• by Erin Everhart , September 25, 2026

I've been a fan my whole life. College football is my game, and the Gators are my drug. It started young. I was nine, and my tender heart swooned for Jesse Palmer. I vowed then and there to go to the University of Florida.

The prophecy was fulfilled, and I went to UF from 2005-2009, the single greatest era of college athletics. Tim Tebow. Urban Meyer. Billy Donavan. You know the one. Sure our football team has struggled over the past few years, but my heart was forged in the Swamp, and it has never fully left.

Regardless of your sport, fandom is universally understood no matter what language you speak, what tax bracket you’re in or how you define football. Fans are just built differently because we all know what it means to love a little team so much it hurts.

Fandom like that has existed for generations, but the way fans show up is drastically different now. Fans aren’t just tuning in anymore. They want to be inside the moment, the roster, the play. There’s so many more ways fans can live and breathe their team than just experiencing it in a stadium, on a field, or on the pitch.

Nobody has built a bigger bridge between watching sports and playing them than Electronic Arts. From Madden to FC, Electronic Arts has turned the fan on the couch into the fan with the controller and made participation the whole point. We sat down with SVP and GM, Global Marketing Andrea Hopelain, to hear how they’re doing it. 

Listen to the full episode here.