WIN

What does it take to be successful in a constantly evolving esports marketplace? A relatively new company, WIN, intends to answer that question by looking directly to what the market’s consumers are most interested in

Jared Wynne Editor-in-Chief

Serge Vardanyan CEO & Founder

WIN aims to service esports consumers through a variety of means. The company boasts three separate platforms, each of which exists as an independent product.

The first of these is WIN.GG, an editorial platform that seeks to provide comprehensive information to fans of the biggest games in esports. This starts with the website’s editorial coverage, ranging from briefs on news of the day to more in-depth pieces exploring game analysis and general topics of interest in the esports community.

From there, the website boasts a thorough statistical database covering years of matches and tournaments played in such games as League of Legends, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Dota 2. Combined with live updating scores and tournament tracking, the platform’s goal is to inclusively meet the information needs of any esports fan. The website also features a function through which registered users are able to select their favorite teams and players to follow. This allows fans to access content that is customized uniquely to their individual preferences. The next of WIN’s products is WINNERS League, a competition run through popular tournament organizer FACEIT. After a debut season featuring free play, WINNERS League officials boasted an approximate 40% conversion rate of free users to paid subscribers for the second season. This next season

also featured an expansion from the league’s beginnings in Europe to newly include North American players and teams, as well as the welcoming of some of the world’s biggest and most noteworthy esports organizations to its competition.

The league has thus far run with a focus on competition for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, with future plans to continue expanding league play into other regions across the world. Finally, there is Winners.bet, a sports betting service geared specifically towards esports users. Sports betting has become an increasingly popular past time, and this very much includes the world of esports. Total esports wagers have already reached over $7 billion globally and are expected to nearly double by 2020.

In spite of this tremendous growth, few betting platforms cater directly to esports users. WIN seeks to change this by building Winners.bet from scratch specifically for use by esports fans, with its very form and function meant to best align with the esports marketplace and its unique needs.

One of the burning questions for any such operation is what separates its business from the rest of the pack. It’s a question that WIN’s management, bringing with it significant experience at other ventures in the industry, is eager to address.

WIN co-founder and CEO Serge Vardanyan attributes the company’s success to date, and its bright future prospects, to the passion the team feels for the space in which they work. “We all, each and every one of us, are esports fans. It’s one of the first things we look for when bringing someone new to the team,” Vardanyan said. “I truly believe that having a real passion for, and native understanding of, the esports

industry is what separates the market’s most successful ventures.”

There is, of course, more to it than that. And the WIN team does bring a wealth of experience from across a variety of other industries as well, including data analytics, digital media, gambling, tech, and more.

Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief Jared Wynne spoke to the team’s rigorous approach to each decision it makes and to the accountability that every member of the team is held to. And it again

comes back to what seems like a very real passion for esports. “We’ve all come together not only to make this venture a success, but also to better contribute to the esports industry. And we really believe that we’re doing exactly that,”Wynne said. And there’s more yet coming. The company is deep into the development of an AI that it intends to use for a variety of purposes. The objective about which the company is most forthcoming is the use of advanced data analytics to empower a proprietary predictive service that will be used both to bolster its sportsbook offering and as a subscriptive offering for fans and bettors alike who want a unique insight into potential competitive results.

As it builds upon its existing products and invests in new and complementary developments, WIN’s goal remains the same. The company’s primary interest in is answering the needs of the esports marketplace’s consumers. And as the marketplace continues to solidify and its consumers continue to make known their desires, companies like WIN stand only to benefit.

here have been plenty of reports covering the explosive growth of esports, but none have ever really taken a look into what this means for the industry’s employment opportunities. With significant new investment coming into esports every day, companies are hunting for the best talent in every corner of the globe to help them bring their grand ideas to life. T

In short, it’s never been easier for talented people to work in the industry we all love!

At HitmarkerJobs.com, the largest esportsspecific jobs website online today, we’re in a unique position to observe employment trends in the industry. We post hundreds of legitimate esports careers every month. All sectors and skills are catered for, with opportunities ranging from customer service to engineering, from hospitality to human resources, from business development and software engineering and beyond! Yes, we can very confidently say that the esports ecosystem is now capable of successfully supporting professionals from every walk of life.

But don’t just take our word for it. Take the data’s word...

A few weeks ago we crunched the numbers from the jobs we posted in Q1 of 2019 - all 2,084 of them - and produced the infographic you see before you. We’re sure you’ll agree that it tells the story of the industry’s hiring scene more clearly than we ever could with words alone!

If you haven’t been following the esports jobs scene lately, it may surprise you to see that over half of everything posted this year has come from the USA. While it’s true that esports jobs exist all over the world - in 40 countries to date in 2019, to be exact - the United States definitely boasts the lion’s share and this doesn’t look like changing anytime soon.

What perhaps is even more staggering is that 62% of all esports jobs in the USA are based in California, meaning that California itself accounts for more esports jobs than the rest of the 49 US states combined AND more than any other individual country on the planet too! As such, we think it’s fair to say that the US west coast has a massive monopoly on esports job opportunities... Looking at the most actively-hiring companies helps to explain this trend. The top three hiring companies in esports account for 17.18% of all jobs posted this year and are all headquartered in either San Francisco or Los Angeles.

Another piece of data we collect from every job we post is the sector we categorise it in. This has given us extensive information that determines which kind of jobs are the most common in esports. Marketing takes the lead on this front, though it’s only narrowly ahead of software engineering, with both combined accounting for around 22% of everything we’ve posted. This paints a pretty accurate picture of what many companies in the space are prioritising right now: people who can build digital products, and people who can effectively market them to esports’ massive audience.

A myth that we’re always keen to dispel is that most jobs in esports are unpaid. This is something we hear quite frequently, even though unpaid positions made up just 16.96% of our postings in the first three months of this year. Volunteer positions for juniors looking to pick up some starter experience in the scene made up 14.34% of these, with the remainder coming from unpaid internships at established companies, where the currency on offer is an invaluable experience placement. Naturally, that means that well over 80% of all of our listings this year have been paid ones, with the vast majority of them coming in the form of full-time positions (72.92%, to be precise). Part-time jobs in esports remain surprisingly rare, with only 3.24% of all jobs so far in 2019 offering lower time commitment contracts. However, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, esports is known as the 24/7/365 industry!

Something that definitely won’t surprise is that the majority of people looking for esports jobs are male, with females making up just 11.15% of the HitmarkerJobs.com audience between January and March of this year. We saw female participation in the esports hiring scene trend upwards significantly in 2018, and we’re hoping that pattern continues during the remainder of 2019 too.

Given that we’ve only just finished Q1 and there have already been over 2,000 jobs on our website, we think it’s safe to say that this year is looking like the biggest one yet for esports careers. Indeed, with announcements for new headquarters, arenas, funding rounds and companies popping up on Esports Insider multiple times a day, it seems there are only going to be more opportunities for people to get involved in this burgeoning industry!