The 2021 NFL Professional Bowl will happen totally on the digital gridiron in Madden NFL 21, bringing collectively this season’s high performers and different present gamers with celebrities, NFL legends, and Madden streamers for a weeklong sequence of occasions, the NFL and writer Digital Arts introduced Tuesday.
All members will play Madden NFL 21 utilizing the Professional Bowl rosters throughout the week, and the video games will culminate in an AFC-NFC matchup that includes 2021 Professional Bowl gamers. The Professional Bowl, the NFL’s all-star recreation, historically takes place one week earlier than the Tremendous Bowl, which might put this season’s Professional Bowl week from Jan. 25-31, 2021.
It’s unclear how the NFL will resolve who will partake in that closing recreation, because the full Professional Bowl rosters will include 88 gamers, 44 every from the AFC and NFC. All the video games might be accessible to look at “throughout a wide range of platforms,” and the week of occasions might be featured in a “particular program” that can air on ESPN and ABC, the NFL and EA mentioned in a information launch.
Voting for the 2021 Professional Bowl rosters is now open, with NFL followers capable of vote for his or her favourite gamers on the NFL web site in addition to via Madden NFL 21 on consoles and Madden NFL 21 Cellular on Android and iOS. Voting can even be accessible through Twitter, however solely from Dec. 1-17. Fan voting will conclude Dec. 17, after which NFL gamers and coaches will solid their ballots; votes from these three teams might be weighted equally in figuring out the rosters.
“We’re remodeling the Professional Bowl for followers in all places and bringing one other wonderful NFL expertise to life in the best way solely Madden NFL can,” mentioned Chris Bruzzo, government vp of selling, business, and constructive play at EA, in a information launch. “We’re excited to work intently with the NFL, our long-time companion, to maneuver the Professional Bowl to the digital fields of Madden NFL and be a part of the primary high-profile sporting occasion to go digital. Our neighborhood is hungry for extra interactive experiences, so we’re all the time working to create extra alternatives to deliver them nearer to the sports activities they love.”
Bruzzo’s assertion brings to thoughts the announcement from Could through which EA, the NFL, and the NFL Gamers Affiliation mentioned that they’d agreed to multiyear extensions of their long-term licensing offers for the Madden NFL online game franchise. They proclaimed that the renewals — reportedly price no less than $1.5 billion over the following 5 years — would permit them to type a better relationship and create new methods for soccer followers to attach with the game.
“This partnership can even give attention to design, visualization and growth improvements to develop and deepen the world of Madden NFL, impacting the way it performs and feels, and the way gamers hook up with the world of the NFL because it occurs,” the events mentioned in a information launch on the time. A digital Professional Bowl, with playable content material and voting inside Madden, won’t have been precisely what they’d in thoughts again then — after we had been just some months into the coronavirus pandemic — nevertheless it looks as if an enchanting strategy to deliver these unspecific statements to fruition.
Tuesday’s information comes a couple of month after the NFL introduced that it had canceled the Professional Bowl because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The AFC-NFC contest was initially scheduled to be held at Allegiant Stadium to shut out the Raiders’ inaugural season in Las Vegas. Allegiant Stadium is now slated to host the 2022 Professional Bowl.
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