Hey there - welcome to Edition #36 of The SEG3 Report!

Today’s newsletter delves into McDonald’s recent web3 & gaming collaborations, The Gang’s report into the role of gaming in driving sports fandom & Netflix’s attempts to help grow the reach of their content through referrals with ‘Moments’.

Contents: Edition #36

• McDonalds partners with Doodles and Pet Simulator for customised meals

• Almost 80% agree that playing sports video games boosts their interest in watching real-life sports

• Netflix launches ‘Moments’

Before we dive into, have you RSVP’d for SEG3 Los Angeles yet? 👋

With just 3 weeks to go and limited space remaining, RSVP below now to join the leading corporate innovators, brand marketers and technologists from global sports, entertainment & gaming industries in LA on December 11th!

Now, let’s get into it…

McDonalds partners with Doodles and Pet Simulator for customised meals

McDonald’s has had a busy week - releasing partnerships with web3 native brand, Doodles & Roblox game Pet Simulator (created by BIG Games) to bring unique themed cups and Happy Meals to their customers.

The fast-food giant has partnered with the popular game "Pet Simulator" to create limited-edition Happy Meal toys. Each Happy Meal now comes with a collectible toy inspired by the virtual pets in the game, alongside a unique code that players can redeem for exclusive in-game rewards.

To complement this, McDonald’s has also partnered with Doodles, ‘an online community building the future of storytelling through animation’ to deliver themed coffee cups, which act as a pass to unlock exclusive animated content, limited edition merchandise & digital apparel - with the collaboration also being twinned with a new song from Pharrell - an investor of Doodles.

Why You Should Care

McDonalds is a brand that consistently ranks within the Top 10 for brand value, so the fact they’re partnering with Doodles, a web3 native brand, and Pet Simulator, a Roblox game, to bring themed cups and Happy Meals to their customers is yet another pretty big indicator of the power that internet native and gaming communities have, and why consumer brands want to find collaborations with them to help place their brand at the centre of these subcultures.

There are a few key themes that span both partnerships that are worth calling out:

1) Blending Physical & Digital Experiences

Whether it’s Doodles offering access to exclusive content/merch, or Pet Simulator with exclusive in-game rewards, both collaborations encourage members of their community to visit the physical restaurants, and when they do, their experience is enhanced by rewarding them with digital products & experiences that they value.

We’ve talked a lot on this newsletter about the crossover of physical and digital, but with the lines continuing to blur at a rapid pace, consumers are almost becoming expectant that any interactions that they have with a brand, whether that be in physical or digital, should be linked and reward them in the other realm.

A report from CMO Council found that 85% of consumers want a blend of physical and digital experiences with their brand, but only 13% of consumers believed that brands were meeting their expectations.

That leaves a lot of room for growth and engagement if you can incentivise consumers to engage with your brand across each realm - which leads onto the next part quite nicely - the mechanics behind that…

2) Community Participation & Rewards

So, what can you offer that will incentivise your existing audience to engage with a brand partner, whilst also making the onboarding easy for newcomers that discover your brand, IP or game through the partnership?

For Pet Simulator, this was in-game rewards, accessible by scanning the packaging of the Happy Meal. Whilst the number of redemptions/plays for the Pet Simulator ‘digital game experience’ isn’t yet available, it sounds like an easy access point.

With Doodles being a web3 brand, we can of course see the impact and how many newbies, members of the web3 community and Doodles holders have headed to the restaurant to claim their cup and taken action to create a Doodles Stoodio account to be able to claim their McDonald’s app pack.

With the campaign only officially launching yesterday (18th November), over 1,461 wallets have been created, of which, 96% are new to the Doodles ecosystem.

Close to 1500 wallets being created in a day isn’t eye watering numbers, but with 96% being newbies to the Doodles ecosystem, it is succeeding in bringing the Doodles IP to a wider audience.

And given Doodles focus on animation, the uniqueness of the brand and the influencers they have as part of their team (like Pharrell) that can help take them into other parts of culture, they certainly have one of the best chances to break into the mainstream psyche of any web3 native IP.

Side Bar: You can hear from Doodles CEO Julian Holguin about how they’ve built the IP at SEG3 Los Angeles in three weeks time 👉 https://lu.ma/qgwxuh86

3) Collecting

Both activations lean into a shared passion of both communities - collecting. With Doodles starting out as a NFT PFP collection, and Pet Simulator about collecting 1500+ pets, both sets of audiences are collectors at heart.

McDonald’s designing these collaborations to centre round that passion point and giving the audiences access to exclusive items (IRL & digitally), which they knew would be received well, means it is going to be hard for these collaborations to be a miss.

Overall, McDonald’s have been extremely active recently in taking the brand to new audiences through smart collaborations that deliver engaged audiences from subcultures (we covered their moves in Anime with a Genshin Impact collaboration in Edition #27).

So although the partnership clearly brings a tonne of validity and eyeballs to Doodles & Pet Simulator/Roblox, it can’t be underplayed that McDonalds, a top 10 global brand, has turned to gaming & web3 communities to help them to shift the needle and tell their stories.

That’s an exciting development and certainly is good omens for both industries.

Almost 80% agree that playing sports video games boosts their interest in watching real-life sports

In the report "Gaming & The Future of Sports Fandom," The Gang explores how gaming is reshaping the way younger audiences engage with sports. With insights from over 2,000 respondents in the UK and US, and notes from FIFA, Premier League, Australian Open and more, the report uncovers the role of video games in cultivating sports fandom among younger generations.

The data highlights that sports video games boost understanding, interest, and enjoyment of sports, with 70% of young gamers reporting that gaming improves their knowledge of a sport. Gaming also serves as a catalyst for attendance at live events, with 87% of gamers expressing a desire to experience sports in person. Additionally, platforms like Roblox and Fortnite are emerging as significant spaces for sports content consumption, drawing in a younger audience more than traditional platforms.

Why you should care?

Only in last weeks edition did we share The R&A’s collaboration with TopGolf to help drive audiences from Roblox to engage IRL with the sport. This hypothesis that engaging fans through gaming, bringing them into your ecosystem, and getting them to actively participate/engage IRL has been tested by The Gang, developer of the R&A’s experience and through a number of other sporting experiences in UGC gaming platforms (Wimbledon, AO etc), but with their report, we now have some hard data into the impact of games on driving fandom and participation in sports IRL.

And the results are pretty fascinating.

1) Gaming Enhances Understanding of Sports for Young Audiences

• 70% of 8-17-year-olds agree that sports games enhance their knowledge of real sports, compared to 56% of 18-34-year-olds.
  

• 80% of sports video gamers feel that playing encourages them to read more about the actual sport.

  
  I have so many first hand experiences of friends when growing up that learnt the game of football through FIFA, or didn’t follow a club, but could name the whole squad of an obscure European club because they’d played career mode with them.
  
  These stats show that the traditional way of engaging youth audiences in sports is changing, and rather than the first touchpoint of a sport being through linear broadcasting or on the field of play as it has been for previous generations, it may well now be through games.
  
  Which is proving a successful pathway because…

2) Gaming Increases Interest in and Enjoyment of Real-World Sports

• 79% of sports video gamers agree that playing sports video games boosts their interest in watching real-life sports.
  

• 23% of respondents started following a sport after first playing it as a video game.

  
  Close to a quarter of respondents started following a sport after playing it as a game first - that’s quite the acquisition tool…

  
  As the industry moves to more of a lifetime value approach to their fanbase, bringing that percentage of new fans into your sport can help to drive significant revenue further down the funnel.
  
  But it’s not just about passive engagement, it’s about active engagement too, with…

3) Gaming Can Serve as a Gateway to Real-Life Sports Participation

• 89% of respondents reported playing a real-life sport they had first encountered through a video game.
  
  Christian Volk, SVP, Esports & Gaming @ FIFA said:

And sports brands especially want new fans to show that passion by engaging with them through the traditional channels they are well versed at driving revenue through, like matchdays…

4) Gaming Encourages Live Events Attendance

• 87% of sports video gamers expressed interest in attending live sports events, compared to 53% of non-sports gamers.
  
  The Premier League’s average fan age is somewhere between 35-54, the NFL between 47-50 etc - so as the typical game-attendee gets older, the need to attract the next-generation to your stadium and live experience becomes that much more important for sports brands.
  
  A 34% jump in interest from those that have engaged with sports video games is substantial, but I do question if there are still barriers that prevent youth audiences from moving from interest to intent/attendance, these being:
  
  A) How much price sensitivity is there for the next-generation when wanting to interact with the sport?
  
  My guess is far more than pervious generations given the array of entertainment experiences open to them.
  
  B) Does there need to be more effort put into onboarding for the first game, and then offering a pathway for first-time fans to re-engage/re-attend?
  
  I’d argue it is fairly one size fits all (student/concessions aside), and would likely still rely on the ‘nag factor’ to enable youth audiences to access tier 1 sports games.
  
  If these barriers can be removed/reduced in size, we all know how sticky sports becomes for the fan, with one of the largest factors in that being…

5) Gaming Fosters Personal Connections with Teams and Players for Younger Audiences

• 65% of 8-17-year-olds feel that sports games increase their support for individual teams, while only 49% of 18-34-year-olds agree.
  
  Community. A sense of belonging. Of shared pain and ecstasy. All feelings which are mutual within games and sports. These shared social experiences mean that it is not a big leap for gamers to immerse themselves into the culture of sports too (see the recent article by The Athletic on why games are important for sports players for more).
  
  So if those behaviours can be encouraged and channelled off platform to help increase the support and loyalty to a brand, that is extremely valuable, not only for the sports brand, but also for their commercial partners.
  
  Lisa Willet, Head of Sports Partnerships @ Roblox said:

And being where the eyeballs are is important because…

6) Younger audiences are more than twice as likely to consume sports content through UGC gaming platforms vs older generations

• Over 1 in 3 (around 33%) of 8-17 year-olds consume sports content on UGC platforms like Roblox and Fortnite, versus 1 in 6 (about 16%) among older generations.
  
  If younger audiences are using UGC platforms to discover and consume sports content, then important, life-long decisions and commitments are being made early, which means any brand/IP owner that isn’t exploring UGC gaming platforms as another media channel risks missing out on a new generation of fans, and worse yet, likely leaving a sizeable amount of cash on the table once that generation gets to age where they have significant spending power.

Netflix launches ‘Moments’

Netflix has just launched a new feature called "Netflix Moments", aimed at making the viewing experience more interactive and deepening social engagement by allowing users to share their favourite show and movie moments with friends and on social media. Viewers now have the ability to capture short clips directly from Netflix content, making it easier to share reactions, recommendations, and memorable scenes.

Why you should care

This was one that flew under the radar a couple of weeks back, but Netflix offering clipping and sharing is one of those things that now they’ve done it, you wonder why it hasn’t been part of the platform well before now.

Netflix has an incredible library of content - so much so that discovery of new series (away from the algorithm suggesting based on previous viewing) is largely led by word of mouth and seeing snippets on socials.

I’ll be the first to admit that my discovery channels for new shows are:

A) Family & Friends - recommendations from those you trust (sometimes misplaced - I have watched some awful things…)

B) Socials - I have quite often come across short clips of shows on TikTok, and then sought out that film to watch in full.

Given both of those behaviours (which I think are fairly universal between us all), the ability for subscribers to share recommendations with their inner and social circles to drive eyeballs to Netflix’s content can only be a positive move.

In any case, this appears to be the starting point for Moments (so we’ll be keeping our eyes out for future updates), but its launch does coincide with Netflix’s ‘It’s so good’ campaign, which does an excellent job at synthesising the behaviours we all experience when talking about our favourite shows/movies:

In other news this week…

A quick round-up of other stories you should be across from the past 7 days - LOADS of interesting things happening:

• UFC names IBM as first ever ‘Official AI Partner’

• Amazon launches 3D Digital Shop for festive season

• Why Video Games may be sports players’ secret weapon

• Sonic the Hedgehog game launches at TopGolf

• Avery Dennison partner with YinzCam

• BBC Creator Lab launches competition for creators to become BBC Sport Contributor

• KitKat and Jolly Rancher brands partner with Nintendo to power up Family Game Time

• Moana 2 DLC launches on Minecraft

• Roblox now allows you to personalize thumbnails to attract players

• Team Liquid launches ‘MyBlue’ fan engagement platform on Sui

• Discord collabs with Arcane for themed shop items

• Niantic is building a large geospatial model to achieve spatial intelligence

• Sony Pictures Entertainment launch Jeopardy! Bar League

• Publicis Media launch 2025 Trend Report

• How Supercell are Boosting LiveOps with IP Collaborations

• Roblox introduces Parental Controls

Working on anything cool, or have a press release you would like us to cover? Send it in for the chance for it to be covered in next week’s edition!

That’s all for now - thanks again for reading the latest edition of The SEG3 Report!

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