Together with its much-promoted Black Friday NFL recreation, Amazon is serving up a facet serving to of vacation sports activities content material this week with its new docuseries in regards to the historical past of the top-selling online game based mostly on pigskin: “Madden NFL.”

And no, the timing is just not a coincidence, as “Madden” writer EA Sports activities is keenly conscious of the affiliation between Corridor of Fame soccer coach and iconic commentator John Madden, for whom the franchise is known as, and Turkey Day.

“Thanksgiving is synonymous with Coach Madden. He referred to as one thing like 20 Thanksgiving video games as an announcer and was a part of lots of completely different vacation traditions with that,” EA Sports activities senior vp and basic supervisor Daryl Holt informed Selection. “It grew to become a calling card of soccer across the Thanksgiving vacation.”

All through his life, Madden was intently concerned within the growth of the sport — previously referred to as “John Madden Soccer,” till EA struck its long-running rights take care of the NFL in 1990 — and Holt mentioned EA Sports activities has been contemplating methods to inform the story of the franchise and Madden’s affect for years. Then alongside got here Amazon, which has been working extra time to solidify its standing within the soccer neighborhood since setting its pact air “Thursday Night time Soccer” from 2023 to 2033.

“The filmmakers and Amazon approached us, however we had been already fairly receptive as a result of we’ve been enthusiastic about methods to inform the story and the legacy of Coach Madden’s involvement, the longevity of ‘Madden NFL‘ as a franchise, now 36 years within the making and persevering with,” Holt mentioned. “So that chance, because it introduced itself, was a pure one for us to say, let’s dive deeper and see how we will make this work. I’m glad we had been capable of get collectively a terrific relationship with Prime and the filmmakers, and to peel again the curtain and open the archives for some issues that we’ve by no means actually shared or talked about.”

Per Amazon’s Prime Video, “It’s within the Sport: Madden NFL” reveals “the never-been-told story of Madden NFL, from its archaic 8-bit origins to its success as an annual will need to have — towards all odds. What began as an unlikely pairing between a pc whiz and a soccer legend, ignited a revolution and triggered a seismic collision between the worlds of jocks and geeks. They need to have failed. As a substitute, their recreation modified the sport — and our tradition, too.”

The four-part sequence, which options Holt, amongst different present EA Sports activities execs and “Madden NFL” staff members, contains never-been-seen footage from all through the making of the three-decade-old franchise, and likewise exhibits builders placing the ending touches on subsequent yr’s “Madden NFL 25.”

“It’s a large problem to make a recreation as deep and as large as ‘Madden’ yearly, and it’s complicated. It’s essentially the most complicated sports activities recreation to make,” Holt mentioned. “So there might be issues behind the scenes that they’ll perceive higher. There’ll be views of recreation builders in several methods, each previous and current, on how these items works and the way it comes collectively and the challenges that may pop up. And I’m hopeful that that understanding offers them a better appreciation for one thing they already love.”

Produced by A+E Factual Studios group, Michael Strahan’s SMAC Productions, Misher Movie and MTP and directed by Nathan Caswell and Jeremiah Zagar, the doc is supposed to attraction to each longtime followers of the “Madden” franchise, in addition to a youthful demographic that entered into the NFL recreation at a really completely different time for the game.

“You need to have a look at all of the followers of Madden, and there’s clearly two colleges that you might simplistically carve out the generations, which is a brand new technology of followers that may devour sports activities otherwise — they most likely observe athletes and highlights, and never essentially sitting on the sofa watching a soccer recreation for 3 or 4 hours — after which others which have grown up with the game and bear in mind John Madden as a coach, or actually as a Corridor of Fame broadcaster and coach,” Holt mentioned. “So all these issues come collectively within the docuseries for individuals to know what’s it about ‘Madden,’ when it comes to the way it began, how lengthy it’s been round, what it takes to make the sport by way of the nostalgic journey that’s the previous, in addition to the present juxtaposition with ‘Madden NFL 25’ growth.”