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The Detroit Pistons became with first professional sports organization to launch a gaming community for its fans through a partnership with Rival, the team announced.
Pistons fans can join the esports community and sign up for upcoming tournaments in games including NBA 2K, Madden, EA NHL and FIFA on the Xbox and Playstation consoles.
Fans can talk with each other, compete and earn reward points toward merchandise and prizes. There will be weekly tournaments, and gamers can log in at any time to compete against each other using the Rival platform.
The inaugural NBA 2K tournament will feature $500 in cash apiece to the winners on the Xbox and Playstation platforms and the ability face Pistons guard Bruce Brown “or another mystery NBA player”
Sign ups are open now.
This is a smart move by the organization, because if I’ve learned anything about the Pistons fan community online in the past decade of writing about the team it is that Detroit fans are obsessed with video games and it’s not limited to just NBA 2K.
Growing a community of like-minded fans will be interested, and could perhaps lead to additional interest and engagement with the Pistons’ 2K team. As someone who hasn’t played a video game since Super Mario Galaxy, I’m not sure I’m ready to sign up, but if you are, you can visit www.motorcityrivals.com.