The NFL and all 32 of its member teams have partnered with Electronic Arts to launch the first Madden NFL Club Championship, the parties announced Monday.

The event will hold a set of online leaderboard competitions, as competitors fight for a chance to compete on behalf of their favorite NFL franchise, starting with the release of Madden NFL '18 on Aug. 25. The top player on each leaderboard will be selected to play at offline competitions at the Pro Bowl Experience in Orlando, Florida, and Super Bowl 52 in Minneapolis in January and February. The winner of the Super Bowl competition will receive two free tickets to attend Super Bowl LII.

The competition will utilize a modified version of the Ultimate Team game mode called Ultimate Team Champions. Players play to unlock and earn trading-card style players to add to their teams, creating a competitive balance similar to that of fantasy football.

The Club Championship is one of three Madden NFL Championship Series EA majors. The collective Championship Series prize purse is $1.15 million, with $403,000 going toward the Club Championship.

"Competitive gaming and esports are one of the most exciting ways to engage a larger, younger and digitally savvy NFL audience," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. "Collaborating with EA to create the Madden NFL Club Championship presents a unique opportunity to capture the excitement of NFL action and the passion of our fans with competition that anyone can participate in."

Provided by EA Sports

The competition is the first time a professional sports league has received commitments from all of its members. In May, the NBA announced 17 of its 30 teams would participate, at a cost of a reported $750,000 on three-year agreements, in the upcoming NBA 2K League, which is set to launch in 2018.

The commitment comes after a joint push to the NFL owners from the consumer products team at the league and several members of its business ventures board who voted for the project, league sources told ESPN. That board consists of 10 NFL owners and executives from the Jacksonville Jaguars, Arizona Cardinals, Buffalo Bills, Cleveland Browns, New York Jets, New England Patriots, Seattle Seahawks, Washington Redskins, Los Angeles Chargers and Minnesota Vikings.

A number of those teams -- the Patriots, Vikings, Bills, Seahawks and Jaguars -- were among the eight to participate in the 2017 Madden NFL Club Series, which had events across the United States sponsored by those NFL teams.

Only one of that list, the Kraft Family of the Patriots, have an outside investment in the traditional esports space. Alongside the Stan Kroenke of the Los Angeles Rams, the Krafts recently purchased a spot in the Overwatch League for a reported $20 million buy-in.

NFL chief strategy officer and senior vice president of consumer products Chris Halpin told ESPN he believes that this can provide NFL owners the opportunity to see esports and witness the industry's development outside of sports-based games.

"There's strong interest across ownership in many leagues," Halpin said. "There's going to be a distribution of perspective on esports as an opportunity as a sport. Like the other leagues, we've got owners who have multi-sport holdings and are focused on building their esports franchises and there will be others who are moving into it. It's a good launching off point and there's also a good intersection for the traditional sports through their games and what they're doing in esports across fans, brands and with owners learning about the market where there's already significant foundation and presence and applying that model elsewhere to non-sports based esports."

Several NFL owners echoed that sentiment to ESPN, saying they think the Club Championship is just the beginning of business opportunities for NFL owners and their businesses. One NFL executive told ESPN they believe this will create new opportunities for audience overlap between the NFL and the Madden player base, given the necessity to understand the skill of NFL players in-game compared to their real-life counterparts.