Welcome to our SportAccord 2024 Insights series which reveals parts of some of the most exciting discussions from Birmingham, centred around the horizontal theme “The Power of Sport”.
SportAccord 2024 saw a lineup of amazing speakers tackling the hottest industry topics – with the sessions on gaming, its impact on the sports industry, creating a lasting impression.
Mark Rein, Vice President of Epic Games, creator of Fortnite and Unreal Engine, made it all the way from the US to Birmingham to share his exclusive insights on some of gaming’s key success factors and how sports can be part of the huge gaming ecosystem created over the last decades. Here are some top take-aways:
The most important rule when making games is to “make it fun”. If you don’t like it, others won’t either. It sounds simple, but has been the guiding principle for the highly successful Fortnite creator.
In this context, Rein highlighted sport’s huge and valuable entertainment factor: “Just like games, sport is entertainment – that’s where video games and sport really collide.”
It’s something Fortnite has definitely used to its advantage: “Sport is in the environment of Fortnite,” Rein said. “When we put Patrick Mahomes and Lewis Hamilton in Fortnite, it was the most popular skins we ever had,” he acknowledged, underlining the huge value in engaging people in a sport they are not familiar with or in getting fans more enthusiastic about one particular sport.
While Fortnite has leveraged successfully bigger sports like American Football or Basketball, Rein also sees potential for “smaller sports” to get involved. They can build on the existing distribution platform of 700 million accounts, well established communication tools for the players and many different environments at hand, without starting from scratch, he advised.
Rein concluded: “Nobody has really built sports games in this environment yet, but that’s coming and the possibility to do it is there now.”
Check out below the full conversation with Mark Rein and Nate Nazer – Vice President of Epic Games, Head of Global Partnerships
Gaming & Inclusion
Alice Dearing – Olympic marathon swimmer for Team GB and global diversity advocate – shared her perspective as an avid gamer, outlining the many opportunities esports and gaming provide in terms of inclusion:
“Having more competitions for people to be able to choose from, whether it’s traditional sports, esports or virtual sports, it’s exciting, it’s more options, it’s more opportunities, it’s another place for someone to pull an effort and a passion into.”
She cautioned that some people may nothave the opportunity to engage with traditional sports for different reasons, but would be able to have an opportunity to connect with people and spark their competitive spirit through esports and gaming.
“It’s something we should ever encourage,” urged Dearing. “I truly believe everyone is a gamer at heart, it is about capturing and letting people know it’s a space that is open to everybody.”
Dearing also insisted that gaming promotes interaction, at times even more so than traditional sports may do:
“The majority of athletes I know, particularly males and in swimming, play video games, and it brings people together in a way that being in the pool cannot.”
She also agreed with Rein on the potential of gaming for creative expression: “You really can create what you want to create and find great partnerships.”
Check out below the full conversation with Alice Dearing, which also featured Alban Dechelotte – CEO of G2 and member of the IOC Esports Commission, Paul Foster – CEO of Global Esports Federation and Alex Inglot – Commissioner of ESL Pro League.
Stay tuned for more exclusive insights from SportAccord 2024, coming your way over the next few weeks.
