ajor League Gaming and ESPN.com today announced a partnership that gives the pro-gaming league a high-profile boost. The sports giant will now cover MLG’s competitive-gaming events on a special section of its site, giving the sport another step toward the legitimacy it craves. Could this mean we’ll start seeing pro gaming on ESPN? Will it get the same kind of coverage other sports receive? For the answers to those questions and more, we talked with Raphael Poplock, ESPN’s vice president of games.

Game Informer: Will ESPN broadcast any Major League Gaming
 coverage on its channels, or is this deal specific to ESPN.com?

Raphael Poplock: This is on the outset primarily a digital-media deal, where we’re going to cover MLG and all their competitive leagues with that lens. We really want to see how this resonates with our fans, and obviously we’re thinking in the long picture and hope that it does very well. And then we will, of course, reevaluate things after this year. But year one, this is primarily all of our digital-media assets where we’ll lend this content to.

GI: Do the terms of this deal extend beyond 2008?

Poplock: We typically don’t talk terms, so what I will tell you is that in the near term we’re focusing on digital media. We really are impressed with what Major League Gaming is doing and the management team that they have on the forefront—our hope is that this is a more broader relationship down the road, but we obviously need to walk before we run.

GI: Will the coverage be as in-depth as other coverage is on ESPN.com, with stat-tracking and all the trimmings?

Poplock: We’re going to cover it as the sport that it is, and we’re going to do a lot of the things that have made us the best worldwide leader in sports across all of our platforms. So we’re going to try to replicate that. I think the one thing that we’re going to do a little bit differently is try to impress upon, with our casual fans, how this is a new sport and try to get them attuned to what goes on in these competitive-gaming scenarios and really bridge the gap between what most fans consider traditional sports, like your stick and ball, with competitive gaming and really get folks excited about the potential of this as the new, exciting sport.

GI: Do you think Madden Nation has primed audiences for accepting this sport?

Poplock: I tell this to anyone who will listen: I think, to date, there has not been a more successful, original video-game lifestyle programming outside of the Madden Nation franchise. Granted, it is more lifestyle oriented than a lot of the more hard-core, competitive-nature programs than a lot of these folks have put on, but the competitive-gaming elements that are interwoven into the lifestyle aspects of Madden Nation has frankly been unmatched, at least from my point of view.

GI: What do you say to people who might question the legitimacy of competitive gaming in general or the notion that video-gaming could be considered a sport?

Poplock: I think folks are always entitled to their own opinions, and one of the things that really excites us is that we do see this as an attractive new sport, especially within our games world, where we really want to serve our fans, wherever they are. We see this as a big opportunity, and like I said before, one of the things we’re going to do is try to bridge that gap, or that notion that it isn’t, by bringing in folks like Gilbert Arenas, who’s a big face in Major League Gaming, and really talk about the analogies between running a basketball team as a point guard and then also running your video-game team or your Halo team, in MLG’s case, and really talk about the attributes that make them similar and make them different and really get our fans, again, really attuned to what’s going on in that space.

GI: In the past, when pro gaming is covered, it’s often a situation where it’s almost more about the players and their personalities than the actual gaming itself. Is ESPN committed to taking the actual gaming aspects seriously, and how would that manifest itself in programming or coverage?

Poplock: Absolutely. I think it is a sensitive balance though, to be honest with you. I think you need to get folks fired up about who the personalities are. It’s just like any other sport. You look at what just happened with the Dallas-Giants game—the whole infatuation with what Tony Romo did with Jessica Simpson, leading up to the game. We can’t take that out of the sport. It adds to the drama and the saga that happens in that day that the game is played. It’s nothing dissimilar to what we’re talking about here. Folks are going to want to know who the big players are, who the big rivalries are. Frankly, I think you can’t just smack up two general teams and not give some of that background. You want to get fans fired up for what they’re about to see. But at the same time, educate the more casual fans who may not be into this kind of programming of what they’re seeing on the digital-media platforms when they’re taking a look at this stuff.

GI: ESPN is the bigger player in this deal—what’s in it for you guys?

Poplock: For us, as I’m sure you’ve heard before, our mission is to best serve our fans, wherever they are. In the games world, which is my individual and my team’s purview, this is a big area of growth and opportunity, and we want to be where our fans are. There’s a great many sports fans who are really taking a liking to this form of competitive gaming arena, and by having this great content that MLG is providing us in this great relationship, we then have our ability to serve our fans and hopefully bring new fans in here and grow this property well beyond the short term.