Game industry veteran Peter Moore left the business behind when he left Electronic Arts in 2017 to become CEO of the Liverpool Football Club, and now he’s afraid it’s coming after him.
“I’m concerned as a CEO of a football club that relies on the next generation of fans coming through,” Moore recently told Arabian Business magazine. “There’s so much pressure on time now and only 24 hours in a day, [and] there are only so many hours to play Fortnite.”
It’s interesting to see that even in the world of one of the world’s biggest international sports, video games (especially free-to-play juggernauts like Fortnite) offer sizable competition for young people’s time and money.
The interview also reveals Moore is applying a lot of what he learned in the game industry to his work of selling football (including tickets, broadcasts, and merch) to the next generation of paying fans.
“That’s something I learned in video games. I can push you all kinds of stuff on particular players, but if you’re only interested in [striker] Mohamed Salah, and I don’t know that, my outreach is wasted,” Moore said. “You might like [midfielder] Gini Wijnaldum. The more we learn about you, the more we can push Gini Wijnaldum stuff that you’ll click or engage. The key is that I need to know who you are.”
The rest of his comments make for interesting reading over on the Arabian Business website.