Madden NFL 20 Teased Super Bowl 2020 Chiefs Prediction With Manning Brothers Ad

Update: The official Madden Super Bowl prediction called the game for the Kansas City Chiefs, and as those who watched the big game can attest, that was the right call. Original story follows.

Madden NFL 20 is preparing to announce its official prediction for Super Bowl LIV, and it's teased the big event with a new ad that suggests player data may be taken into account. The advertisement features brothers Peyton and Eli Manning, both former NFL quarterbacks, having some sibling rivalry.

The ad takes us inside the "EA Sports prediction lab," where very serious people in white coats furrow their eyebrows at charts. Peyton Manning says the lab has already conducted its own simulations, but player data gets fed into the machine and "the more games we input, the tighter the prediction." That suggests EA is planning to take user data into account for this year's soothsaying.

EA Sports has also set up an official site where you can predict the points spread and MVP. All of this is tied into encouraging people to play more Madden to "feed the machine," with a 50% discount on the game across all platforms. You can play a simulation of the Super Bowl now. But seeing as the ad never gives a cutoff time for when user data is being taken into account, it's difficult to say if it's all a gimmick.

The ad does end by teasing that the official prediction will be revealed tomorrow, January 30. That coincides with the Super Bowl Music Fest, which features an EA Sports Bowl. That may be where the company reveals which team won its prediction model--though Madden predictions have a spotty history of predicting the actual outcome. On the bright side we can be reasonably confident the Madden Curse won't be a factor.