By Alain Quinto

A huge congratulations goes out to the EA SPORTS Technology Licensing Group and ESPN's Emerging Technology group for two recent awards nominations.  Yesterday, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) announced the nominees for the 30th Annual Sports Emmy Awards and both groups were recognized being nominated for the George Wensel Technical Achievement Award for their work with the EA SPORTS Virtual Playbook.  On top of this prestigious nomination, the groups were also nominated to appear at the Sports Business Journal Awards in the Best in Sports Technology category as well.

The Sports Emmy Awards are to be decided on April 27th, 2009 while the Sports Business Award winner will be selected on May 28th, 2009.



EA SPORTS and ESPN share a passion for – and dedication to – engaging, exciting and serving sports fans by combining content and technology in innovative ways.  Driven by this, and in a close collaboration, the EA SPORTS Technology Licensing Group and ESPN’s Emerging Technology experts merged real-life football analysis with video game virtual reality, and fans inside the huddle and down onto the field.

Leveraging the long-term ESPN-EA strategic partnership (which started in 2005), the companies collaboratively pursued the ambitious initiative to create an interactive game analysis tool that integrated the virtual world of video games and the physical world of television production.  The result:  EA SPORTS Virtual Playbook puts virtual players from EA SPORTS’ Madden NFL franchise right in the ESPN studios, right alongside real-life ESPN hosts and game analysts.



With Virtual Playbook, EA SPORTS and ESPN provide a new level of enhancement to in-studio sports analysis. The new television technology delivers an “augmented reality” that allows ESPN’s football analysts to interact with virtual players and provide insight, education and analysis to fans about key plays and techniques. Analysts on ESPN’s shows are able to utilize the EA SPORTS Virtual Playbook to analyze game matchups each week and can easily demonstrate offensive and defensive schemes and highlight key matchups and mismatches with the virtual players from EA SPORTS’ Madden NFL 3D graphics engine.  From the viewer’s perspective, it’s as if the players are alongside the analysts in the studio.

For sports fans, EA SPORTS Virtual Playbook adds a new, and augmented, television reality. Allowing for truly one-of-a-kind storytelling, it has opened a new vision for shared growth with ESPN and EA SPORTS. By interacting with the virtual players, ESPN analysts can give viewers a better understanding of many potentially unseen or unnoticed aspects of the game, such as spacing on a play, which can help them better understand the game and their favorite teams and players.



Once again, many congratulations go out to the EA SPORTS Technology Licensing Group and ESPN's Emerging Technology group for their efforts and we'll stay tuned for the results at both award ceremonies.