SVG Sit-Down: EA SPORTS’ Evan Dexter on How the ‘EA SPORTS Madden NFL Cast’ Blends Gaming and Live NFL Production

Peacock’s Thanksgiving-night broadcast will blend videogame elements, NFL action

With the EA SPORTS Madden NFL Cast returning Thanksgiving night on Peacock, NBC Sports and EA SPORTS are again pushing the boundaries of how football is presented and consumed. The alternative broadcast, produced in collaboration with the NFL and Genius Sports, will merge live action from the Cincinnati Bengals–Baltimore Ravens matchup with real-time data overlays and visual elements inspired by the Madden NFL videogame series.

For Evan Dexter, VP, franchise strategy and marketing, American football, EA SPORTS, this project represents more than a creative experiment: it indicates how gaming and live-broadcast production are converging.

[Football’s] live-broadcast and gaming leadership have been emulating each other for a very long time. The Madden NFL Cast is the official integration of the two in ways that just haven’t been done before.

What does the Madden NFL Cast represent in EA SPORTS’ broader vision for how fans experience your brand and football videogaming?
Madden and its properties have, for so many years, crept into the authentic football world to the point where we started to see, over the last five, 10, 15 years, football on TV trying to replicate Madden. The sport’s live-broadcast and gaming leadership have been coming together in a way that both have been emulating each other for a very long time. The Madden NFL Cast is the official integration of the two in ways that just haven’t been done before.

The decision to use the SkyCam as the primary angle brings the Madden perspective directly to air. What’s your take on how that changes the way a viewer reads the game. How did your side and NBC Sports come together?
Yeah, it was meant to be a part of it last year. We started out last year with, I think, eight or nine core creative concepts that we wanted to represent Madden Cast as a whole. But, because it was new to us and relatively new to NBC, they had done alternate casts before but not the way we wanted to execute it. Because of our partnership with NBC, Genius, and EA, we were stumbling through the testing process last year and trying to preserve as many of those eight or nine original core concepts as we could. We just ran out of time because of the R&D required to get NBC’s production set up and ready to go. One of the things we ran out of time on was the SkyCam.

What are some of those other “core concepts” that you mentioned will be making it into this year’s production?
There’s a couple. The big one I’m excited about — again, something we ran out of time for last year — is pre-snap ratings matchups, like line-of-scrimmage ratings matchups. That was part of the original vision of what we wanted to achieve with Madden Cast. We started down that path last year, and we’re going to be much further down the road this year using data and assets specific to our game to put on screen narratives that don’t require an analyst or commentator.

You can imagine that a 98-overall wide receiver matched up against an 80-overall defensive back is instantly intuitive to a viewer: there’s something to watch, a pre-narrative that might unfold in an interesting way. It’s part of that chess game between offense and defense. If we can visualize, before the ball snaps, where the most interesting matchups are purely based on ratings, it gives viewers the ability to establish a little bit of a sub-narrative and watch it unfold in a way they might not have otherwise — unless they’re a hyper-core fan who knows every name, number, and skill level on the field.

Use of augmented-reality graphics is happening a lot across the NFL. How does Madden carve out a unique identity in a space where lots of people are trying to figure out how AR can tell the best stories in a live production?
I think of it as the difference between alternate versus augmented. We’re the only brand trying to augment football, whereas a lot of other brands — like The Simpsons, Toy Story, or Nickelodeon — are trying to alternate football for different audiences. What we’re doing is an attempt to make the viewership experience better and more data-immersive for existing football fans, as opposed to leveraging outside IP to attract new ones.

From EA’s standpoint, how do you balance innovation with respect for the game’s core emotions and stories? There’s emotion and intensity in players, coaches, and the stadium environment that maybe doesn’t come across in a videogame. How do you creatively balance what you can do technologically with what, from a human standpoint, viewers still want?
The way I think about it is, everything that we’re integrating from the game into broadcast should be augmentative: it should supplement the viewing experience, not distract from it. It should feel like more data available to you.

Where we landed well last year — and I’m even more excited about it this year because we’ve got an even better cast — was in the analysis. Kurt Benkert was one of the most well-received components of last year’s Madden Cast because he brings such a deep level of analysis and predictiveness. His post-play breakdowns are at a level we’ve seen only with guys like Tony Romo. Kurt not only can dissect what’s happening in front of him but can pick up a controller or use our interactive production tools and show you in-game what would have gone differently if the defense had chosen a different formation or play call.

Kurt has that ability, and we’re adding Tyrann Mathieu to the broadcast this year to bring that same perspective from the defensive side. I’m excited about that. It’s a distinctive brand voice for the broadcast. Again, Romo is probably everybody’s favorite example of someone who can dissect what’s happening on the field, but adding the interactivity of game elements to tell those stories in real time is what Kurt does so well and what Tyrann can do phenomenally this year. That gives us a unique tone and voice in the space.

Feedback from last year’s debut was positive. What did you learn from that first run that influenced this year’s version?
The learnings from our partnership with NBC were really interesting. I’d describe last year as dipping our toe in the water. It came together late, and we wished we’d had more R&D time on the creative concepts. We loved the execution, but we knew that, with more time and space, we could deliver a better product. Luckily, we have that opportunity this year.

We also learned a lot from the performance. We got a call from Fred [Gaudelli, executive producer, Sunday Night Football, NBC Sports] and his team the night of the first Madden Cast, telling us what they were seeing on Peacock’s data platform. It was the only alternate cast they’ve done where viewership and retention rose throughout the broadcast. Normally, you see mass tune-in and then decay over time. We knew that, even though imperfect, the concept was sticky and people who tuned in stuck with it.

Kurt said it best: there aren’t a lot of alternate casts where you don’t have to sacrifice watching the game. If we can keep that going, we’re winning. If we can get more of the original concepts in, like SkyCam and ratings matchups, it’s only going to get better. We also have an opportunity to bring more people to it this year.

Last year was so experimental, and we were sprinting to the finish line. We didn’t promote it as heavily as we might have liked because we didn’t know how sticky it would be. Now that we know, we can drive appointment viewing and keep people engaged throughout the broadcast.

What kind of coordination happens between EA’s development teams and NBC’s production group to ensure the “Madden look” feels authentic in a live-broadcast context? Are you involved beyond maintaining the brand?
Oh yes, we’re very involved. Teams of our studio leaders, editors, capture artists, and production folks from EA SPORTS are sitting at the control boards in NBC’s facility in Connecticut, and others are onsite at the game. They’re doing everything from feeding narratives through to the broadcast talent to experimenting in a test environment using a customized Madden build.

They can look at a play in real time — say, the defense ran Cover 3 — and instantly model how it would have looked if they had run Cover 4 quarters instead. They can capture that in real time and feed it to NBC, and Kurt can ingest it and drive a narrative for viewers. So yes, we’re very involved.

Is there anything that EA is doing in the videogame itself in coordination with this, whether it’s to drive viewership or bring something unique to gameplay?
Yes. One thing we’re doing this year that we didn’t last year is rewarding Madden fans. During the broadcast, we’ve pulled in our Twitch Prime API to drop in-game content to viewers in real time. Fans can scan a QR code on the broadcast and redeem unique content built specially for the Madden Cast.

We also have a unified messaging system in the game that drives dynamic messages to players once they boot up, directing them to the broadcast. More of our EA SPORTS ecosystem is ready to drive appointment viewing this year. Last year, time was our biggest enemy: we were sprinting against something we didn’t know how to do. I’d say everything has been 70% easier this year, so hopefully it shows.

Thanksgiving is an NFL tradition, and, recently, the league has turned it into a celebration of the legacy of John Madden, the namesake of this game for more than 35 years. What does it mean to you as an organization that this is happening on that day, and was that purposeful?
It was definitely purposeful. We wanted to target the Thanksgiving Day game. We have a significant title update planned for Madden 26 on that day as well, all themed around John Madden Week and reintroducing some concepts around what it means to be “All-Madden.” That’s prevalent today only as the NFL drives that narrative for younger generations.

It’s important to us that those things don’t fade from football culture. We’re very intertwined with the Madden estate; they’re phenomenal partners. A little bit of Coach’s DNA is ever-present in our hallways. He gets brought up a lot, and “What would John have wanted?” is still a question that gets asked because of how involved he was with the game. So yes, it’s exciting to offer a significant content update for players at the same time as the Madden Cast and the NFL’s celebration of him during such a meaningful week.

EA SPORTS is very much a keeper of the flame for John Madden’s legacy, and you have a lot of younger users who might not know who he is. Do you feel a responsibility to carry on his name and teach coming generations who John was, that he’s not just a name on a videogame?
Yeah, we do. Without sounding cheesy about it, it does end up being the anchor of a lot of our conversations, not just what we’re promoting this year but in our multi-year roadmap as we think about different football products in our ecosystem.

A lot of what John Madden saw in partnering with EA SPORTS 35 years ago was a teaching tool for the next generation, and that’s still very much top of mind. The way he spoke about it is still top of mind. It’s exciting. We’re experimenting (nothing official yet) with new technology and the opportunity to bring John back in certain ways, to have him live and breathe inside the product. You can squint and see that future pretty close to us.

Obviously, it’s something we’d only ever do with the respect and approval of his estate, but the technological capabilities of keeping John’s legacy alive in more overt ways than were possible five years ago are exciting. It makes carrying his legacy not a burden but a privilege. It’s a story that can continue to live on in ways that just weren’t possible before.