Getting to the top of your game is an ambition held by many. The same applies to virtual football enthusiasts - the highest level of EA SPORTS FIFA players competed throughout the season and it all culminated in the FIFAe Finals 2022 this summer in Copenhagen, Denmark and was supported by marketing partner, RAWR by Webrepublic.

Picture this: The 1950s have arrived. Credit cards, satellites and video recorders have been invented but more importantly - the decade has given us the birth of gaming.

Since the evolution of gaming over time, from arcades, to moving a paddle across a screen in the revolutionary ‘Pong’, to console gaming with the Xbox and PlayStation at home, the popular source of entertainment evolves every single year. In our modern day over 70 years on, competitive video gaming has been taken to a new competitive level, where people compete for millions of dollars’ worth of prize money, international fame and a pedestal to catapult your online streaming career - known collectively as esports.

It has been discussed as a potential Olympic sport, and national boards that look after their countries’ specific esports have tipped it to become one of the biggest sports globally in the coming years. According to Statista, the esports industry’s global market revenue is forecast to grow to as much as $1.87 billion by 2025.

Traditional sports have now been translating into virtual sports and bridging the gap between reality and fantasy for several decades. Esports competitions surrounding sports such as football, basketball and American football have infiltrated the mainstream media markets - including the likes of broadcast giant Sky Sports. FIFA - the international governing body of football - created their own competitive gaming and overarching esports brand, FIFAe, who have a young, overlapping audience between virtual and traditional football.

Virtual football’s structure is played through season-long competitive series, where FIFAe uncovers the best players, clubs and nations from the official licensed product - EA SPORTS™ FIFA - who qualify for the pinnacle events of each of different tournament narratives.

FIFAe Finals

For the first time this year, FIFA introduced a brand-new FIFAe Finals concept, encapsulating all three pinnacle events - the FIFAe World Cup, FIFAe Club World Cup and FIFAe Nations Cup - which took place over three weeks in July in Copenhagen. Athletes from every corner of the world travelled to the Danish capital for their respective tournaments.

The FIFAe Finals isn’t just the grandest FIFA esports event to date where athletes came to claim a share of the $1.2 million in prize money. It is also a prime showcase of how FIFA esports work to develop and professionalise the sport whilst attracting millions of viewers who laid eyes upon the top level of virtual football during the FIFAe Finals.

The final day opened to the general public, and gamers, fans, families and kids packed into the arena. As the new generation spends time in front of the screens and consoles, parents had the opportunity to reconnect with their families in their specific area of interest, whilst also being able to follow along due to the ease of understanding between virtual and traditional football.

As a FIFA-run event, the same laws over professionalisation apply to both traditional football and virtual football. Players are considered elite sportspeople and travel with an entourage of coach, media and team representatives. They compete in state-of-the-art ‘gaming pods’, as FIFAe set out to create in close collaboration with the community the next generation of gaming stations. Hall of Fame inductions were also introduced for the first time this year and the standards that are in place to protect the integrity of the FIFAe Finals are very alike to other international ‘traditional sport’ competitions.

RAWR in Copenhagen

RAWR by Webrepublic - a marketing partner for digital strategy and innovation in the sports and entertainment business - supports FIFA on a day-to-day basis with marketing and operations behind the FIFAe project. For the last three years, RAWR has supported the FIFAe team in developing their commercial activations, operational activities, editorial and PR as well as digital marketing initiatives.

Specific communication and marketing initiatives were created all season long to reach the audience that resonates best with FIFAe, with the engagement and growth of the community in mind. Unsurprisingly, Gen Z and their affinity for esports constitute a highly relevant target and tailored messages on a variety of channels were composed. Social media continues to play a vital role in that regard with TikTok showing best-in-class results for that specific demographic.

More traditional communication channels such as newsletter marketing were also activated, with both global and regional distribution. It was also observed that longer-form editorials still have their place in a global communication strategy, with info-packed and engaging articles published on the hub for everything FIFAe, FIFA.GG.

Overall, the FIFAe experience is certainly a look into the future of entertainment and sports, with the boundaries between virtual and traditional sport blurring year upon year. Long-lasting memories were created to relive throughout the year with the fans - and esports has piqued the interest of many new personalities and faces. It’s here to stay, and it’s only going to get bigger and better.