restricted bandwidth access, such as player/talent homes. EA also uses this transport protocol for international acquisition/distribution.
As for distribution on Sunday, EA will internally load-balance and distribute the final signal to all endpoint destinations via the AWS Elemental MediaLive platform.
In an interesting twist, the EA team needed to totally rethink the overall signal flow due to the increased complexity in the show format (the need to swap players between quarters). Given the remote workflow, it wasn't possible to play the games as preferred in a LAN environment. And the ability to switch players quarter by quarter on a console isn't possible within the standard Madden 21 game.
David Saunders, Madden Club Championship Director, is in San Francisco, CA
Instead, the team loaded Parsec on the laptop in each kit and attached an Xbox controller to it, giving each player the look and feel of playing on an Xbox. However, the laptop remotes into a host machine located with EA's Madden League Ops team in Orlando. League Ops is then able to change players and create seamless gameplay while maintaining competitive integrity.
Phenomenal work by the Development and League Operations teams to [devise] this solution, says Lynch. It's differ
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
EA Brings Madden Esports to the Mainstream With Virtual Pro Bowl, Madden Club Championship The Madden Club Championship will be released next week By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor 
