EA Sports correctly predicted the winner of the 2010 World Cup using its soccer engine, and they hope to be able to do a great deal more now, thanks to a new technology deal with the British Premier League. The multifaceted agreement includes new opportunities for EA to gather data from real-world gameplay and leverage it to make better video games. EA Sports global president Peter Moore believes such stats may be key to winning American hearts.
"As someone who lives in the United States and went over there in the 1970s, but also someone who understands American sports very well, Americans need to statistically analyze everything and this is where soccer befuddles them sometimes because it's too fluid," Moore said, according to a report by the Associated Press. "That U.S. consumer that is used to waking up the next morning and being able to look at every baseball box score."
The Premier League hopes to to gain some fans out of the deal too.
"We're going to be collecting a lot of that information by camera, a lot of new information as well," Premier League director of sales and marketing Richard Masters explained. "The challenge for us is to work out how that information can be used to enhance the performance of the performance index."
Now I love soccer. The game is fine by me. I heard a lot American sports fans complaining about why they couldn't get into soccer during the World Cup this summer, though, and low scores and slow gameplay both came up numerous times. I do not however ever recall hearing lack of statistics mentioned as a major gripe. But these guys are the marketing experts, I guess. Hopefully we'll at least see a few new tricks in EA's next FIFA release.
Are you an American soccer fan? Do you think EA and the Premier League will be able to find new soccer fans through enhanced stats? Share your opinions in the comment section below.