EA Sports FC 26 Ratings with Nicole Baxter

Speaker 1 So would they go back in now or have they gone back in and like filled in my head with hair? That's a great question.

Speaker 2 That is a great question.

Speaker 1 Nicole, we need hair. Nicole, can you push this for 26, just a full head of hair?

Speaker 2 I would be honored to drive that. That is something that I can handle.
Yeah.

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Speaker 1 All right, Timmy, great, great guest. Super pumped.
I got a lot of people. Not only am I I excited because I've played video games and I've played EA video games my whole life, but my kids are stoked.

Speaker 1 They're going to want to listen to this. We have an assistant producer from EA Sports,

Speaker 1 Nicole Baxter, and we're going to let Nicole tell her story. But Nicole, before we get into your backstory, how you ended up at EA,

Speaker 1 my first question for you is in 2001, I'm sure you were not at EA then. I went up to Vancouver, put on the suit, the motion sensors, all the things.
I spent all day there. They put me on the cover.

Speaker 1 I was so stoked. I played the game for the first time

Speaker 1 and thought my rating was going to be like a 97.

Speaker 1 And it was

Speaker 1 83.

Speaker 1 That's high, 83.

Speaker 2 That's the thing that people don't understand is that's a good rating.

Speaker 1 That's not a good rating. An 83 is a B minus.
So my first question for you, Nicole, is, can you find the person who decided on the 83? I'd like to have a conversation.

Speaker 1 And we will get into how that happens. But first, give us a little feedback or a little intro on you, how you ended up there from a playing career and then ended up working for ASports.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so I was playing in the NWSL. I played in Sweden for a little bit.
So I played up until

Speaker 2 early 2023.

Speaker 2 And then when I was deciding on whether to retire, I was just looking at jobs online and trying to figure out a way that I could stay in women's sports, full disclosure,

Speaker 2 without working for like a women's sports company per se.

Speaker 2 Like I wanted to go from playing in the NWSL, which kind of felt like a startup environment, to like working for some sort of big corporation. So I started applying for jobs online.

Speaker 2 And we had just done our body scans for EA Sports. So like EA was at the top of my mind.
So I started applying for jobs online and I came across a vice president position for like Madden.

Speaker 2 And I was like, heck yeah, clicked apply. And within like three minutes, I got an email from an EA recruiter that was like, you obviously can't have the job that you applied for,

Speaker 2 but let's try to find something that you can do here. And he like really went out of his way to reach out to a bunch of different like game titles at EA.

Speaker 2 And they happened to have an unposted job opening for like a women's soccer expert on the live content team, which is in charge of ultimate team.

Speaker 1 Very, very ambitious. I love it.

Speaker 2 Very ambitious. And it was like so classic.
Like I have, I don't know what my skill set is. So let's just apply for anything.
The salary was like 300K.

Speaker 2 I was coming off of like a 30K salary in the NWCL. I was like, I like, I like that one.

Speaker 2 That's awesome. Yeah.
So that's why I ended up there. Yeah.
It worked out.

Speaker 1 And so, and so like, I, I will, I will admit, I, I've also been up to Vancouver and worn the suit and done all this stuff, which is amazing. And we talked offline.

Speaker 1 I'll take a trip to Vancouver any day. Um,

Speaker 1 and, and I just remember thinking, I'm so terrible at this video game. Like literally, like so, so

Speaker 1 even now when, and I, and I do a bunch for, and I know Landon does a bunch for EA when the game comes out, you know, whether that be like watch parties, launch parties, different things, and it's great.

Speaker 1 But like every time they're like, hey, Tim,

Speaker 1 we have another celeb in the room. Can we get some content? Are you guys quiet? And I'm like, sure.
And I'm looking at the buttons and I'm going like, how do you guys kick?

Speaker 1 And yeah, I just talk myself through the game. It's terrible.

Speaker 1 When you're an assistant producer on the live content team, can you help us understand what that is? And then you help with player selection and the creation in the ultimate team.

Speaker 1 And for people who aren't super aware of that, I know my kids are all over that, but what do those both mean?

Speaker 2 So do you guys play Ultimate Team at all? Or I would assume you're maybe a little familiar with. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And you're also, I think, you're both in the game, obviously, but I'm sure you've done some like photo shoots for different campaigns that we do.

Speaker 2 So basically in Ultimate Team, it's like a live game mode where we release new players throughout the week and they get more and more powerful and they're more and more exciting.

Speaker 2 So maybe I keep using Messi, but Messi starts with an 84, but then say we do a campaign that's themed around really great international players and we suddenly give Messi a better rating with a new action shot and a different color shell.

Speaker 2 And it's like this interactive game mode. So that is like mostly what I do is work in that game mode.
And I select the players that we're going to use for those different campaigns.

Speaker 2 And then I create the players like using our tooling system.

Speaker 2 And I work pretty closely with the data collection and licensing team because a lot of our campaigns are based around like authentic football.

Speaker 2 Like for example, we did last year a campaign to highlight like the women's Euros. And so.

Speaker 2 You sometimes rely on the DCL team to give you a list of players that are participating in the Euros, players that are expected to perform really well in the Euros and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 And from your experience, so you played at Gotham. You said you played in Denmark, Sweden, Sweden, Sweden, for a hot second.
Yep.

Speaker 1 So are you actively pushing the women's game? Are you always in people's ears saying, you know, can we do more? Can we put right?

Speaker 2 Because it's been great to see. It's hard to hear my own voice.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's been great to see that evolution, and it's a long time coming. So

Speaker 1 my assumption is you're in your boss's ears all the time trying to.

Speaker 2 constantly trying i mean it's why i took the job like i grew up casually playing it was called fifa at the time but i i played it casually and like i would play with the chelsea men's team and i would play with didier dragba and he was my favorite player for like 10 years and i had never seen him play in person like i still to this day don't even know if i ever watched a chelsea game um at that age when he was still playing so like i understood the power of the video game and that is why I wanted this job was because I saw an opportunity to put the women women in the video game and like create that fandom for them.

Speaker 2 And it's like, it's been amazing. This is my third year doing it.
I think this is the third game title that they're now in for Ultimate Team.

Speaker 2 And by now, we have the women's players like across all the game modes.

Speaker 2 You're seeing that they're gaining like these social followings.

Speaker 2 It's been like, it's been really cool to watch that as like someone who's working on it, but then just see how people are reacting to it like throughout the public.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's a fascinating phenomenon because you, you touched on it and it was, it was, it was going to be my next point.

Speaker 1 When I played in Europe, Landon's played in Europe, and we've always had to answer the question of like,

Speaker 1 how do America, like, how do Americans learn the game? Because

Speaker 1 it's not our game. We didn't grow up with soccer.
And I would often tell them, like, yo, the American fan is different.

Speaker 1 We learn soccer very differently. And I point to your, your example with DDA drug, but Landon and I have friends in a lot of other sports.

Speaker 1 my friends that were going back to the 2000s that were in NFL in the NFL and played in the NBA

Speaker 1 they're like they're like yo I got to go to I got to go to Barcelona to see Messi and I'm like why he's like yo I played I play I play FIFA or EEA every every time on the on the road and I'm like this is a guy who's never kicked a soccer ball knows nothing about soccer the only educational medium he had was a video game and that's for like millions of people and so I think for the for the women's game that's exciting because it's like people will learn more about the women's game through a video game, which isn't a bad thing because half of our country learned about it.

Speaker 1 You know, and so do you still get that sense

Speaker 1 as you're more immersed in EA as you're obviously full-time job that you, do you see how

Speaker 1 impactful it can be in the soccer landscape?

Speaker 2 Oh my God, yeah. I mean, people are suddenly watching women's European football like they're tracking NW Cell players.
The perfect example, actually, we did this campaign in Ultimate Team.

Speaker 2 It was like a fantasy campaign where we basically, we pick a bunch of players and they get upgraded based on like their performance in real life.

Speaker 2 And we had this player item for Frida Rolfo, who was at the time playing at Barcelona. And when we first released the item, like a big thing in Ultimate Team is kind of like their links.

Speaker 2 And she's Swedish, so that's not like the most popular country of players to play with.

Speaker 2 So when we first released that player item, people were like, eh.

Speaker 2 And then they realized that the Barcelona women's team is absolutely filthy and that this player item was going to upgrade really quickly and become really powerful.

Speaker 2 And suddenly people were watching all their games. People were commenting on all of her stuff on social media.
Like it got to a point where she was posting, being like,

Speaker 2 what is this? Like, why are you all yelling at me?

Speaker 2 And at the time, she was coming back from an injury. And so I selected her, like, and this is where my player knowledge comes in.

Speaker 2 I had seen like little inklings of maybe she might, she might be on the track to be healthy for this next game. Like I saw photos of her in training.
I saw what she was participating in.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, I think she's going to be healthy enough for this campaign.

Speaker 2 And it just like popped off. And suddenly she was posting with her new player item.
All these new fans were commenting on her stuff.

Speaker 2 Like it's, it's incredible what this video game can do for women's soccer and women's sports. And that's like the example I use every time.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I have so many examples too. Nicole, so growing up, I was, you know, I'd played in a World Cup, played in the Olympics, was, you know, won an MLS Cup, whatever.

Speaker 1 The minute I was on the cover of at that time, FIFA, my friends would text me and be like, dude, you're actually a real player. And I'm like, what are you talking about?

Speaker 2 Somebody they respect you.

Speaker 1 Totally. And it's true.
And I'm like, we're making light of it, but it's true. Like my daughter now, she's six years old.
She's playing EA. Like she's playing all the time.
We did this game.

Speaker 1 We were in the jacuzzi the other night and we were doing, okay, let's name soccer players and go around with my three kids. And, but you can't say the same name twice.
And she was rattling off names.

Speaker 1 And to Tim's point, this is how, this is how I learned about soccer player. I couldn't watch on TV.
We didn't have TV. So this is how people are learning.
And I think it's phenomenal.

Speaker 1 Okay. So speaking of cover athletes, this is such a great talking point.
So

Speaker 1 how do you decide? How does EA decide? I know

Speaker 1 EA now will do multiple athletes sometimes based on where you're located or three on a a cover or whatever. What goes into that? And what I'm really curious, like behind the scenes, is there lobbying?

Speaker 1 I'm sure our agents calling are like, how does this all, how does this happen?

Speaker 2 So my team doesn't handle that. So I actually don't know the answer to that.
But from afar, I feel like.

Speaker 2 I watch the other teams that deal with that. And it seems like they always pick like the perfect players.

Speaker 2 And it feels to me like EA is really good at telling a story with their cover athletes.

Speaker 2 Like it's gone from kind of just like picking the, like I feel like back in the day, it would really be like the most popular player at the time.

Speaker 1 And now you see them have like,

Speaker 2 yeah, of course, like someone, someone as amazing as you.

Speaker 2 And now they have right like Bellingham and Musiala and they're telling the story of how they grew up playing together.

Speaker 2 So I actually don't know like what goes into how they pick that cover athlete. Like I'm kind of told around the same time that you are,

Speaker 2 but I can like admire how they like tell the story on the cover. Like, the fact that they have like Ibra sitting there on the cover, like that stuff to me makes you want to buy the game more.

Speaker 2 Like, it's brilliant marketing, of course.

Speaker 1 And to be fair, for the player, you would almost do it for free because of oh, yeah, it's like it's like singing at the suit halftime Super Bowl.

Speaker 1 Totally, it's like you would do it for free because of the promotion and the marketing, right? Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1 But you talked about ratings.

Speaker 1 I think ratings are probably the biggest talking point of the game. It's

Speaker 1 become its own beast, right?

Speaker 1 Whether that be a player you like that isn't rated high enough, or if it's yourself in the game, everyone looks for the ratings. So can you share with us a little bit how

Speaker 1 those come about? And again, Lan and I disagree on his rating. I think it was too high.
He thinks it's too low.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 what's the formula or what's the algorithm to come up with that?

Speaker 2 Yeah, and I'm actually excited to talk about this because I saw some of your videos where you were trying to guess like the highest rated player, like men's national team goalkeeper you looked at Messi's rating and you're like what the heck is going on here and I can really relate to that side of it as like a footballer like you look at some of these ratings and you're like I don't I cannot possibly understand how they came up with Messi being an 84.

Speaker 2 But it's actually like a really intricate system that I've grown to really like admire and respect since working at EA Sports.

Speaker 2 And we have an entire like data collection and licensing team based out of Germany.

Speaker 2 And they have individual producers dedicated to tracking all of the leagues that are in the game,

Speaker 2 both men's and women's leagues. And they use different stats.
They

Speaker 2 scout matches. They watch matches in person and online.
Like it's really, really detailed and intricate.

Speaker 2 And so I try to remind myself, like, when I'm looking at these ratings, like these people probably know better than I do.

Speaker 2 But there's always like that, you always have an opinion on certain players or like, there's always going to be some aspect of like subjectivity.

Speaker 2 But when it comes down to it, the ratings are so intricate because there's like all you really see as a user is like you pay attention to the OVR and like the face stats, but there's all these sub-attributes.

Speaker 2 There's play styles, there's different roles, and those all contribute to like the power of a player item.

Speaker 2 So it's actually like a lot, I keep saying the word intricate, but it's a lot more intricate than you would think when you just like look at a player and see their OVR rating.

Speaker 1 So how so how much when we're looking at we're looking at teams, you talked about kind of the algorithm and all the scouts

Speaker 1 is it is a is Real Madrid getting as much

Speaker 1 time without getting the most time but then you look at I don't know let's say a second or third division team in England or something like that like how is that broken down from a scouting standpoint yeah so every

Speaker 2 DCNL producer is assigned to specific leagues and that doesn't just go for like the top leagues that goes for second third fourth tier leagues like every league that's in our game has a DCNL producer that is assigned to pay attention to them.

Speaker 2 So everyone's getting the same amount of attention and the same amount of love.

Speaker 2 And yeah, we treat everyone like very equally.

Speaker 1 But Nicole, is it like, okay, you're being very diplomatic. I respect that.
Is it like the intern who just signed is doing like league two in England and Accrington Stanley and Gillingham?

Speaker 1 And like the person who's been there for 15 years is doing Chelsea for sure. It has to be.

Speaker 2 That's definitely,

Speaker 2 I mean, it's definitely possible. But like, I know, for example,

Speaker 2 I was just speaking with a producer who works on, she's like one of the main producers for Liga F, which arguably

Speaker 2 I would say the NWCL is the best league in the world. But Liga F, top league in the world, like has the top team in the world.
She's also assigned to French League Two. So it's like...

Speaker 2 These people no matter which leagues they're focusing on like they all know the same, if that makes sense. And so it's not necessarily like, oh, well, the most veteran producers get

Speaker 2 La Liga or, you know.

Speaker 1 But you're not giving the most veteran producer like French League

Speaker 1 Vale.

Speaker 2 There's no way. I would, yeah, I would

Speaker 1 highly doubt that. But here's a comment, though, as you're talking through that for the three soccer people having this conversation.
Like, is there a

Speaker 1 am I crazy to say, LD, that like you could take one of these scouts and plug them into a real team? Like, hear me out for a second. Of course.

Speaker 1 Their knowledge.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
All right. We might be onto something here.

Speaker 1 If you're a team owner or GM or technical director, this, this could be the way forward.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Like they might watch more football than the average person.
And they're watching levels of football that you probably wouldn't want to watch.

Speaker 2 So they're probably learning

Speaker 2 about a lot of different players.

Speaker 1 Maybe we've just cracked a code here. All right.
Maybe we just cracked it. We need to buy a team and then implement these as scouts.
That's incredible.

Speaker 2 Deal. And full disclosure, like I actually, I saw your video where you guys were like, the

Speaker 2 people who do the EA ratings must be the same people who do the FIFA rankings.

Speaker 1 That was hilarious.

Speaker 1 I thought that was hilarious. That's a landing comment because here's why.

Speaker 1 Here's why. Here's why.
Because going back to ratings and a little bit what Landon was saying,

Speaker 1 once I was in the video game, i made it like yeah my rating could have been a 23 i didn't care i was in

Speaker 2 as a kid growing up when i did i was like oh i made it i'm famous yeah 100 the ratings are still scary though like uh so i got i was rated in the game i never made it into the game because i had retired and when i first started working here uh some of the dcnl producers were like do you want to know your rating and i was like no i really don't think i do absolutely not terrified to know this and i can't remember if they told me or not but then i was in their ratings database yesterday and I was thinking about this podcast.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, oh, let me just like search my name because they have all the retired players in there. I tried to click on my name.
It was like, you're not authorized to look at this.

Speaker 2 I was like, it's probably for the best. So, like, yeah, yeah.
So, I understand why it's like just being in the game is simply not good enough.

Speaker 1 You need a good rating. For me, it was.

Speaker 1 Do you guys ever hear from players about our agents or stuff about ratings?

Speaker 2 Yeah, we do.

Speaker 1 Amazing. Without Without naming names, can you give us like an example of a conversation? Like,

Speaker 2 I can remember, and sometimes it's not even through agents. Like, remember, I have a lot of friends in the NWSL.
I've had NWSL players, NWCL coaches text me and be like, What is going on here?

Speaker 2 And sometimes I agree with them. Like, sometimes I totally agree where I look at an item and I'm like, I don't understand what DC and I was looking at.

Speaker 2 Like, I thought this was one of the fastest players in the league. Like, how is this their speed?

Speaker 2 I can remember an example. It was either from last year or the year before.
Someone, it was like, this one wasn't through an agent. This was kind of through like friends of friends of friends.

Speaker 2 It got back to us that like a big-time player was really disappointed with the defending that we gave him.

Speaker 2 And it's fun, it's funny. Like, I love, I love hearing the feedback, but we can also kind of work with that.
Like,

Speaker 2 just like our marketing team likes telling stories for the cover, we also like that in Ultimate Team. Like,

Speaker 2 if someone is outwardly talking about something, that's like motivation for us to

Speaker 2 work with that in some way. Like I think Yamal, he did something in a game and he posted on Twitter or Instagram and he was like, he was like, yo, I need that Trevella.

Speaker 2 It was like a Trevella or Trickster play style. And we were like,

Speaker 2 well, maybe we should give it to him. Right.

Speaker 1 You know, so it's like,

Speaker 2 I like when players give their feedback. Like, I want to know what they want to see.

Speaker 1 You're going to be like, I think it's really fun. You're going to give me a part of absolutely blast every end of yourself.
By me me as well. My rating's going up because

Speaker 1 I'm on a campaign. I'm going to say that this is the dumbest comment, but I swear it's true.
And I'm just going to out myself right now.

Speaker 1 If I had known that while I was playing and like my defending was a 65, I would have defended harder.

Speaker 1 I swear on my life. I don't know.
It's the dumbest comment, but I swear I would have. Whatever games,

Speaker 1 I wish you would have in some games.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm not much of a defender either. No, no,

Speaker 1 he was way too good. We needed him up the pitch.

Speaker 1 Who are the highest-rated rated player men and female and male?

Speaker 2 Oh, in the game. Who are they?

Speaker 1 And what are they? Do you know? You can bring that up. That's amazing.

Speaker 2 That's a great question.

Speaker 1 Oh, I guess I could just Google it probably.

Speaker 1 I would say I could guess.

Speaker 2 We have icons and heroes in the game as well, as you guys know. So they are the highest-rated players.

Speaker 1 Oh, they'll be higher rated than Ronald Deaner, bro.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 He's high. He's got to be high.
Yeah, that's probably true.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like Pele's in there.

Speaker 2 Who are the highest rated players? I should probably know this.

Speaker 1 What about Bon Mati?

Speaker 1 She's the highest route.

Speaker 2 Bon Mati, she, yep, she's a 91. Her and Pateas are

Speaker 2 they've been riding those high spots for the past like two or three years.

Speaker 2 But that's why, that's why I'm like,

Speaker 2 those are some of the best like footballers I've ever seen, and they're 91. 84? Oh my God, I would pay EA Sports for 84.

Speaker 1 I just don't believe that. I don't believe that.
I now know.

Speaker 1 I now, ld you're making me think like i want to know what my highest ever rating was that's weird i want to you want me to look it up it would yeah it would have to be after the 2014 world cup i'm almost certain of it i bet i bet 93 93

Speaker 1 what

Speaker 1 wow really

Speaker 1 there's no way

Speaker 1 there is no there is a way he's messing with us there is a way there's no way

Speaker 2 have you you watched to be fair i don't know if there would be a goalkeeper that was a 93 ld 96 let's go

Speaker 2 when yeah but is that that

Speaker 2 is that for ultimate team or is that? Um, yeah, who knows?

Speaker 1 You know, Nicole, I think that's let's just stop talking. Let's just stop talking.
93.96, we're done. Wrap this thing up.

Speaker 1 Got that part. Um, okay, so when you're so we have ratings, and then you know, we talked about going back in the day when we would, I, we would go to Vancouver.

Speaker 1 You said you guys, they would come to you with like a mobile truck and put on the motion sensors, whatever. They obviously can't do that for every single player in the game, right?

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 So, what could I do?

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 um, they do that, they do the scans for every single player, but you don't all start off looking exactly like yourself.

Speaker 2 So, there's like a certain percentage of players, like when the game releases, that they have their star heads is what they call it.

Speaker 2 Um, so when the game releases, it would be like X percentage of this league has their star heads. And as the game goes on, more and more players get it.

Speaker 2 Um, and I really just think that's like a capacity thing. Like,

Speaker 2 you can't, it's like it's like how slow would that upload if all of those were put in at once so they kind of like spread it out so

Speaker 2 obviously like the highest rated players or the players that contribute the most usually the ones who like start the game with their but you're not you're not you're not physically scanning every single player in the game oh yeah yeah yeah yeah so they go to every team and scan them yeah yeah at least that's that was my experience with it yeah i mean so if anyone was gonna not be scanned it would have been me

Speaker 1 You got scanned.

Speaker 2 I was barely playing, but so I got scanned. Everyone got scanned.

Speaker 1 LD, it was like at the end, like at the end of my Everton career, so that's like by 2016. So like, you know, immediate day when you do all the green screen stuff.
Hey, I'm somehow

Speaker 1 that, yeah, you jumped it, you jumped in the thing and it like it went right. That's the one that goes around, sorry, that goes around you, right?

Speaker 1 The cameras that like fly around you. Yeah.
Yeah. That's incredible.

Speaker 1 What about like getting everyone's movements accurate, right? Because you can't do that through a scan.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So we, so like the scan that I did I was it was standstill um

Speaker 1 so that would just mean that like my body and my face and my hair and all that stuff looks the same but they they don't have me like running right so they there's only so many athletes they can actually have running emotion right because I do remember watching going god that he actually runs like me yeah

Speaker 2 but you probably did it like a whole thing in the Vancouver studio right you're probably kicking the ball running around like yeah and that tracks for like someone of your caliber but so would they go back in now or have they gone back in and like filled in my head with hair that's a great question they should right that is nicole

Speaker 1 can you

Speaker 2 i will full head of hair honored to drive that wouldn't that be amazing that is something that i can handle yeah let's go that would be what about what about me i don't really want a hair mold

Speaker 1 i saw actually you did a podcast and you showed up with a we did we did that was all yeah that was here i was just that's the picture we're going to use for you moral support for my gun great if you had that in the game.

Speaker 2 Yeah, try to get that in the game.

Speaker 1 Landon needs hair for

Speaker 1 the next edition, please. Let's go.

Speaker 1 Do you get feedback from who are the most popular teams that people play with?

Speaker 2 Yeah, we do. We have those numbers somewhere.

Speaker 2 But I mean, like most of what I pay attention to, full disclosures, like the women's stuff, like people love the FC Barcelona women's team.

Speaker 2 It's kind of like the teams you would expect, to be honest. And I like really want to drive it towards

Speaker 2 like giving love to someone like the smaller teams or smaller players.

Speaker 2 Like that's a goal of mine, especially for the women, like creating new fandom around different teams that maybe aren't as popular, like Paris FC in France, like really good women's team, but they're so overshadowed by PSG and Leon.

Speaker 2 But yeah, we do like it's those main leagues, the Barcelonas, the Real Madrids, like your classic Premier League teams,

Speaker 2 Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal.

Speaker 2 It's all the leagues that the teams from the leagues that you would expect that are the most popular to play with.

Speaker 1 Just a quick follow-up to that.

Speaker 1 Have you all seen a rise with intra-Miami because of Messi? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
That's crazy. I mean, that's insane.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean, the MLS in general, like,

Speaker 2 and we also have legal requirements. So if we want to use Messi in campaigns, like, we are obligated to use other MLS players as well.

Speaker 2 So, I mean, what he's done for like the business of the MLS and he's like the epitome of like rising, rising tides, lift all ships. Is that the thing?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Well, I'll, I'll finish on this, and it's more of a comment than a, than a question.

Speaker 1 And, and for someone who has a daughter and Tim has a, a daughter who plays at Tennessee, it's, it's been what you're doing and is remarkable for the women's game.

Speaker 1 And I, I can't stress this enough because, you know, my wife gets mad sometimes when my kids are playing EA video games, right? And I say, well, it's better than some fighting game or whatever.

Speaker 1 And it's better than them, you know, sitting and watching YouTube videos all day.

Speaker 1 And I learned so much, not only about players, but just about how to play and how to move and how to run by playing the game, by actually playing the video game.

Speaker 1 And I, you know, I don't know what the data is on this, but I really do think it helped me and it helped me become a professional. And totally.
And equally, you are growing the sport,

Speaker 1 particularly on the women's side exponentially and you say you want paris sfc and you want these teams to grow bigger but they're going to naturally because as people are like oh bon mati and they watch the women's euros and they watch the world cup in 27 and then 31 and here at the us probably they're going to get into it and be like oh i want to see her and i want to play her whatever and then the byproduct is they'll play against paris sc when they're playing you know in in the french league or whatever and all those players will get lifted so i just want to say kudos to you you're doing a fantastic job this has been this flew by by the way we're already yeah it did 30 minutes um we could do this forever but thank you so much this has been really enlightening and really helpful for our audience and for me yeah we enjoyed it i mean we had we had a lot of questions that we we didn't know the answer to and uh you've you've provided incredible insight so that was that was fun that was a ton of fun i know our our listeners are going to get a kick out of that because i have a feeling a lot of them are playing the game and the show

Speaker 2 i might get a lot of tags on social media now you will

Speaker 1 from lands agent full disclosure i didn't do the initial ratings You're going to DMs are going to advocate for the company. All the NWSL players are going to pull up your DMs.

Speaker 1 And we also found out that you are in Jersey on the Least Coast, as Tim likes to call it. So next time I'm there, let's get together and follow up more.
It'll be fun for all of us to sit and chat.

Speaker 1 So thanks, Nicole. Thanks for having me.
All right. Thank you, Nicole, for joining us and providing incredible insights.
We appreciate all of you for being here today.

Speaker 1 I'm assuming there's going to be a lot of comments and questions about all this. So fill up the mailbag, email Jordan.

Speaker 1 Remember, as always, to subscribe to YouTube, Spotify, Apple, Podcast, anywhere you get your podcasts, and follow us on social media at Unfiltered Soccer for more content.

Speaker 1 Yes, thank you, Nicole, for your insight. Amazing.
Thank you, everyone, for listening.

Speaker 1 And really, really importantly, thank you to our presenting sponsor, VW, as well as ATT and Coors Light. Have an amazing week.
Don't forget, season two of Unfiltered Soccer is coming November 11th.

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