In this post, you’ll learn more about FIFA Ultimate Team, FUTcoaching and how they have been using video analysis to enhance the performance of their own esports stars and gamers over the globe. In 9 months, the FUTcoaching team progressed up the UK and European leagues and are now into the Championship. With the new season about to start, let’s look back at how they’ve used video analysis to support this impressive growth and performance.
Contents
What is esports
Esports, also known as e-Sports, egames, or electronic sports is organised competitive video gaming.
It primarily involves teams competing against each other in tournaments for a cash prize. Functionally, it’s the same as traditional sports. Top-level athletes are constantly vying for the top spots in their sport, or game, of choice.
Gamers love competition. They want to be the best. From 1972 when the winner of the first esports event received a yearlong subscription to Rolling Stone magazine, to present day where prize pools include up to tens of millions of dollars, winning is at the core of what playing video games is all about.
Esports is also accessible. To play a traditional sport you may have to organise people into the same physical location, whereas with gaming you can play with people from all around the world instantly with an internet connection from the comfort of your own home.
Esports Viewers: Streaming
This is where you can watch other people (including professional gamers) play on websites like Twitch, which is another reason eSports is popular. In 2017, Twitch (owned by Amazon) received 15 million daily visitors, with 355 billion (yes billion) minutes watched.
Gaming culture today is as much about playing games as it is about watching other people play. FUTcoaching's own internal surveys reveal the average gaming addict plays about 25 hours per week, while also spending 25 hours per week on other internet activities, like watching streams.
Esports Careers: Going Pro
Esports sells the dream of going pro. With 83% of teenage girls and 95% of teenage boys playing video games regularly, what could be more exciting than earning your living as a pro gamer, especially compared to traditional careers like being an accountant, lawyer, or sales associate (no offence to people working in those professions!). The competition for eSports is fierce, with hundreds of millions of gamers competing for hundreds of spots.
What is FIFA Ultimate Team
FIFA, developed by EA Sports, has two primary competitive game modes; FIFA ULTIMATE TEAM (FUT) and Pro Clubs (PC).
In FUT, players play solo or coop with one other player with a custom made team, based on real-life football players. Every player controls the player on the ball, with the rest of the squad mostly being controlled by an AI. It’s all about mastering your mechanical ability, being tactically smarter than your opponent and mentally strong because of the millions of players competing and professional leagues requiring an extremely high performance level where every single goal can make a difference.
In the fiscal year 2021 (March 2020 to April 2021), gaming publisher Electronic Arts generated approximately 1.62 billion U.S. dollars in revenues from extra content sales for the Ultimate Team mode associated with its sports gaming franchises. This makes it the mode that’s played and pushed the most on the professional esport scene.
Pro Clubs takes a different approach where every single gamer controls one, custom made, player on the pitch and works together with 10 other gamers to be the best ‘’Pro Club’’. This mode requires terrific coordination, teamwork, communication plus individual skill. This mode can best be compared with the real-life football counterpart, but because it lacks extra content sales, it’s not pushed tremendously by sponsors and the publisher itself. However, many colleges and football clubs partner with pro clubs organisations to get access to the esport scene, without having the high amount of entry funds required for FUT.
The Virtual Pro Gaming League is one of the biggest organised leagues in the world and is dedicated to getting the best pro clubs teams together in well organised leagues.
Who are FUTcoaching
Founded by John van Uden, FUTcoaching started offering support to FUT players in 2017 and helped many organisations (like Bundled, Home of esports, Royal Belgium Football Association) and clubs (Feyenoord, Emmen, PEC Zwolle to name a few) to unlock their performance in FIFA ULTIMATE TEAM.
With their analysis processes fully supported by Nacsport and KlipDraw, they are the only support organisation that provides a fully data-driven approach, trusted by performance coaches, analysts and great players all over the world.
“'Data driven analysis allows us at FUTcoaching to convince even the best players and teams to work on certain aspects of their game” John van Uden, FUTcoaching founder
Since 2021, they have been offering coaching services to individual, non-professional players that play FIFA for fun. If you want to beat your friends in a local tournament, just one data-driven session (delivered via a video that’s yours for life) can make a tremendous difference. FUTcoaching has one mission, “to unlock your potential in FIFA Ultimate Team or FIFA Pro Clubs”.
How to use video analysis for esports
Put simply, video analysis is all about getting a video, breaking it down to find key clips (generating data at the same time), then filtering these down and combining with other sources of information (telestration and data dashboards for example) to provide a detailed feedback resource that can be used to communicate ideas and enhance understanding and performance.
Every single video game console has the option to record gameplay and create a video file. All FUTcoaching needs for a fully data driven esports coaching approach, with the use of the Nacsport and KlipDraw video analysis software, is this video recording of a match. Every single action from the match, be it a pass, shot, tackle etc, is tagged and stored into a Nacsport analysis. The clips are analysed by the performance team, then compiled and shared in a video presentation including telestration drawings made with the KlipDraw tools. This video will show the players WHAT goes well and WHAT can be improved upon, plus HOW to improve is explained in a very detailed way.
“To provide more detailed coaching and feedback to our players, we use the KlipDraw telestration tools to visually highlight where players can adapt and improve their gameplay. As this is fully integrated into Nacsport, it also means we can quickly get to building our coaching presentation to give feedback to our players easily.”
In the Dutch Edivisie (the esport version of the Eredivisie), FUTcoaching took this to the next level. Not only did they analyse the teams and players they supported, but because of the league structure, which enabled them to know exactly which opponent they’d be facing next, they started analysing the upcoming opponents too! With every single match broadcasted, they had access to every single action performed by the next team, which allowed for very detailed plans to be created to take on the opposition. These two types of analysis are now consistently applied by FUTcoaching’s partner, the national squad of Belgium (Royal Belgium Football Association).
The impact of using Nacsport video analysis for esports
In 2022, FUTcoaching took the next step, wanting to show the world their approach works into less charted territory as well, FIFA Pro Clubs (11vs11). Starting their own esport team, consisting out of a team of 20+ players, they started in the Virtual Pro Gaming League in the European League One for the summer leagues. After a mid-table performance and learning a lot about the format, they entered two leagues for the next season; The European League One and the English League Three.
“Nacsport allows us to measure the impact of our analysis during a season, by comparing data from every match and identifying trends, both positive and negative ones”.
With their constant data-driven approach (powered by Nacsport and KlipDraw) delivering weekly analysis to the team, an excellent performance by the team and the dedicated management, they went undefeated and won the English League Three! Their performance in the European League One showed this wasn’t a coincidence, becoming second in the league and securing a direct promotion. Because of these exceptional performances, FUTcoaching Pro Clubs will play in the VPG Championship in the European league as well as the Championship in the English league.
“Nacsport makes it quick and easy for our team of coaches to analyse and review the footage of our clients and our own pro players. With customised tagging windows and in-depth review tools, it perfectly suits our data-driven approach to coaching and analysis.”
Conclusion
Esports is a huge and ever-expanding industry that is accessible to all, where professional players can compete across a wide range of games and tournaments, with some earning tens of millions of dollars at the top. Billions of minutes of gameplay streamed online are consumed by an avid fan base all over the world, where players will often spend as much time watching others as they do playing games.
The game FIFA has two competitive esports game modes, FIFA ULTIMATE TEAM (FUT) and Pro Clubs (PC). By using a data-driven approach to their coaching and video analysis of these esports, the FUTcoaching team have enhanced the performance of their clients and their own pro teams, successfully gaining back to back promotions, meaning they will now be competing in the European VPG Championship and the English Championship too.
FUTcoaching uses Nacsport to tag videos and create both clips and data to share to players, with KlipDraw being used to telestrate clips to add further visual feedback to enhance the coaching messages being delivered. Using Nacsport and KlipDraw has made it quick and easy for the FUTcoaching team to analyse videos and provide detailed feedback to players, enhancing understanding, performance and results.
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