BRANDS
Charging hard into Irish esports
Enda Lynch
Head of Enterprise Munster Rugby
he lines between esports and traditional sports continue to blur. Storied clubs such as FC Barcelona and the Golden State Warriors have dedicated esports divisions, NBA and F1 teams have esports players representing them in official leagues, and the ownership groups behind the likes of the New England Patriots and New York Mets have splashed out tens of millions of dollars on franchise slots in the Overwatch League.
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With the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing measures putting traditional sports leagues on pause for the time being, there’s even more crossover such as NASCAR drivers competing in iRacing, NBA players facing off in NBA 2K20, and hockey legends Wayne Gretzky and Alexander Ovechkin competing in NHL 20 for coronavirus relief.
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AUTHOR Andrew Hayward @ahaywa
Amidst all this, another legendary traditional sports entity has entered the esports world, albeit on a more regional scale. In mid-April, Irish team Munster Rugby announced that it had partnered with Phelan Gaming, which would be rebranded Munster Rugby Gaming. Phelan has been arguably the only significant esports organisation to date in Ireland, and now will go forward with the backing of The Red Army.
Lynch’s role with the team is to look for new business opportunities outside of on-the-pitch competition and everything tied into that. Previously, the team established a High Performance Leadership Programme - an executive training initiative - in collaboration with the University of Limerick, where its rugby team trains. Esports, on the other hand, targets a much different and broader kind of audience.
“Our TV audience is gradually getting older, and that’s the same across all audiences. That’s not a negative thing in its own right; our TV numbers are still very strong,” Enda Lynch, Munster Rugby’s Head of Enterprise, explained to The Esports Journal. “We saw an opportunity to bring our brand to an age profile and an audience that knows… in an Irish context, they’ll know who we are, but they’re not engaging with us day-to-day.”
“This is just another brand extension for us, and a way of creating potential revenue opportunities that are not aligned directly with our core product and on-pitch results,” said Lynch. “More and more sports teams are beginning to look towards that. They have a brand that is loved and admired by their own fan base and maybe people around the country or even around the world in some places, yet they rely entirely on on-pitch performance for those results. You’ve got to wean
