The NBA is poised to announce a partnership with Take-Two Interactive Software, the makers of the popular NBA 2K video games, according to reports from Sam Amick of USA Today and Zach Lowe of ESPN.com. The two companies will work to launch a professional eSports league in 2018, which will feature competition between professional NBA 2K players.
According to both Amick and Lowe, the NBA 2K eLeague will eventually feature 30 teams, one owned by each of the NBA’s 30 franchises. Those teams, made up of five human players apiece, will compete in a season that mirrors the real NBA season. While all 30 NBA franchises may not be ready to launch their own eSports teams by 2018, commissioner Adam Silver hopes that at least half of the league’s franchises will have teams for the first year of the eLeague.
“These are a completely different set of professional athletes,” Silver told Amick. “There’s a global pool of gamers. They come in all ages, and sizes and ethnicities and sexes, and then we will at some point have a draft that will look somewhat similar to an NBA draft, in which the teams will select their players, and presumably on top of that they’ll have the ability to spot some great talent on their own, players who aren’t identified through sort of a league system. And that’s how we’ll form our teams.”
According to Lowe, specifics on the schedule, structure, and salary cap of the NBA 2K eLeague remain “hazy,” but players are expected to compete using their own user-created avatars, with no real NBA players represented on screen. Gamers who play in the league will receive salaries and will “essentially treat the NBA 2K eLeague as full-time jobs during the season,” per Lowe. Meanwhile, the league will hold events, sell tickets, and even negotiate licensing rights so that fans can watch games remotely.
“Fans and players of these games, who aren’t as expert as these professionals, want to come into an arena and watch the very best play,” Silver told Amick. “So you can imagine a scenario where, (say) the new arena in Milwaukee, where there’s five-on-five competition, just like NBA basketball, (and) it’s being projected on a huge, large high-definition screen, and fans are watching all the moves. There’s quarters, there’s halftimes, and everything that goes with it.”
As Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick explained to Amick, the eSports industry already has a significant consumer base, and is still on the rise, so the NBA and Take-Two are confident that the new NBA 2K eLeague has significant potential as a moneymaker.
“We fully believe that it will be well over a billion dollars as a market in the near future,” Zelnick said of competitive gaming. “Of [a] 250 million person audience worldwide, about half that audience – about 125 million people – are avid consumers of competitive gaming. They watch competitive gaming events, largely online. And this is nascent. It’s just beginning.”
This is a brilliant move. It will undoubtedly make a tremendous amount of money for the league and increase worldwide exposure. There will ultimately be more interest in the Eleague finals than the actual NBA Finals.
Can I get like a non-nerd translation on this? Are we talking about of a bunch of video gamers being paid to compete against each other in a basketball video game? And what do they mean “no NBA players on screen”? How can you play NBA 2k without NBA players? I’m so confused.
In response to your first question: Yes.
As for the second one, NBA 2K games let you create custom fictional players, and it sounds like those would be used in this league, rather than real NBA players (I’m assuming this has something to do with the fact that the NBPA would need to sign off on real players being used, but not 100% sure).
2k has a tournament they’ve done the last couple of years where you use your created player, and they play 5 on 5…there are certain limitations to each type of player, and you have to do certain things in the game to be able to improve your player’s skills. I imagine this will pretty much be the exact same thing, but on a much larger scale
…and in case anyone is wondering, I’ve watched a little of the games they’ve had the last couple of years, and it’s pretty good. Its like watching a basketball game in some ways. These guys know how to play 5 on 5 basketball. They also practice together and stuff. You’d be surprised how entertaining it could be. Especially if you’re a basketball junkie, it can be a decent option, assuming you don’t have other things to do
That’s pretty damn exciting. Not necessarily meaning I’ll watch it or whatever, but I think any of us who has ever played video games has at some point dreamt that something like this would one day exist!
Horrible idea honestly. Youre essentially saying there is the nba and enba. If you are going to pay these enba players like a “full time job” youre gonna need fans to pay and watch and engage. So you’re taking money away from the nba and players by spending the money on the enba…….
Also, i dont see people paying to see digital versions of nba players playing basketball because it doesnt have the hype-hardly anyone enjoys the strategic nature of basketball; now a days fans want to be entertained by unimaginable shots being made, herculean performances, and nasty dunks . If youre expecting this to be the sports version of counterstrike, call of duty, world of warcraft professional players this idea will fail miserably.. Those games offer things that get people’s attention that nba cant offer- violence, combat, and its solo moreso than sports is, plus there is different modes to be good at.
My god you’re being so naive! The NBA could care less where the money is spent as long as it’s spent in something the own a part of. It’s 2017 and Billions are spent on video game content. This will some day UNDOUBTEDLY be more profitable then the entire NBA.
1. The nba might not care…..but the player association will when revenue taken away from players is put towards the owners profiting on a separate entity that $0 profited goes back towards the actual players and only goes back to the e-players and owners and nba…..any money generated by the e league isnt guaranteed to find its way back to the pros who actually play the game. And that will be a huge issue if fans stop paying money for nba games and such.
2. Billions are spent on video game content people CAN participate in……NOT on video game content people watch for leisure activity and actually do not have any involvement whatsoever…….hardly anybody pays money to watch cod battlefield counter strike players on a regular basis.
Nice try but you need to think your arguments through better.
This is the next step in humans becoming the humans in WALL-E