One of the top executives in professional soccer has spoken out about the increasing pressure video games—namely Fortnite: Battle Royale—has put on his sport.
Liverpool Football Club CEO Peter Moore told Arabian Business in an interview that he’s concerned about making younger people into fans of soccer.
“Nintey minutes is a long time for a millennial male to sit down on a couch,” Moore said. “When I look at viewing and attendance figures of millennial males, I’m concerned as a chief executive of a football club that relies on the next generation of fans coming through. We are an industry that needs to harness technology to make sure we don’t miss an entire generation of young people growing up that don’t have that love for football. We need to package content in bites of 60 to 90 seconds to keep their engagement.”
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Moore, who previously worked at Microsoft and SEGA of America, said he’s not only competing with other Premier League clubs for fans, though. He said he also has to combat one of the most popular video games in the world, Fortnite.
“If we don’t build technological prowess as a club we will lose them,” Moore said. “There’s so much pressure on time now and only 24 hours in a day… there are only so many hours to play Fortnite.“
During the interview, Moore further stressed the need to effectively use technology to bring in and keep its younger audience. He even said it was working with IBM to optimize its websites and apps to offer more personalized content to fans.
Liverpool FC had nearly 500 million social media interactions in 2018, according to Moore, which ranks second in England and fifth in the world.
H/T SportsPro Media
