NFL “Blockies”
“We need to figure out how to drive more adaptation and attention to Next Gen Stats,” the leader of NFL Media said to me.
As an executive helping to oversee creative content — graphics, music, AR/VR, scenic design, and emerging production platforms — I realized we had tremendous opportunity here if we could figure out ways to bring more attention to this massive pool of analytical data.
Next Gen Stats (NGS) is the National Football League’s proprietary data technology system that enables the tracking of individual players’ precise movements all across the field during live football games. Made possible via microchips that are placed inside each player’s shoulder pads and the ball, the NFL uses Next Gen Stats to gather an avalanche of data during games.
But. After initially taking on said NGS data, we were struggling to figure out how to optimize and broaden its use. It felt like we were just buried under data.
Although the team and I immediately set out to develop a visual brand for NGS that could be regularly and consistently included, mentioned, and featured throughout all NFL Media content, and although we worked to integrate Next Gen Stats inside that content, and to provide our broadcast partners with more opportunities to use it in their game analyses, merely dressing up the data and serving it on a silver platter didn’t quite give it quite the successful boost we hoped.
It was time to think outside the box.
In order to make NGS more useful to broadcasters and producers (and also to make it more visually engaging to current fans and potentially garner new ones), we had to figure out how to use NGS to better visually tell a story. And that’s when it hit me: What if the story we wanted to tell wasn’t so granular? What if, instead of solely using NGS to further dissect plays, we leveraged the data to help tell the same general story, in a new and interesting way?
My first thought: video games.
I reached out to EA Sports to see if there was a world in which we could connect our proprietary positional data with their incredible Madden graphics/game engine, thinking we could then stream a digital version of a live football game in real time. They loved the idea. First down! But sadly they couldn’t spare the engineer team necessary to make it happen. Turnover.
Still, I knew this game engine direction in which we were heading had potential. Next, we needed a technology partner with strong creative chops to get our idea into the end zone – and I knew just the one. An AI-based data visualization company located in the Netherlands, Beyond Sports is a company known for creating exciting new perspectives of real sports footage by leveraging player-tracking data. I had met Beyond Sports at a VR conference a few years back, and was so impressed by their work that I remembered them years later. Ultimately, I rang them up, pitched them my idea, and they quickly came on board.
A few weeks later we had a demo ready to share.
Good news: the tech worked!
Not so good news: the look was pure Uncanny Valley lame.
Time to do that most important thing in any developmental process: PIVOT into what it wants to be and is working well. FAST.
Instead of streaming a hyper-realistic recreation of the football game inside a modern-day sports video game engine that looked disappointing, we decided to play around with streaming a hyper-unrealistic version. We wanted something that felt nostalgic and fun to watch: old-school, 8-bit, Nintendo-looking stuff. Led by the very talented art director Daryl Mar, our graphics team went to work designing the blocky, old-school-video-game-looking 3D animations. Our 90’s-style football game characters weren’t supposed to look real and that was the point — that was the fun part.
Our team moved the new animation concepts and designs over to Beyond Sports who took them to a whole new level of excellence.
We were almost there.
Testing had to be conducted on an actual, live NFL game so that we could truly assess the accuracy of the data stream functionality in tandem with the graphics. But testing (and live-broadcasting) our brand-new technology on an American audience was impossible given the broadcast rights issues. So, we tested it out on Beyond Sports’ home turf – The Netherlands – and on Twitch.
With the help of the NFL’s Next Gen Stats and Business Development teams, David K. Anderson - CEO BreakAway Data and NFL Wide Receiver, Marcelle de Bie - Twitch Partner, in addition to a very willing and helpful business partner in Twitch, we tested the tech during a 2019 Wild Card Playoff game. It was the first-ever real time VR stream of an NFL game. It was historic!
With zero promo (again, gnarly broadcast rights issues solved), we launched our block-like football characters to a specific, geo-fenced audience in The Netherlands on a singular channel on Twitch. Within minutes of going live, our characters had more than 5k concurrent viewers, and their ratings were higher than those for the linear broadcast. Coolest of all, the Twitch audience had gone and named our Lego-like characters: BLOCKIES! Despite our audience’s lack of experience or interest in American football, the Blockies were able to connect with them enough that they turned into raving fans.
We were on to something.
So, when the announcement later came through that CBS Sports would be producing a special game for Nickelodeon the following season, I knew our Blockies needed to be a part of it. Working with Shawn Robbins who executive produced the game, superstar Nate Burleson who would be in the booth calling the game, and the CBS Sports graphics team led by Drew Simon, I connected Beyond Sports into it all and they made it happen. New Orleans Saints vs. Chicago Bears on Nickelodeon — with Blockies’ in-game highlights! Plus, they’d just made television history: they were the first time-ever digital highlights to be created and shown inside an NFL game broadcast.
It didn’t just work; it rocked. The audience went so crazy for Blockies, they racked up more than 1 billion social impressions during the Wild Card Game. Even better, the playful and fun air about the Blockies offered a giant step forward on the NFL’s quest to connect with young fans and families.
The Blockies went on to help CBS and Nickelodeon win a Sports Emmy Award for graphics, and earned themselves an Emmy as well. Besides reinvigorating the younger generation’s interest in the game of football and increasing their engagement with it on the screen, Blockies demonstrated that there is amazing potential when creative content comes together at the intersection of sports, entertainment and technology.