The Gaming Lifestyle Economy

Words by Pauline Mendoza | Photos courtesy of Tier One Entertainment

How Tier One Entertainment has built careers around an industry that started as a hobby

There are 3 billion gamers worldwide. Market and consumer data firm Statista reports that this number will continue to rise in the coming years. Gone are the days when video games were treated as only a mere pastime or a hobby. It is not a small sector of the global economy anymore. Now we’re looking at a video game industry that will generate a revenue of $196.8 billion by the end of 2022, as stated in the Global Games Market Report by analytics company Newzoo.

With this development comes a culture that celebrates esports and gaming at the heart of the entertainment and lifestyle industry—a space where gaming is no longer a cultural vacuum.

“We believe that gaming entertainment can be developed the same way Korean entertainment companies developed music and dance,” says Tier One Entertainment Co-Founder and CEO Tryke Gutierrez in an interview.

Esports veteran Tryke Gutierrez, together with cosplay superstar Alodia Gosiengfiao and serial entrepreneur Brian Lim, co-founded Tier One Entertainment, a premier esports and gaming lifestyle startup based in Asia, reaching a global audience through its international talents and venture partners.

Since its inception in 2017, Tier One Entertainment has been campaigning the message of how one’s passion can be turned into a viable career. The startup raised a couple of funding rounds from established venture capital firms such as BITKRAFT, Atlas Ventures, Gobi Partners, Warner Music Group, Play Ventures, and Mirana, while staying true to its vision by showing how to thrive in the gaming lifestyle economy, giving thousands of geeks and gamers the opportunity to pursue a career out of what they love and do best.

Tryke Gutierrez adds, “We’ve moved from being solely a talent management agency to being a company that is at the intersection of media properties, esports, and gaming lifestyle.”

With the company’s current momentum, being able to find the sweet spot of its market position, Tier One Entertainment is poised to build an esports and gaming behemoth of its kind.

What makes Tier One Entertainment thrive? Take a look at the pillars of its gaming lifestyle ecosystem:

Esports Teams and Championships

The primary driver of growth for the global video games market is now mobile gaming. It comprises 53% of the market, and is expected to contribute $103.5 billion in revenue this 2022, as published in the Global Games Market Report. This gives Tier One Entertainment a powerful position as it prides itself on being a world-class mobile esports destination.

Tier One Entertainment launched its esports division Blacklist International in 2020. A year later, it had garnered world championship titles in Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and Call of Duty: Mobile. Adding to the company’s list of trophies and medals are local and international championship titles such as Free Fire’s Malaysia-Cambodia-Philippine Majors (MCP Majors), Mobile Legends Professional League (MPL), Call of Duty Mobile Garena Masters, and the Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games) for MLBB.

Aside from winning multiple championships, Blacklist International as a brand has become a cultural phenomenon. True to its tagline, “Break The Code,” the organization has broken stereotypes in the typically maledominated esports scene.

Blacklist International’s Mobile Legends team captain Jonmar “OHMYV33NUS” Villaluna was subjected to homophobic remarks after the team lost a game. Instead of fighting fire with fire, Blacklist International as a brand encouraged the huge community of gamers and esports enthusiasts behind them to become agents of change online and offline. Various news and media outlets in Southeast Asia picked up on the story, and it further raised awareness on LGBTQ+ issues in esports.

Upon winning a championship, one of Blacklist International’s viral posts has OHMYV33NUS in his signature ‘crown pose’ with a caption that states, “Who says esports are only for kings? The new king is a queen.”

Creator Community

Tier One Entertainment Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer Alodia Gosiengfiao is the first personality in Asia to be chosen for Facebook Gaming’s Creator Program.

Over the years, Tier One Entertainment has helped thousands of streamers and content creators become partners with Facebook Gaming through its incubator program AMPLFY. This allows gamers to make a living out of their passion for streaming games.

As of August 2022, Tier One Entertainment’s pool of content creators has a combined following of 260 million, amassing almost a billion reach across different social media platforms that cater to various demographics, further affirming the company’s branding that gaming is for everyone.

The company also recently partnered with Bent Pixels Asia of Hepmil Creators’ Network to open up YouTube advertising opportunities for creators. In its years of managing talents, hundreds of brands from different sectors have trusted Tier One Entertainment to bring them to more audiences. It has worked with brands like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, IKEA, Samsung, Netflix, and Toyota, to name a few–creating a footprint that gaming can be mainstream.

How do you thrive in the creator community? Alodia Gosiengfiao, who started cosplaying and streaming before those were mainstream, shares, “Be authentic to your craft. You can’t fake authenticity.”

Through the years, Tier One Entertainment has signed talents of different backgrounds, game genres, genders, and ethnicities. The company’s recent signings are internationally sought-after cosplayers Knite, Shunsuke, and Hakken. Its roster of talents and affiliates is at the core of geek culture, flourishing with unique passions and interests.

Tryke Gutierrez says in another interview, “When we were about to start this company, she [Alodia] didn’t sign with any other talent agency because she knows she has a different ‘mold.’ We’re building this for people like us, gamers and geeks, who are in a way ‘weird.’ In this company, we embrace ‘weirdness,’ we embrace diversity.”

Apparel and Merchandise

Tier One Entertainment branded items started when the organization decided to sell merchandise at a huge gaming convention. Now the company’s retail arm is officially named BLCKBOX.

“The purpose of BLCKBOX is to create tangible items that will remind our fans of the milestones and the highlights of our talents and players in the years to come,” shares Tryke Gutierrez in a social media post. Tier One Entertainment wants every piece from BLCKBOX to have a story. For instance, a specific jersey reminds fans of an epic championship run or a shirt can be a throwback to the early days of Tier One’s community.

The company shares that BLCKBOX has already become a stable source of revenue, with Blacklist International jerseys as their top-selling items in the past year. The brand has recently collaborated with world-renowned artists Quiccs Maiquez and Egg Fiasco for Blacklist International’s Mobile Legends Professional League S10 Collection.

Tryke Gutierrez says, “Our retail arm will open up new opportunities for us to work with established intellectual properties in the retail market. As our esports teams, talents, and brands gain more popularity, the possibilities are endless for collaborations.”

“The combination of physical items packaged with NFT and access to events is the future of this Tier One’s subsidiary,” Tryke Gutierrez reveals.

Media Properties

The rise in gaming culture needed more platforms where successful gamers could further inspire and bring opportunities to more people. Enter The Gaming House, Tier One Entertainment’s reality show for video game streamers and content creators. The show was made to give audiences a glimpse of gaming influencer life and how the next generation of gaming superstars are trained, and ultimately search for the next Tier One Talent.

The Gaming House was sponsored by some of the top brands in their respective industries like Grab, Samsung, and IKEA, to mention a few. It was presented by one of the most extensive entertainment and media conglomerates in the Philippines, ABS-CBN.

Tier One Entertainment is not limited to a single show, they are continuously diving into a lot more media property projects like a Spotify Podcast titled Payaman Insider involving their talents from Team Payaman, a vlogging group with a multi-million following. Meanwhile, some of their other digital media projects are also produced by their creative productions arm, servicing multiple brands that want to connect to more communities. The company also hosts tournaments for content creators and fans through its esports entertainment subsidiary ASCEND.

What’s next for Tier One Entertainment?

“Dreaming about the future is limitless. In this industry, you only stop when you stop learning.”

For a startup that has secured series funding while reaching millions of people through their communities, one may think that it might have reached its peak. But Tier One Entertainment shows no signs of stopping. It has recently revealed their venture into the Web3 space.

“The first thing we worked on before going into Web3 was to go through the due diligence of understanding what the space is all about and what gap we can fill in its ecosystem,” says Adam Vinluan, Vice President for Web3 at Tier One Entertainment, in an interview.

“Tier One’s strength is the traffic and the reach that we have. The thought process was, with all the intellectual properties that we have and the marketing machinery that we’ve created, we’re positioned to utilize the tools that are developing now in Web3 to provide more value to our community and our brand,” shares Adam Vinluan.

Reporting almost a billion reach on social media last August, Tier One Entertainment is banking on its massive social media reach and brand credibility. The startup has announced their newest incubator program called ALLIANCE. It aims to be a global collective of thought leaders to drive traffic and mainstream adoption of Web3, shaping the future of the blockchain and crypto industry.

Tryke Gutierrez shares that this is just the startup’s first step towards Web3, hinting that there is more on the horizon. After all, Tier One Entertainment has always positioned itself to be a trailblazer in whatever space they enter. As one of the company’s famous taglines says, “In Tier One, we never settle.”

“We want to identify a sustainable utility that we can provide to our community so that we can onboard those who want to be in the Web3 space and help them make that jump,” Tryke Gutierrez shares.

Alodia Gosiengfiao echoed the sentiment when she said, “Dreaming about the future is limitless. In this industry, you only stop when you stop learning.”