Members of the community can enjoy Turkey Bowl 2025 — a Madden NFL 26 Playstation 5 tournament at the Long Beach Public Library.
Gamers age 12 and over will be organized into a 16-player bracket–with competitors having the opportunity to select their own teams during the tournament.
Participants will be provided controllers, and are welcome to bring their own if desired.
Registration is free beginning at 10 a.m. on Nov. 8, and will last 45 minutes. Matchups will begin an hour later in the second floor program room. The championship round will take place in the library’s auditorium.
Turkey Bowl 2025’s champion will take home a Playstation copy of EA’s College Football 26. Second place will be rewarded with a Moko Keyboard — a keyboard plug-in for a Playstation 5 controller. Third place will receive “The Story of Football in 100 Photographs,” a book from Sports Illustrated that gives readers a glimpse into the legacy of the sport.
“We want participants to walk away with a feeling that the Library and its staff care about their interests,” Jakea Williamson, the assistant director for Long Beach Public Library said in a statement. “We are constantly looking for ways to bring fun and relevant programs to our patrons.”
Jake Cohen, a Youth Services librarian, has been organizing this year’s Madden tournament.
It follows another library-hosted Playstation 5 tournament on Sept. 25, featuring the popular game Super Smash Bros, which received “great turnout,” with Cohen calling it a “great opportunity to serve different kinds of people in the community.”
Cohen’s experience managing the fiction, comics and manga, as well as Nintendo Switch sections has helped him acclimate to what teens and different crowds are looking for, calling his civic-minded approach an opportunity to help recognize the communities “enthusiasms.”
“Programs like these can attract both new and old patrons, and allows for members of the community to take advantage of our great library.”
Cohen has spent time gathering information on rulebooks from different organizations in E-Sports to create an authentic and fun experience. He has also collected feedback on game settings such as quarter length, player fatigue, injury, and weather, as well as reviewed the skill-level rules, which affect the in-game experience.
“I’ve been very receptive to feedback,” Cohen said.
Turkey Bowl 2025 is part of the library’s commitment to the gaming community, which includes their Teen Games, Jr. Gamers and Retro Gamers programs. Designed to target people of all ages, the three programs are now a regular part of the library’s monthly programming.
On the unique relationship between video games and the library, Cohen noted that a library functions to “provide access to various forms of narrative storytelling as well as technology” for its patrons.
“Videogames help foster imagination and empathy,” Cohen said of their impact. “Playing games with a group helps develop tangible skills such as cooperation, teamwork, compromise, and socialization.
The rules for Turkey Bowl 2025 are subject to change. For more information on the tournament and the library, go to LongBeachpl.librarycalendar.com.
