This Sunday’s NFL playoffs divisional round matchup between the New England Patriots and the Houston Texans will feature a World of Warcraft-themed attraction for tailgaters, and it’s because Blizzard’s data shows that its players love sports.
The World of Warcraft: Welcome Home Pre-Game Tavern, as it’s called, is a marketing activation that’s meant to promote WoW’s upcoming Midnight expansion. Inside the tavern, people can get a drink and watch World of Warcraft livestreams. They can also meet cosplayers and influencers; the Orc cosplayers will be inside the stadium for the game itself.
The Midnight expansion adds player housing, which is something fans have been requesting for years. Blizzard is also partnering with real estate company Zillow on this branded partnership, according to Sports Business Journal.
People can find the Welcome Home Pre-Game Tavern outside Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass. Blizzard Entertainment CMO Monica Austin said the team has been building the tavern at Blizzard’s headquarters in Anaheim, California for months, and only just recently decided to host the event in Foxboro as opposed to Denver, where another Divisional round game will take place.
But why have this kind of marketing campaign in the first place? Austin said Blizzard’s research has shown that lapsed and active WoW players also enjoy watching sports.
“We’ve done a tremendous amount of deep dives to understand who are our players, lapsed and active. One of the things we see consistently is that our players are over-indexed in watching sports. And for the NFL, it’s top-three over-indexing sport,” Austin said. “We know our players are there. We know they’re watching. This is a strategic way that we want to use to reach them.”
Midnight launches on March 2, and will revamp the game’s nearly two-decade-old Blood Elf zones as well as introduce new areas, dungeons, and raids.