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CONTENTS
In this edition
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28 New Wave Esports New Wave Esports is an esports investment company that’s aiming to do things a little differently.
32 Abios
DAIMANI Max Müller knows a thing or two about VIP hospitality after working at the heart of the four previous FIFA World Cup hospitality programmes, including the 2006 tournament hosted in his native Germany.
Data is perhaps one of the most untapped sectors of esports. Since video games are entirely digital, a huge amount of raw data is available and the opportunities that presents is far beyond those in other industries.
Digital versions will also be available via www.esportsinsider.com & www.lmgmas.com
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ESI London Looking back at the biggest year in UK esports. This’ll be one of the main stage panels at this year’s ESI London conference
12 GRID
GRID is a technology platform that serves as a comprehensive data partner for top tier esports competitions, sponsors and teams around the world.
14 Esports BAR Miami
Run by experts in show organization and international B2B deal-making, Esports BAR 6th edition is on its way to Miami, next 2-4 October.
16 Fnatic
Turning 15 - Then & Now
18 WIN
Less than one year into its WINNERS League endeavor, WIN has already established itself as a major player in the space.
20 We Are Nations
The emergence of esports in pop culture.
26 ES Broadcast
Outfitting the ambitious National PUBG League.
36 Kinguin
From sponsoring the most prominent teams and tournaments to forming a recently re-branded competitive organisation of his own, Viktor Wanli has tried his hand in many sectors.
40 Suzhou
Creating its very own esports hub.
46 Women in esports
Regardless of gender, you can be a good player. An interview with Isurus Gaming.
48 Marketing
What type of esports marketing is made for you?
50 Bayes Esports
Economically, esports runs off the promise of growth.
52 ESIC
The Case for (Some) Regulation in Esports
56 YES: We have esports in Brazil
The companies and executives that make esports one of the fastest growing industries worldwide
EDITION 1 ESI NYC - April 23rd 2019 EDITION 2 ESI Hall of Fame - June 10th 2019, Los Angeles EDITION 3 ESI London - September 16-17th Esports BAR Miami - 2-4th October
Digital versions will also be available via www.esportsinsider.com & www.lmgmas.com To get involved, or if you have any questions at all, please reach out via info@theesportsjournal.news
Welcome to The Esports Journal We’ve given life to this industry-focused magazine, which will be available in digital format and print (at all good esports b2b events near you), as we believe there’s a gap in the market for such a project.
Notes from the editors
ust as in ‘traditional sports’ there are businessfocused publications from SportsPro to SportBusinessReview, we saw there was space for such a magazine focused on esports. Some prefer to read their long-form content in a print publication, and indeed for the screens only amongst you, we’ll produce each version in digital format too, which naturally will be made more widely available.
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Initially, in 2019, The Esports Journal has been available at select esports industry events, but there are plans to expand beyond this should there be appetite for it. These have been the editions of Esports Journal in 2019. ESI NYC April 23rd 2019 ESI Hall of Fame June 10th 2019, Los Angeles ESI London September 16-17th Esports BAR Miami 2-4th October
Sam Cooke
Agustín Cikes
This is an idea we’ve toyed with for a while. We’ve been producing daily business-focused content on esportsinsider.com for close to three years now, and then after chats with our Buenos Aires-based friends at LMG, we decided to go ahead.
In LMG, we are keen supporters of printed magazines; perhaps it ́s as Sam said, I’m being nostalgic because it reminds me of when I read Wired magazine, or simply, the newspapers in the morning. What I do know is that I’m 100% sure that it’s much more effective to take a magazine home or to the office rather than bookmarking a link (though you can do this with The Esports Journal too..).
Managing Director & Co-Founder ESI
Maybe I’m being nostalgic for the days of reading Match magazine, GamesMaster and NME, but I do believe there is a space and will be a desire for an esports industry focused print magazine. And we’re producing a digital alternative too, for those who of you determined to see the end of WHSmith. The aim with the magazine content is that it’ll be differentiated enough from ESI content in that it’ll be a home for longer form content, more in-depth interviews and insightful opinion pieces. All industry and business focused. Give us time, and we will deliver on this front. Moreover you won’t be forced to read ‘Esports Insider says’ at the end of every article.
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COO & Co-Founder LMG
Over the past few years, we’ve attended the most important business events in the esports industry, and one thing we noticed was that there was no specialised magazine focused on the industry (looking at the business side; the organisations, the brands, executives, associations, challenges and so on). And so here we are; about to launch a highquality magazine with fantastic, exclusive content and reaching the most important executives of the industry. Enjoy!
About Us
About Us
Based in London and founded in the summer of 2016, Esports Insider is an industry events, agency and media company, with a leading international business focused news site.
Based in Buenos Aires and founded in 2016, Latam Media Group was launched to bring a new concept in communication, networking and content creation.
We are a team of industry professionals who are both knowledgeable and well connected across the space as a whole. In this fast paced and fast changing industry we have formed a team of experts to play a part in guiding it in the right direction. Esports Insider.com - One of the leading esports industry focused platforms worldwide. We feature the latest news stories each day, alongside opinion pieces, and interviews with those making waves in esports business. We publish four to eight stories daily, and see upwards of 140,000 page views per month, and have a twice weekly newsletter, the ESI Dispatch. Our Twitter following is 7,000+ and our combined social media reach is over 12,000. We are also active on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram. ESI Events - We run esports industry focused events and have produced more such events than any other, globally. These have included the ESI Forum Series, the ESI Super Forum, Betting on Esports Conference, ESI Birmingham, ESI London, and ESI Hall of Fame. In 2019 we have ESI NYC, ESI London, the ESI Forum Series and the ESI HoF in Los Angeles. We offer white label events services too. ESI Media - We offer content creation options (editorial, podcast and video), advertising, consultancy, and social media campaign promotions. ESI Connect - ESI Connect sits in-between current esports rights holders and companies seeking to do business the right way, without all the hassle. Acting as an agency, media house, translator and mentorship group, ESI Connect will evaluate what you seek to do, propose the best fit, initiate the right contacts and support you in the delivery of your plans.
Latam Media Group is a media group specialized in the Latin American Gaming industry. Its expertise in public relationships let them multiply their business audience, building a selected and exclusive network that acts as a guide to keep evolving in the right direction. LMG now organizes events, VIP dinners, conferences and summits for the Latin American gaming industry. Betting Mgz - The first and only magazine focused on the online gaming industry in Latin America. It´s distributed in the main events of teh region, reaching the main operators, suppliers, regulators and businessmen. LMGMAS.com - It´s one of the leading websites of the Latin American gaming industry. Apart from promoting the latest trends of the companies and the executives, LMGMAS makes the difference with their innovative way of communication, exploiting all the resources that social networks and new trends allow. All the content is perfectly segmented, according to the interests of each of their readers. This is: Esports Industry: All the information related to esports industry, focused on Latin America with a worldwide perspective. Gaming Agenda: Exhibitions, Conferences, Summits and Webinars. Betting Sports Mkt: It´s a new era for betting, entering to sports market as never before. In this section, you´ll find all the content related to this area. LMG Eventos - Thanks to our daily contact with the whole industry, we know the needs of our clients. That´s why we organize events that fit perfect with their demand. Some of our events: Esports Brands Conference Betting Sports Marketing Conference Affiliate Summit LatAm One on One VIP Dinners
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EVENTS
Looking back at the biggest year in UK esports Esports isn’t a new phenomenon for the nation, but how can it keep building upon the success it saw in 2018? AUTHOR Adam Fitch @byadamfitch
nspired by a panel set to take place at ESI London 2019 with participation from the likes of ESL UK, FACEIT, UKIE, Taso Advisory and the British Esports Association, Esports Insider takes a look at the events which provided the building blocks for the biggest year so far in UK esports.
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Hailed as a landmark year, 2018 saw some of the biggest esports tournaments hosted on UK soil for the very first time. Kicking off the year, ESL One headed up to Birmingham, playing host to first ever Dota 2 Major in the country. The tournament saw twelve of the best Dota 2 teams battle it out for a hefty $1,000,000 (£810,560) prize pool and all-important DPC points. Hosted at the 15,800 capacity Arena Birmingham, ESL reported that it sold over 1,000 tickets in the first five minutes of them being made available.
saw Astralis lift the trophy after taking down Natus Vincere in the Grand Finals. It was reported by FACEIT that over one million concurrent viewers tuned into the Grand Finals on Sunday. At the time of its conclusion, the tournament was celebrated as the third-highest viewed esports tournament, behind Dota 2’s The International 2018 and the League of Legends World Championship 2017, excluding Chinese viewership. The Major also received mainstream attention with Sky Sports broadcasting the final matches of the tournament.
Clement Murphy, Marketing Manager for FACEIT commented on the monumental year: “Hosting the FACEIT CS:GO Major in 2018 was a huge honour for us, and personally a career milestone for me. More and more UK businesses are stepping up to the global esports scene to put on world-class events, and 2018 was our most successful year yet. It’s up to us to learn from all the great things we did in 2018 and keep pushing them forward to make the UK the esports capital of the world.” Since the Major, FACEIT has kept up the momentum hosting a number of
On the back of its success, ESL One made its return for 2019 where it was once again hosted in Birmingham. The $300,000 tournament was recorded as the most-watched ESL Dota 2 event in history, with a peak concurrent viewership record of just over 300,000. Elsewhere, UK production company FACEIT brought the first-ever CS:GO major to the UK. The tournament, which was hosted at the SSE Arena in London,
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Clement Murphy Marketing Manager FACEIT
EVENTS
UK-based events, including the Esports Championship Series (ECS) Season 7 Finals, FACEIT Ignite: Halo European Open, and FACEIT Global Summit: PUBG Classic. UK esports organisation Excel Esports announced its entry into the coveted Riot Games’ League of Legends European Championship (LEC) in 2018, too. Since its introduction into the LEC, the organisation has gone from strength to strength. A strategic collaboration was announced with Twickenham Stadium which saw the creation of XLHQ, the first endemic dedicated esports training facility in the country. The organisation has also announced partnerships with peripherals brand HyperX, and Belong Gaming Arenas.
multi-million-pound investment. The nine teams participating teams were required to go through a rigorous selection process to show their commitment to creating a long-term partnership. Fnatic and Excel, who both participate in LEC, secured slots to field their academy teams in the UKLC setting a standard of play for the rest of the teams. There is no doubt 2018 was a high point for the UK esports industry.
Going forward, it’s integral that the local industry works to ensure that the biggest years in UK esports are yet to come, though this will doubtless prove a challenge. With the likes of UKIE working closely with the government and stakeholders throughout the space, the work being done by the British Esports Association, the emergence of esports at the university level and the increasing amount of international events taking place in the UK, it’s clear that the challenge has been accepted.
Additionally, in the world of League of Legends, UK esports received a boost when Riot Games and LVP announced the creation of UKLC. The tournament represented the developer’s biggest commitment to the UK yet with a
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MEDIA We’ve assembled a hit squad of content creators who, as a collective, know the industry and each competitive scene inside, out. Whether it’s editorial, podcast, video, or social media campaigns, we can help. If you need expert esports content for your platform, and/or want to promote your business to the key industry stakeholders, drop us a line For more information visit www.esportsinsider.com or email info@esportsinsider.com
brands
RID is a technology-asa-service company that partners with esports companies to help them maximise revenue and customer engagement. Through exclusive partnerships with tournaments and publishers , Grid’s game agnostic data engine collates, processes and distributes official data assets to third parties. GRID commands the majority of high-value data rights in esports across both western and eastern markets and has a proven track record in delivering quality results and protecting asset value from bad actors in the industry. GRID provides partnered tournaments with a wide range of web, broadcast and audience channelling assets, as well as developing industry
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leading coaching and analytics assets for pro esports teams in Europe and South Korea.
2019 Growth GRID has been experiencing rapid growth throughout the last few months. The company has recruited the finest talent in the industry to the team, increasing to nearly 50 full time employees only a year from founding. This explosive growth is driven by major long term partnerships with some of the biggest companies and competitions in esports; FACEIT, StarLadder and Chinese giant Alibaba. GRID has established itself as the major player in the esports data scene.
Partner Focus: StarLadder GRID has taken on the role of of official data partner for the StarLadder Major in Berlin. Charlie Hanley-Nickolls, VP of Partnerships at GRID, said of the partnership:“We’re providing a range of awesome services to Starladder on the data side, and working closely together to help them secure their tournament and revenue against outside threats. We’re so excited and proud to work with this great organisation and looking forward to a fantastic future working with the team there.”
events
Esports BAR Miami
2-4 October at the JW Marriott Turnberry
sports BAR was launched in 2017 by Reed MIDEM, the organiser of the leading international entertainment markets: MIPCOM, MIPTV, Midem. Run by experts in show organization and international B2B deal-making, Esports BAR 6th edition is on its way to Miami, next 2-4 October.
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The core mission of Esports BAR is to contribute to the transformation of the sport of the digital generation into the future of entertainment. Esports is a global cultural phenomenon that is definitely designed to take a central place in the entertainment ecosystem. We know how essential it is to achieve this goal, the interaction with nonendemic business players like brands & media. That’s why Esports BAR has the main goal to mingle endemic and nonendemic key decision makers. Tell us a bit more about the upcoming event. Our next edition is scheduled in Miami 2-4 Oct., at the JW Marriott Turnberry.
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We expect +500 execs and indeed, to meet the industry’s needs the best, where offer different options: the famous and prestigious VIP Arena, where we pre-select execs that are eligible for the 1-to-1 Matchmaking; the Forum where we welcome the bright minds of the industry to deliver keynotes + be part of the renowned Mentoring Programme. As an essential part of the event, the Hosted Brands Programme is more than ever growing: non-endemic brands Air Asia, Anheuser Busch InBev, Brooklyn Brewery, Coa-Cola, Coty, Danone, Foodora, Kellogg’s, Kopparberg, Mountain Dew, Nike, Tinder, Trip Advisor,
events
Unilever or Wallmart have already confirmed their attendance. And last but not least, a special focus on LatAm is schedule on day#2 of Esports BAR Miami this year. Why are the US and LATAM markets such an important focus for Esports BAR and the industry in general? Latin America has quickly risen in popularity and has now developed some of the most talented players and teams in the world. After Riot Games launching a Latin America league, based in Santiago, Chile, Allied Esports announced recently the production of a Latin America esports event, Nation vs. Nation, while Blizzard just added Latin America to the Arena World Championship alongside with NorthAmerica, Europe, Korea and Australia/ New-Zealand regions. With three main cultures and languages, Latin America is a rich and promising region for esports. It seems important to help the industry and non-endemic leaders to understand this phenomenon, its key factors and more importantly how to reach this growing community; this why for this edition, Latin America is part of the three pillars of the event.
What are the other pillars of the conferences? Aside from a big focus on brands (keynote series + round-table sessions), media networks and platforms also represent a bigger part of the Forum. Broadcasting questions and content issues are rising as esports is getting more and more popular. A special focus for media and about media is absolutely necessary. Finally, sports and esports are getting closer than ever, in terms of similarities and complementarities opportunities, a powerful combination can be built, for example, the NBA created its league dedicated to the NBA 2K game.
What else is there to announce ahead of this year’s edition? Mentoring has been since a while a strong part of our shows. We have been on board so far some of the most experienced execs in esports that have been extremely engaged in our show to help younger execs to maximize their skills and knowledge. We do continue the mentoring programme in Miami, but we add to this a brand new format of sessions: the Round-Table Series.
The concept is very simple: Execs from media platforms, publishers and leading brands will sit at round-tables to share to delegates insights on how to work with them. Each session lasts 1 hour, during each slot there will be 5 tables, available for ten delegates, each one led by a representative from a platform, or a brand or a publishing company. You can check all of our announcements on our website: https://miami.the-esportsbar.com/en-gb/forum.html
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INTERVIEW
Fnatic
Turning 15 - Then & Now Fnatic recently turned 15. Here’s a Q&A with Sam Mathews, Founder and CEO, on what they’ve learnt and where they are now AUTHOR Pablo Monti @PabloMMonti
natic just turned 15, what was it like back then? Did you envisage that the organisation, and esports more broadly, would become what they are today, at least this soon? Sam Mathews: Back in 2004, esports was much smaller, it was more of a scene than an industry. Gamers would play with their friends to create teams and use IRC to find others interested in playing. The most common connection was a dial up modem, with the lucky ones having ISDN or university fibre. There were tournaments but on a much smaller scale with a few thousand viewers not millions we see today. One thing that has not changed is the passion and excitement fans and players had then is very much the same as today, just on a larger scale.
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rom the beginning I realised that the potential was F inevitable, esports represented a paradigm shift in competing. It gives players the ability to compete on a level playing field and get the same thrill from competing in a physical sport, but at anytime, and from anywhere with an internet connection and computer. Fnatic was from day 1 positioned to be at the forefront of this movement, and we still are! To move forward as an industry and realise the potential it required constant evolution of the fundamentals: better internet, cheaper broadband, faster devices, more advanced but simpler to use games, and finally the invention of the streaming platforms, and VOD such as Youtube. It was just a matter of time for the technology to catch-up and the industry to thrive.
Sam Mathews CEO & Founder
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INTERVIEW
ESJ: During 2019, Fnatic signed a contract with OnePlus and raised $19 million in funding, what’s the future for the organisation? SM: Following on from the investment earlier this year, Fnatic is in the next phase of global expansion. I recently resumed the CEO role and appointed a new management team including Chairman Nick Fry, formerly the CEO of Mercedes AMG F1, and COO Glen Calvert, formerly the Founder of Affectv. to scale the company to the next level. Adding to this we’ve had incredible hires accross departments from companies such as Redbull, Bumble, Uber, Nike, and much more.
provides them with a unique innovative asset to monetise. From our perspective it’s very important to partner with such an institution in the world of football. AS Roma gives Fnatic leverage when it comes to FIFA specific tournaments and people instantly recognise the brand. As Fnatic grows our fanbase, aligning with such institutions is vital to reach a wider audience across other major sports.
ESJ: Fnatic has teams with lots of history in Tier 1 games like League of Legends, CS:GO and DOTA 2; but you also have teams in many other games. How difficult is to manage so many teams? SM: We’ve been fortunate to have had time to test what works, and what doesn’t. Through trials and tribulations we’ve reached a place today where our players sit within a strong management structure, where each team has its own core setup with support staff, all aided by a central team which makes their jobs as smooth as we can. It is extremely important to ensure that we have the right staff in place to nurture and develop our talent across all titles.
I wouldn’t say the partnership is about what each organisation ‘gets out of it” but more a sharing of values via a mutually beneficial partnership to help us achieve our objectives.
esports industry aswell as the brands it attracts. You get a chance in a beautiful setting to not only chat business, but also have some unwinding time together where the great conversations happen, and much is learned. This ensures that there are plenty of opportunities to find new opportunities as well as partners that share our values and fit the brief of what we are looking for as an organisation.
e’re looking globally as we further W expand into South-East Asia, China and Japan, focused on our core mission of seeking out and leveling up every gamer on the planet. Working with top-tier brands globally only supports this and we’re doubling down on our offering to the Oneplus / AMD level brands of this world, to help them navigate and maximise there involvement in the exciting world of esports. e are also investing heavily in esports W talent, developing a centralised performance function for all Fantic teams to drive innovation through nutrition, scouting and training. We recently opened new custom-built 10,000 sqft training facilities in East London with top-of-the-line equipment for our teams to train and stream from.
ESJ: A few weeks ago you had something of an issue with your Twitter account. After a few hours, Fnatic’s account regained almost 500k followers, how important is creating a community around the organisation for Fnatic? ur Fans, who we refer to as our Fnatics O are everything. We wouldn’t be here without them, they are the key to our success, literaly the organization wouldn’t exist. Since 2004 we’ve built a community of millions of Fnatics by being fun, being successful, and giving them something to believe in. They’ve been with us through every high and low, so temporary losing a huge portion of them to a Twitter glitch was a little terrifying and frustrating. Luckily this has now been resolved and back to normal thanks to Twitters support.
are aware of the challenges of doing We something global across several titles, thats why we write playbooks and look to refine and improve, learning along the way so that we can replicate success in new titles, new regions and new squads. ESJ: Back in 2017, Fnatic signed a partnership with AS Roma focused on FIFA. How important is to partner with such an established football club, and what does Fnatic gets out of it? SM: The partnership with AS Roma is a true partnership in the sense that it is a two way street. We share a mutual investor, Raptor, and subsequently help each other via the shared resource of the team.
e also continue to push innovation W through our line of professional grade gaming peripherals and continue to develop and launch new products including an audio line as well as partnering with the most forwardthinking brands. ESJ: Esports BAR is coming back to Miami and it looks like there will be a mix of esports specialists and non endemic brands. Why is Esports BAR a good place to find partners and sponsors? SM: Esports Bar is a great event for the breadth of delegates from across the
ocial media itself is a huge part of S connecting, you have to speak in their language, often memes haha. But its also a way to give back to our Fnatics, we did a full day of giveaways on Twitter last month to celebrate our 15th birthday, where people won one-ofa-kind signed Gear and merch. It was hugely popular.
Fnatic adds value through our publisher network and strong brand association within the esports industry, managing the day to day running of the team, whilst enabling AS Roma to engage with a younger, global audience. This
or us though, this is just the beginning F of Fan creation, it was our fans who coined #alwaysfnatic, and we live and die by that now, we’re here for the long term. 17
Creating a successful esports league from scratch is no easy task. But less than one year into its WINNERS League endeavor, WIN has already established itself as a major player in the space.
ollowing the conclusion of WINNERS League’s second season, the team behind WIN is already hard at work not only in setting up for its biggest season of play yet, but also to begin bringing that success to live event spaces.
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WINNERS League stands apart as a premier online competition. WIN.gg has partnered with FACEIT once again for WINNERS League Season 3, which is shaping up to be the league’s most dynamic and competitive season yet. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive teams from Europe and North America will be competing for a share of a $50,000 prize pool. The competition has three divisions, making it accessible for players of all levels. Players will range from up-and-coming competitors looking to work their way up the ladder
to seasoned veterans wanting to make a statement and add to their trophy cases. WINNERS League project lead Nick Gorbunov has seen many teams and players make great strides while taking part in the competition, and he projects a clear excitement for the future direction of the league and how it will continue to help players advance in their careers. “We’re happy to be able to contribute to players’ development and to shine a spotlight on new and upcoming talents.
BRANDS
As the league grows, these teams will only get more opportunities for greater exposure,” WINNERS League project lead Nick Gorbunov said. The majority of the prize money will go towards the league’s invitational divisions to incentivize some of the world’s best pro Counter-Strike teams to compete. But there will also be financial rewards for amateur and semi-pro teams who find success in the league, as well as opportunities to move to higher divisions and compete against the best pro players on the planet. “We are proud of the competition that happens on our circuit. Players have told us that they’re hungry for quality competition, and we’re excited to be able to bring that to them both now and in the future,” Gorbunov said. Gorbunov added that WINNERS League aims to improve its players’ experience each season. Strides made between the first and second seasons were tremendous, and Gorbunov expects that the league’s third season will see another big step forward as WINNERS League becomes better entrenched as a premier competition both in esports broadly and specifically for CounterStrike players and fans. Season 3 will begin on October 20 and will be played over the course of 10 weeks. The first seven weeks will feature a group stage format, with teams battling each other as they jockey for playoff positioning. This setup allows players to get plenty of experience playing and ensures that only the best teams will be able to move on. There are no flukes in WINNERS League.
WINNERS League integrates with WIN.gg media platform With the competition having been established, the next logical step for WIN was to connect WINNERS League to its other successful product, WIN.gg.
WIN.gg is a news and statistics platform that has, in just over six months, already established itself as being among the industry’s leaders with more than half a million monthly visits. The platform covers the most popular games in the industry, including Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends, Dota 2, Fortnite, and more. WIN.gg also boasts advanced data and analytics, allowing its users to see the stats behind the esports world’s best teams and players. It’s something that WIN is now looking to apply to its WINNERS League competitions, allowing players to track performance over the course of play in the league. WIN CEO Serge Vardanyan is excited about the possibilities and what this could mean for the future of esports.
competing players are exposed to the news coverage and stats database of WIN.gg. Curious visitors to WIN.gg are similarly exposed to the league and to the opportunity to compete in it. “This is the sort of synergy we’ve been aiming to provide from the very start, and we are happy to see it coming to fruition now,” Vardanyan said. With a growing database already featuring over 16,000 players and more than 6,000 teams, it’s not hard to see the potential here. A successful launch of both iOS and Google apps further strengthens the case WIN is making to be seen as a major player in the space. And as the company continues to do work like this, that case will soon be undeniable.
“There’s a tremendous future available to us with this sort of analytics work,” Vardanyan said. “Allowing players to analyze their own play is a service that we are very excited to provide, and we expect that players will be equally excited to experience it.” This partnering of services also allows WIN to better take advantage of having a strong mix of complementary products. With WINNERS League now hosted on the WIN.gg platform,
Nick Gorbunov League Project Lead
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interview
Patrick Mahoney We Are Nations The emergence of esports in pop culture AUTHOR Adam Fitch @byadamfitch
sports and gaming are converging with other entertainment and leisure sectors and, slowly but surely, they’re making their way into pop culture. From in-game concerts performed by popular DJs to celebrities investing in esports organisations, the lines are blurring more and more as time goes on.
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To discuss this interesting intersection of entertainment, we sat down with Patrick Mahoney, CEO of We Are Nations. With past experience in the music industry and now clothing a healthy portion of those in esports, he’s in a great position to observe this happening. 20
The Esports Journal: You have a lot of experience in the music industry. What do you make of the crossover between music and esports, and why do you think this crossover is occurring? Patrick Mahoney: For the same reasons there was a connection between action sports and music in the 1990’s, everyone who is participating in the esports ecosystem wants to put their mark on the entirety of the culture. The classic 1990’s example, of course, is The Vans Warped Tour. At the time, for those first few years, it might as well have been a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, because it worked so well.
interview
ESJ: What do you make of the musical performance seen at esports events? A lot of people aren’t overly keen! PM: It’s funny that people aren’t overly keen from the esports side because I can assure you that the Marshmello and Fortnite collaboration has got the entire music business scrambling. Maybe that’s the point – clearly the esports community wants to consume music, but apparently on its own terms. We’ll have to watch. I have no doubt that over time, ‘halftime’ shows will prevail at major esports events and the Coldplay’s, Justin Timberlake’s, and Maroon 5’s of the times will be taking part, posting some of their best engagement numbers of the year. ESJ: These days, organisations and companies are trying to create clothing that can be worn anywhere without it being overtly obvious what the brand’s origin actually is. What are your thoughts on the emerging trend of esports apparel being completely unrelated to gaming and esports? PM: Endemic esports brands are definitely a piece of the overall pie. I’ve invested in a few lifestyle brands over my career and they definitely serve the purpose of leading the way in terms of trend and product. But it’s so hard to cut through and I think most of these brands will hit a wall once they exhaust their internal resources. Some will be able to scale, some won’t, and some won’t want to. That’s how it’s always worked. In 10 years, it will be surf/skate/ snow all over again, but with gaming. ESJ: In the past year, we’ve seen major players in clothing and sportswear enter esports. Why do you think they’ve decided to get involved at this point? PM: I honestly don’t think they have, really. Most of the activations we’ve seen thus far have been from the local management level, and in most cases, they’ve been limited. Don’t get me wrong, there is some great stuff going on out there with Champion and some
other brands, but they should be seen as pieces of an overall merchandise strategy. An activation – a real brand statement – is like when Jordan and Nike launched with Paris Saint-Germain this past year. Everybody knew this was coming and when it came out it blew up in the sports world. That’s not happening yet in esports. The scale is simply not yet there. And to take the Jordan and PSG example further, that deal literally revitalized a brand and created a market that opened up further opportunities for additional product categories. Have you seen the Herschel and PSG backpacks? They are amazing. I don’t want to negotiate against myself here, but the industry needs to learn that exclusive deals aren’t always the best deals. All this said, we’ve had numerous discussions with brands about how we can help with scale, so I think you’ll see us continue to partner up and execute on behalf of brands. It’s important to point out that We Are Nations as a mark is more or less neutral – we are building the company to be synonymous with esports merchandise quality and not as a specific brand on its own.
ESJ: More and more, we’re seeing celebrities investing in esports. Do you think this helps the scene, hinders it, or neither? PM: I definitely think celebrity investment can help give certain organizations an improved brand voice. That said, these organizations are businesses first and brand voice is only half the battle. The teams and other companies that rise to the top of the pile in the next few years will be creatively executed enterprises with excellent business fundamentals. ESJ: Besides talking on the pop culture panel at ESI London, what are you most looking forward to at the event? PM: Meeting new people. We are at a stage in the industry where these conferences and other events are literally filled to the roof with awesome ideas, but I also love London so I’m coming a few days early. I’ll be bringing a bike and will spend the weekend riding in Surrey, which has been calling me since the London 2012 road race (if anyone wants to ride…). I also need a new pair of kicks and the Adidas Originals shop off Regent Street is a favorite.
ESJ: Do you think it’s necessary for esports to tie itself with pop culture for its growth in the future? PM: Yes. My 13-year-old son spends a lot of his free time gaming, listening to Spotify, and watching YouTube videos all at the same time. There’s simply so much out there, all cross-referenced and cross-delivered. That said, I expect esports to become a dominant part of pop culture so the balance of power may very well shift. ESJ: How do you see the industry playing into pop culture in the next few years? PM: Like I said above, the concept of who is leveraging who should flip pretty quickly. Traditional sports lead the narrative on pop culture, and have for a long time. Expect the same here.
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DAIMANI
Turning the hospitality pain into a gain AUTHOR Kit Walker
ax Müller knows a thing or two about VIP hospitality after working at the heart of the four previous FIFA World Cup hospitality programmes, including the 2006 tournament hosted in his native Germany.
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After ending his involvement with the FIFA World Cup last year, Müller has co-founded digital sales platform DAIMANI. For Müller and his DAIMANI colleagues esports is the next biggest and most exciting commercial hospitality opportunity, and this in an industry estimated to be turning over €6 billion a year.
Max Müller
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“I know many esports organisers see hospitality more as a burden, a contractual obligation to their stakeholders, not a very pleasant one at that and certainly not a revenue stream in its own right,” said Müller. “But that will change in esports just as it has done everywhere in the live event industry, and we can help rights-holders embrace that opportunity and deliver the full commercial potential.” Müller’s contention is that organisers of esports tournaments will run into the same inescapable pressures around ticket pricing as those faced by rights holders in conventional sports. “Supply and demand theory tells you how tickets should be priced. But in the real world, where events only succeed with a high-level of fan engagement, that’s not practical or even desirable,” says Müller. “An economist would recognise the irony: the bigger and better you want to make your event, the more you need fans to validate that experience which is the key to your broadcast and sponsorship proposition. But that means the less ability you have to price tickets according to supply and demand.” He points out that even the main FIFA, UEFA and International Olympic Committee events rarely lift facevalue tickets by more than seven or eight percent over a four-year cycle – effectively below inflation. The answer lies in the introduction of premium or VIP ticketing, says Müller, which gives organisers the ability to taken in hand a percentage of the venue’s inventory and dramatically increase the yield per seat through the provision of quality food and beverage and other unique live event experiences. Esports organisers could really profit from a keen eye like Müller’s, and someone whose business instincts are always to take the long view.
“The first modern FIFA World Cup in terms of commercial hospitality is recognised as being 2006 – before that the arrangements were very ‘ad hoc’ and decentralised’’ says Müller. FIFA’s four-year to financial report to 2018 shows FIFA’s net income from VIP hospitality was USD184 million including a USD61million profitshare from Müller’s former employer. Müller’s breadth of knowledge and the quiet intensity with which he explains how the mismatch between ticketing supply and demand feeds into the commercial hospitality opportunity, should be enough to make even the most fatigued gaming executive realise that the industry better get ready for an esports hospitality revolution. DAIMANI are so certain about the prospects esports hospitality poses, the company even offers a hospitality product-development consultancy as part of its selling proposition, to help overstretched organisers realise the full potential of their events earningpower. This covers catering, project management, hostesses, access passes, and guest management skills. “It might feel to a lot of people that VIP hospitality is a recent phenomenon, therefore everyone’s a little unready and not sure what to do and where to look,” explains Müller. “But as far back as the days of the Colosseum, those who wanted the best of the best were able
to purchase the equivalent of ringside seats and were treated to an early form of sports hospitality in the form of well-groomed service people carrying plates of cakes, pastries, dates and other sweetmeats, and generous cups of wine.” With esports continuing to grow in terms of event attendance and sponsorship, the next key area of revenue for these tournament organisers will be hospitality. This is where companies like DAIMANI can step forward, and add true value to the industry, for attendees and organisers alike. “VIP hospitality goes to something in the core of our being, about who we are as humans, and our desire to feel alive by embracing that live-event experience,” said the Zurich-based CEO, whose DAIMANI platform launches on
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October 1st and will be the first global marketplace for sports, music, and cultural event VIP hospitality packages. Developed in partnership with SAP, who are so delighted with the association that the software company has invested extensively in media spend to promote DAIMANI, the platform is already available in seven languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and Chinese, and can price purchases live in more than 70 currencies with almost 40 different payment methods, reflecting the surging global appetite for customer convenience. Within DAIMANI, the responsibility for signing up the hospitality sales rights of event organisers, or ‘onboarding’ them to the digital sales platform, is with the Hamburg-based, former Lagardere director Tobias Knüwe. “The response has been very encouraging, especially from those companies who can make the link in their minds: official hospitality is really an extension of the esports experience... if you’re serious about the game, you have to be serious about your VIP experience,” said Knüwe. Knüwe says DAIMANI - which also has offices in Paris, Hamburg, London, Amsterdam, Moscow, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Sochi, and Sao Paulo - hopes to be able to announce a series of sales partnerships in the near term, with companies keen to take advantage of the October 1st launch of the platform’s easy and intuitive-to-use SAPengineered technology. If you’re reading this and want to know more about DAIMANI, by all means visit their website: www.DAIMANI.com
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Acting as an agency, media house, translator and mentorship group, the ESI Connect will evaluate what you seek to do, propose the best fit, initiate the right contacts and support you in the delivery of your plans. It’s a non-exclusive, commission based service aimed at helping to facilitate and nurture the right business deals and partnerships globally across the industry.
Finding the right information, people and opportunities inside and outside the esports space has now become much easier.
Bringing together esports and other industry thought leadership so that you don’t have to do it yourself.
The ESI Connect sits in between current esports rights holders and companies seeking to do business the right way, without all the hassle.
Acting as a media house, translator and mentorship group, the ESI Connect will evaluate what you seek to do, propose the best fit, initiate the right contacts and support you in the delivery of your plans.
For more information on how to apply, speak to a member of the ESI team, email info@esportsinsider.com or visit www.esportsinsider.com
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Outfitting the ambitious National PUBG League Jonathan Lyth
AUTHOR Adam Fitch @byadamfitch
Technical Director
hen OGN jumped ship from South Korea to North America last year, it set upon what appeared to be an impossible challenge: creating an arena that can accommodate a Battle Royale league in an logistically-feasible and aesthetically-pleasing manner. With 16 teams competing - each comprised of four players - it’s a much taller task than arranging a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive facility, for example.
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OGN was announced as the company behind the National PUBG League in October 2018 and it only had a few months to set up its Super Arena ahead of the competition’s impending start
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date. It’s not easy to source all the equipment needed to create such a setup, especially if it needs to be mobile to make way for other competitions. Add in the need for dedicated presence on production-oriented tasks, and things can get overwhelming. This is where ES Broadcast stepped in. Vastly experienced in systems integrations outside of esports, the company has done an immaculate job in entering the space in a way that feels authentic and genuinely helpful. Partnering with OGN to help bring the National PUBG League to life, it ventured to Los Angeles with a kit list and did all the heavy lifting to allow OGN to concentrate on the other important areas.
“It was at the time where Battle Royale was really on the rise and as outsiders coming into it, we didn’t realize that from a technology point of view - we were starting on the extreme,” said Jonathan Lyth, Technical Director of ES Broadcast. “OGN needed a company to come in and do the heavy lifting with systems integration so it could concentrate on production and that’s how it all started.” ES Broadcast had a pre-existing relationship with OGN, having worked together in a small capacity in the past, but it didn’t realise the challenge it faced with the National PUBG League. There are four columns that each contain four setups, as well as four rows that are tiered to allow the audience to get a
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glimpse at every team that’s competing. This setup is regarded as one of the more intricate setups in esports to date and, incredibly, it’s wholly removable. The company started operating in esports two and a half years ago but it didn’t enter the industry with the mindset of telling everybody how things should be done. Despite having a wealth of experience from traditional broadcasting, it came to listen to companies and their problems and then offer its expertise whenever it was needed. Those behind the company understood from the get-go that esports was founded upon people wearing many hats and doing everything themselves so they couldn’t just come in and dictate how everything should operate. “We’re trying to be as open as possible and to learn as much as we can about esports to try and bridge the two worlds,” said Lyth. “We’re not saying we’ve got all the answers but we know enough about supplying equipment and integrating systems to help point companies in the right direction at the very least.” As you’d expect with systems integration, broadcast equipment sales, and equipment hire, a lot of the magic takes place behind closed doors. ES Broadcast is working with other major players in esports, such as ESL UK, but the nature of the job means there’s not a lot public acknowledgement for such work. Perhaps that’s the curse of operating in such a space - if you’ve done a good job then hardly anybody will say a word about it. It’s only when things go wrong that fans decide to acknowledge such important elements of event organisation and production.
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INTERVIEW
Daniel Mitre New Wave Esports A conscious and calculated esports investment company AUTHOR Adam Fitch ï‚™ @byadamfitch
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ew Wave Esports is an esports investment company that’s aiming to do things a little differently. Identifying four pillars of investment, it aims to create a diverse portfolio of companies that inhabit different corners of the industry.
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Ahead of his keynote at ESI London, we chatted with Daniel Mitre, CEO of New Waves Esports to find out about these pillars, the companies it currently invests in, and his thoughts on the current esports investment trends.
The Esports Journal: Can you tell us your background in gaming and how New Wave Esports came to be? Daniel Mitre: I’m a huge gamer, my favourite game will always be Super Mario Bro. You can play competitively by trying to get through levels as fast as you can and not dying. This was my first taste of being passionate about competing in video games but my parents always told me that’d I’d never make money from it. Fast forward to my early twenties. I started doing that as a QA tester. This gave me a good foundation of how games are developed and how the interaction with developer and publisher is. From there, I graduated up to becoming an Assistant Community Manager where I led communities on big MMO RPG games, sports games, and big multiplayer titles. I’ve worked at EA, Sega, THQ, and Activision Blizzard. This gave me that foundational understanding of how gamers relate to the games that they are passionate about, the lifestyles that are created from those, and then how to keep them plugged into what we know as a live service now. I took my love for gaming and my network within these publishers with over to New Wave Esports.
I’m joined by our President, Trumbull Fisher, who’s a 14 year veteran in financial markets. He co-led a hedge fund that raised more than $3 billion and has now brought his expertise over to our company to raise money in the esports world. We started last November and really started to make moves in January of this year. ESJ: What role does New Waves Esports play in the esports industry? DM: Our sole purpose is to invest, acquire and develop technologies around esports to push competitive gaming industry forward. We love it and we know that our communities love it. We’re doing this by investing into four different pillars within esports. The first pillar is teams and organisations, we invested into Lazarus - we placed a sizable chunk into them. They took home $3.5 million in the Fortnite World Cup so we’re really proud of that investment. The second pillar that we invest in is platforms, whether that’s an online tournament portal, betting and gambling, portals for coaching and insight, and so on. Oone of the companies that we placed investment in early on was PlayLine, which was co-founded by UFC Middleweight champion Michael Bisping. PlayLine deals in daily fantasy sports and is bringing over an esports component so you’ll be able to bet on esports. The third pillar that we invest in is events. We have a significant equity stake in a company called Even Matchup Gaming, which produces some of the biggest tournaments in Canada. It has two major events a year: a national Super Smash Bros. tournament called Get On My Level and a Super Smash Bros. Ultimate event called Let’s Make Moves. It also hosts 79 other events throughout the year and contributes towards esports at grassroots and collegiate levels.
Technology is the fourth pillar for New Wave Esports. We have some good platforms coming out next year that are listening to the needs of esports and developing solutions for them. We have such a diversified portfolio because we believe in economic durability, especially since we’re going public on the Canadian Securities Exchange in October. ESJ: Why did you choose to invest in Lazarus in particular when there are so many organisations out there? DM: Our company was initially set up in Canada and we wanted to quickly exercise some of our working capital into some Canadian companies. We saw that Lazarus’ parent company, Tiidal Gaming, is very proficient; they’re optimized and working as a very green business. The organisation has a roster of 50 athletes across 10 different countries and 12 titles. This includes female teams for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and League of Legends, they’re pushing for diversity and that’s very much needed in esports. ESJ: We’re currently seeing a pattern of celebrities, and rappers in particular, coming in and investing in esports. Is this a healthy trend? DM: It’s really interesting. From an investment standpoint, it makes sense. We see that a lot of traditional investors made a ton of money in cannabis but all those multipliers are long gone. They can still make money but it’s just going to take longer. All the analysts and investment firms are saying the next big thing is esports. So from an investment standpoint, you know, if I’m Drake or Will Smith, I’m going to jump on the next big opportunity. Where they add additional value as a strategic investor is their name. When Drake put millions of dollars into 100 Thieves it made major headlines, this 29
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put the organisation more on the map and that brings a lot of great working capital over. We’re made shot can start doing some awesome things. And same with all these other big time teams that are raising great capital. So as a strategic value add and it’s great money coming in. ESJ: There’s a lot of discussion around whether esports is currently in a bubble or not, where do you stand on this topic? DM: I wouldn’t say we’re in a bubble, but that there’s a market correction on the horizon. Gaming has been around since the late sixties, early seventies and we know it’s not going anywhere. Since its inception, we’ve always seen that people are interested in seeing other people play video games. So no matter what happens with esports, we will always be entertained by someone playing a video game better than us. Saying that, I think a lot of these teams are over-evaluated. Some companies are saying “Hey, I’m worth $150 million,” though they may often not be. It may just be storyline where they’re trying to raise capital. There will be a market correction. Those that are using their capital and building something sustainable will stick around. Those who are pumping major burn rates without a profitability inflection point over the next two or three years may not survive. We, as an industry, need to correct some issues with using our money correctly and building more of an ecosystem for everybody to be successful rather than just trying to monopolize. ESJ: Do you see franchising as a good investment model or otherwise? DM: That’s a big question. When investors between raise $8-25 million to get a franchise spot, they have to think about when they’re going to see
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profitability. You’re not going to see in the first year, it’s likely going to take two to three years. Even just with talking with Activision Blizzard, they’re saying the same thing. It takes two or three years to really start building out these franchises, getting all the sponsorship money coming in, getting the audience set, and being able to sell CPM models.
What I think is most important here is ethics. Are there as passionate about esports as we are and do we share the same vision? There’s a lot of companies out there and we could just be writing cheques left and right, but we want to work with companies that believe in what we believe in.
ESJ: Why did you decide to get involved with ESI London? DM: I’ve always heralded Esports Insider as one of the go-to outlets for esports news and communities.
It’s going to come down to executive leadership, knowing how to build good businesses, and understanding the long-term profitability here. ESJ: How do you identify what’s a solid, promising investment for your company? DM: We look at certain criteria: what’s their path, when are they going to start to dial in the revenue, their tactics, what their team is like, their network, their understanding of the industry, and so on. You look at some of the traditional elements within a business, as well as exactly how are they contributing to esports and if we see them sticking around for a few years.
I’m honoured to be able to stand on-stage at ESI London. I think what you guys have built over the years is incredible and with your help, we’re bringing great eyes to esports. We’re pushing those major headlines, showing mass audiences that esports is really here to stay in. There’s some serious movement going on. I’m excited to be on stage to show my presence and I’m looking forward to meeting a lot of people that are coming out that you’re attracting.
INTERVIEW
Oskar Fröberg Helping to tell the many stories of esports
AUTHOR Adam Fitch @byadamfitch
ata is perhaps one of the most untapped sectors of esports. Since video games are entirely digital, a huge amount of raw data is available and the opportunities that presents is far beyond those in other industries.
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One company navigating this space, and doing so successfully, is Stockholm-based Abios. We spoke with Oskar Fröberg, CEO of Abios to dig into the company’s products, the challenges it has faced, and its involvement in ESI London. 32
The Esports Journal: In what capacity are you involved with ESI London? Oskar Fröberg: We’ve been a sponsor of ESI London since it began, even when it was part of Betting on Sports.
great success in meeting both existing and new potential clients and partners to do business with.
This year we decided to return as a sponsor because it’s always worthwhile! I’m also speaking on a panel at ESI London on the data and media rights space.
We can meet both sportsbooks and event operators, as well as other suppliers in the industry. It’s a great place to feel the pulse of the industry and to meet with our industry colleagues who are not situated in Stockholm like us.
ESJ: Why do you come back to support the event each year? OF: The main reason is that we’ve had
ESJ: What do you get from these events on a personal level? OF: The networking side of things is
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really important. It’s always great to meet the people that I continuously speak with over email and Skype and whatnot, and there’s always a lot of important people from the industry in attendance. It’s nice to meet them in person to improve the relationship and it’s, of course, good for Abios at the same time. It’s also really interesting to see what other companies and other actors are doing in the industry and to keep tabs on what’s happening each year. ESJ: Where do you fit into the esports industry and what do you bring to it that no other company does? OF: We’re a data supplier and our core product is our API. We enable the collection and use of data for many types of companies, whether it’s a betting company, an organisation, or a media company - any company that’s looking for data. The second product that we have now that’s built on our API is our widgets. This product mainly helps betting companies to create interesting and engaging live content for matches - both pre-match and live - without large development costs or technical overheads. We gather and collect data - either from game developers, event organizers, or from official streams - and then make sure it’s as fast and as granular as possible to distribute it in a way that’s easy to use and well-structured. ESJ: Last year you partnered with Luckbox and you recently announced a deal with Unibet, so you had experience with both esports and sports betting. How would you compare the two? OF: Esports is still far behind regular sports but it’s slowly getting there. We’re not in any huge rush for it to catch up though, we want to be in the industry and grow with the industry as it keeps growing for many, many years to come. While esports betting is getting big
now and interest is growing, the betting industry for esports is nowhere near its potential size. The amount of players in esports is there, the viewership is there, the prize pools are there, and these are all continuously growing. However, we know all of the sub-industries are still have a long way to go; I think this is very positive because it means there’s still huge growth to come for the entire market. ESJ: Do you think there are any missed opportunities that’s hindering the growth of esports betting or is it just a case of waiting for things to grow naturally? OF: I think it’s both. We need to wait for things to grow naturally and we need to wait for revenue to continue to flow down the stream. The audience needs to mature and have higher disposable income so that people can spend money on their hobbies and interests - one of which is esports. There’s not much to do about that except wait because I don’t think we’ll be able to convert older adults to start betting on esports. In 20 years time, I’m certain that the interest will still be there for esports betting so it’s a waiting game. From my perspective, the most important thing is that the game developers continue to provide open data sources for companies to collect and build products upon. I would suggest, for the developers that don’t do that, that they should open themselves up. I also think that in general, what would be best for esports is if it can avoid going down the same road that traditional sports has with exclusive rights. ESJ: How has Abios grown and developed over the past year? OF: We’re just trying to increase revenue and land more and more clients. As of right now, we are roughly growing
revenue by 100% per year. Our business model is Data as a Service so that produces recurring revenue; we sign up clients on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis and do our best to retain them. ESJ: How have you been working with Unibet to bolster its esports offering? OF: We’re developing lots of new products and exciting things together with them for esports, it’s just a close collaboration where they want to tap into both our data and our knowledge of esports. As of now, Unibet has implemented our esports widget.The two main parts of the widget are pre-match and live. The pre-match widgets and the live widgets are both made up of several components which our clients can now pick and choose from, they can tailor the widgets to their needs. The pre-match component, for example, is if it’s between two teams, it’ll state simple data points like who’s playing who, at what time, what stream it’s available on, and so on. It can also include information on how these two teams usually perform against each other, how have they performed recently, what are the best and worst heroes of teams or individual players, et cetera. When it comes to live widgets, we track lots of relevant live data. If it’s a MOBA, we can include picks & bans, the items that they currently have, gold graphs, and other important bits of data. Whereas for a game such as CounterStrike: Global Offensive, the widget can display what weapons players are carrying, who’s alive, the economy, round by round updates on who won, and other pieces of relevant information. ESJ: How do you decide which titles that Abios works with? OF: It’s mostly demand driven from our client side. Currently we support around 33
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17 titles and there are three titles we’re looking at adding right now. If we have clients that are willing to pay for the data, we’ll start covering the games with no problem. We have the computer vision technology in order to start collecting and gathering data off of the publicly available streams, and we have the relationships to set things up to access really good data. ESJ: Which titles do you find the most interesting to operate within? OF: On a personal level, I’m a huge Dota 2 fan and player. For the company, League of Legends. They both have fairly good data availability and reliability. Those games, and Counter-Strike:Global Offensive, have high integrity compared to other titles because there’s very serious organisations and there’s a lot on the line for the players. It’s these three games that clients are really interested in, too. ESJ: What exactly does your esports API offer to companies? OF: The API is our way of distributing data, that’s our core product. It enables companies to build, esports products and offerings - whether that’s content or bets and odds. They can pretty much do whatever they like with the data. ESJ: Have you got any other products on the horizon that in development? OF: We’ll be releasing another product around the same time as ESI London, we’ll be rolling out probabilities. It’s a knowledge feed, but it’s not traded and it’s not risk managed. Since we have very good data and five years of very detailed historical data, we’re able to make some really great predictions on matches and events. We’re releasing a feed of odds or probabilities, whichever way you wish to describe it. The big three games will be supported at the beginning. Initially it will just be pre-match and hopefully we’ll expand into live probabilities going forward. 34
ESJ: What’s been the biggest challenge for Abios since it was started? OF: The biggest challenge for the company I would say is durability. We’re always trying to avoid being shortsighted and burning out too quickly. Often times, people who venture into new industries or new businesses are in too much of a rush, and while we want to make everything happen quickly, esports takes time to grow and build. It takes time for revenues to flow from the top tier players and game developers down to all the subsets of
businesses and organisations in the industry. That affects us as we have some clients that are financially stable but we also have a lot of clients that are esports startups that are faced with the challenge of becoming sustainable. And of course, even if we think that we have a great business and a good business model, uh, we’re also, you know, dependent on the success of our clients.
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Viktor Wanli Kinguin
Creating the Esports Performance Center AUTHOR Adam Fitch @byadamfitch
aving been in the industry for longer than most, Viktor Wanli is a mainstay in esports. From sponsoring the most prominent teams and tournaments to forming a recently re-branded competitive organisation of his own, Wanli has tried his hand in many sectors. Kinguin was founded in 2013 as a trading platform but didn’t waste much time in investing in esports in a big way, especially with Team Kinguin - which is now known as devils.one.
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Here Wanli details the experiences, challenges, and triumphs behind Kinguin’s Esports Performance Center - a facility located in Warsaw, Poland - which is dedicated to the improvement of the industry’s top teams. Wanli will take to the stage at ESI London in September 2019 to discuss this, and answer any questions on it.
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The Esports Journal: When did the idea for the Esports Performance Center come about? VW: Esports is not really new to me. I’ve always been an insider, and I would say I managed successfully to join both of the cultures because Kinguin, as a business concept, revolves more around the casual gamer. Even for today’s esports startups, it’s tough to have a proof of concept and go on any substantial and fair valuation about these concepts. Kinguin has always been positioning itself around unique projects in esports, being one of the very first companies to sponsor teams on a very high level — including Team SoloMid, Cloud9, Fnatic, and Ninjas in Pyjamas. Later on, we turned to sponsor tournaments such as ESL One. Lately, we’ve been working a lot around two topics in esports: infrastructure and education. In terms of infrastructure, we first started thinking of an esports entertainment concept — a retail concept. We defined our goals and values for the project, and we actually started to look for the first location in Warsaw, Poland. That search actually took us about one and a half years because we have very specific demands about the space in terms of location, availability and construction demands. We found such a location in the centre of Warsaw, however, that later had been called off. Thankfully, we ended up finding the current location of the Esports Performance Center by accident. It came very naturally to us, with a concept where esports professionals can find a dedicated space — a curated, private environment. I’ve been working with teams and boot camps for a very long time, so I watched the behaviour patterns of teams and their demands and requirements of such a space.
So we knew that we definitely wanted a residential and training space to be in the same facility. However, they should also be separated from each other, so they know when they are at work, when they are training, and when to spend time relaxing and having fun with friends. So we enabled the teams to define these boundaries.
“That’s one of the beauties about the whole concept; we have everything they could ever need inside.” ESJ: Can you break down for me what the EPC comprises of? VW: It comprises of four floors. We have an office floor which is for back office management. We have a training floor, which we call the ‘performance floor’, it’s where all the training rooms are located, and it contains room for psychologists and therapists with the support of basic facilities like a kitchen and lounge where they can discuss a strategy and their approach to the game. Then we have the living quarters, which consists of private rooms which are equipped with individual air conditioning with Netflix and a PlayStation 4. They have all the facilities they would need to have a rest or have some additional entertainment if they would like that. It’s supported by a professional kitchen where we serve breakfast and lunch. This is led by a local chef and supports the healthy nutrition of the professionals. Then we, of course, have a gym. We offer additional packages in terms of guided physical activity, but they are free to access the gym 24/7. That’s one of the beauties about the whole concept; we have everything they could ever need inside. They can go through the facility as they like, there is
security 24/7. The last floor is a chillout zone. We also look at this as where business and esports meets. Just today we had a viewing party for fans, business associates, and media of the Ultraliga — which is the Polish national competition for League of Legends. ESJ: What makes the EPC different from other centres and headquarters owned by other organisations? VW: An organisation’s headquarters is usually a very simple facility. So, in most of the cases, it consists of a small detached house. The main differences are the level of comfort, the separation of work from fun and from their private life. This is more possible in a facility within 2000 square meters than it is if you have a house of, let’s say, 300 square meters. We have staff which clean through the rooms daily and provide the support for the teams to do whatever they need to do — not in terms of the facility itself, but also in communication with the outside world, whether that’s visits to the city, transportation, and so on. ESJ: What are you most proud of when it comes to the EPC? VW: I’m most proud of the team which actually made it happen in the end because mostly I was just walking around looking at stuff. The guys really made it happen, it took us a long time but what’s interesting is that we had to change lots of the first assumptions we had about the space. It’s been verified by the professionals themselves; the usage and design of the space. We were lucky enough to actually be able to do these modifications on the go which was a huge lesson in itself. So the final thing coming together is like a dream come true and not just for me.
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INTERVIEW
“They loved how open this space was and categorically told us not to divide it by any means” ESJ: How much input did professional players have in the facilities available in the centre? VW: I’ll give you a very specific example. When you plan a space, you try to make it as efficient as possible. So, for example, this very room we’re sitting in was actually supposed to be two rooms. We had the devil.one’s CS:GO team ‘bootcamping’ in the facility, but it wasn’t really finished. They chose to spend their time relaxing in this room - which is a lot smaller than our largest training room - so I
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was curious about the specific reasons behind it. I asked why they chose this room instead of the bigger one, and they explained that if they were in a big room, they would be actually most of the time staring into monitors anyway. They loved how open this space was and categorically told us not to divide it by any means. They felt thrilled to come into this room where it’s a more relaxed, lounged style instead of sitting around the table to discuss things. We listened! Is the EPC open for business at it stands or is it more of a case-by-case basis as to who can stay and practice here? This facility as a business concept has certain fixed costs. We have to be realistic about the tenants of the facility. So, from a business point of
view, there are only a few organisations in the world right now which can afford to come to a boot camp of this scale. Most of the leading local newspapers, even the mainstream newspapers, have already informed local teams of the facility. On our side, though, we’ve been mostly reaching out to specific organisations. I believe we have really been successful with the organisations we’ve housed so far and have helped them fulfil their mission. ESJ: Has the centre created new jobs? VW: Lots of service jobs. I think the facility now employs around ten people full-time for cooking, cleaning, servicing the apartments, the concierge service for the teams, and so on. ESJ: What would you say has been the biggest challenge with the EPC?
INTERVIEW
VW: Everything has gone relatively smoothly, to be honest, but gaining the permits for the residential quarters was somewhat of a challenge. It’s really unique to this building that we’ve been able to obtain these permits because it’s both a hotel and an office. All the regulations with the fire department and so on were slightly challenging. ESJ: Was there anything that you wanted to include or build that you just couldn’t do execute? VW: Personally, I would like to have more training rooms in the facility because we have much more demand than we can currently to fulfil. The whole centre is designed to house four teams with their support staff comfortably. So four teams can have excellent training in the facility comfortably together at the same time. I wish we could have another training space, to be honest. ESJ: How has the centre been received by people in the surrounding area that are not aware or involved in esports? VW: We definitely don’t have any complaints. The area around us consists mostly of other office spaces or hotels because we are quite close to the airport from here. It’s only about 15 minutes to get to the airport. There is a very low residential presence on the other parts of the highway, so when it comes to the local authorities, we can also promote it by them, and I think we’ll see more of that. I think overall we definitely have made a positive impact on the community around us. ESJ: Is there any scope for specific sponsors and partners of different rooms in the centre? VW: We haven’t officially announced any of those just yet. We’ve been really busy getting the concept right before getting involved in promotions with other partners. Definitely, we have
upcoming showcases of technological partnerships and educational partnerships — especially with some of the largest universities in the country but also with many of the high schools here in the city. So it’ll be mostly technological and educational when it comes to partnerships in the near future. ESJ: Do you see the EPC as a potential chain that can be located in countries around the world? VW: I never think of a business as just a local thing; I always try to think in global terms. Thinking of this as a chain, we know already that there are similar a few facilities around the world which are being constructed.
We are in talks with most of them, and we have this idea to bring a chain forward, but I’m working on the values and the basic concept of such a chain. Our goal is to promote unified standards when it comes to giving the teams opportunities so they can have similar
expectations towards different parts of the chain. The service component here is extremely important; this is what we are trying now to define. We are also new to the business of hospitality despite having experts hired from the industry. Really, we are still at the very early stages of understanding hospitality in esports. ESJ: Do you find esports business conferences beneficial and fit for Kinguin, what do you get from them? VW: It’s very good that esports is finally getting the attention it deserves in terms of business opportunities — whether it’s to meet each other regularly
through different esport conference events or to meet newer parties that are trying to understand esports. Sharing these experiences together and with non-endemic brands is extremely important, I can’t imagine going forward without them. 39
Suzhou Inspired by the growth of esports globally, and the development of esports in Shanghai in particular, a number of Chinese cities are accelerating the development of their local scenes and Suzhou is no stranger to this trend.
Creating its very own esports hub AUTHOR Chenglu Zhang ď‚™ @MeepoChenglu
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INTERVIEW
S
uzhou, a major city located in the Southeastern Jiangsu Province of East China, is about 62 miles northwest of the Shanghai Esports Centre. Inspired by the growth of esports globally, and the development of esports in Shanghai in particular, a number of Chinese cities are accelerating the development of their local scenes and Suzhou is no stranger to this trend. To understand the development and the future of the local esports industry in Suzhou, we spoke to Yu Yuan, President of Suzhou Esports Association. The Esports Journal: Can you explain why so many Chinese cities are accelerating the development of local esports industries? Yu Yuan: China has become the most dynamic esports market in the world. According to a report by Tencent in June, the number of Chinese esports users is expected to exceed 350 million and the market revenue is the second highest in the world, after the United States. For such a dynamic and fast-growing market with such a huge number of potential customers, the best choice for us is to embrace it. Currently, the Chinese government has defined esports as an important component of digital sports and culture. Due to the Chinese government’s macro policy support for esports, multiple local governments have also published some supportive policies focused on
encouraging local enterprises to invest in the esports industry. In addition, China is still very much at the stage of formulating regulations for the esports industry, which means that it’s a market currently full of opportunities!
China Suzhou Esports Expo for three consecutive years. We have combined international esports tournaments with local culture and tourism to show our city to global esports enthusiasts.
ESJ: Can you tell us how Suzhou is developing its local esports industry? YY: We established Suzhou Esports Association under the guidance of the Suzhou Sports Bureau and have always promoted esports industry energetically. Various famous esports events have been organized successfully in Suzhou, including World Cyber Games (WCG) in 2012 & 2013, National Electronic Sports Tournament (NEST) in 2014, Tai Lake Esports Invitational (TEI) in 2017, and World Electronic Sports Games (WESG) China Finals in 2019. To show esports to the public and provide a platform for esports practitioners to exchange views, Suzhou Esports Association has held the 41
INTERVIEW
In the meantime we’ve built an esports industrial park called TAI PARK in cooperation with Suzhou Wuzhong Economic Development Zone, a local economic and technological development zone. TAI PARK can be considered as a combination of the cultural industry, sports industry, technology industry, and media industry. It integrates entertainment with technology.. Moreover, it aims to create a positive ecosystem for the local esports industry - we are trying to attract, encourage, and support esports start-ups to launch their business in this industrial park. ESJ: What are the future plans for esports in Suzhou? YY: In order to expand the ecology and contents of the esports industrial park continuously, we will attract more global esports companies to enter the industrial park and provide advanced and comprehensive facilities for them to run their business.
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The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of the People’s Republic of China published New Occupation - Analysis Report on the Current Situation of Esports Employment in June. The report pointed out that China has become the most influential and promising esports market in the world. At the same time, the demand for high-level, high-standard, high-quality esports players, team coaches, and other related positions has become more and more urgent.
ESJ: What do you think the future will look like for the esports industry? YY: The future development of esports will be an ecological coexistence of globalisation and localisation. More and more esports games will be organized based on the concept of internationalisation. For example, Dota 2, League of Legends, and Overwatch all have established their own global league systems. It is believed that the esports rivalry between nations will be the most attractive event in esports.
Therefore, we will focus on finding colleges and potential partners to launch our esports education plan. We hope to activate the creativity of Suzhou’s esports community and cultivate more talent for the local esports industry through educational projects. Furthermore, we will actively communicate with brother esports associations across the country, especially in the Yangtze River Delta region. We will build the Yangtze River Delta esports integration and carry out cross-regional esports cooperation in the future.
Meanwhile, with the launch of a home and away game system in the esports world, more and more esports venues will be established and this kind of esports regionalisation will attract more local residents to take root in the local esports teams. Besides, local esports teams will also become business cards for the city and link residents to the city.
TEAMS
Isurus Gaming roster: Julieta “khizha” Grillia, Evelin “chjna” Acuña, Florencia “Flossie” Gaitán, Irene “lady” Giménez and Sol “solxiz” Checa
Women in esports Isurus Gaming
Regardless of gender, you can be a good player. An interview with Isurus Gaming. AUTHOR Pablo Monti @PabloMMonti
surus Gaming is one of the biggest organisations in LatAm and, besides having the best League of Legends team in the region alongside a top male CS:GO team, it also has a highly competitive female CS:GO team. But what is it like being a woman in esports in LatAm?
I
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The goal of this article is to address the current state of female competitive gaming in Latin America. With this in mind, we focus here on the Argentine organisation Isurus Gaming. Known as “The Shark”, their League of Legends team won the second split of Liga Latinoamerica and qualified for Worlds 2019. Their male Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team is based in Brazil
and is one of the best teams of the country. “We are very proud of what we are doing and what we have accomplished. It is such a massive work that is hard to explain it”, says Isurus’ CEO, Facundo “Kala” Calabro. The organisation’s Sports Director, Juan Cyterszpiler, adds that “we always innovate and we keep targeting excellence and professionalism.
TEAMS
We love to face new challenges and we feel comfortable doing so”. They faced a new challenge one and a half years ago when Isurus Gaming launched their female CS:GO team. “We wanted to help female CS:GO to grow so it can reduce the gap with male CS:GO” says Calabro. Regarding sponsorship, “Kala” notes that “brands are starting to pay more attention to women in esports and we want to increase its popularity. Our teams compete in several tournaments in Brazil”.
were always left aside and we started to feel without motivation to play. Luckily, new tournaments appeared and a lot of women headed back to the servers”. It is clear that there are a lot more men than women playing video games at a competitive level, but the success of organisations, such as Isurus Gaming,
Juan Cyterszpiler Sports Director
illustrates the growing market for female-led competitive gaming in LatAm. Khizha adds that “if you work hard you can achieve your goals, and ours is to play at an international tournament”. Chjna goes even further: “my goal is to be the best team in the world and represent Argentina everywhere”.
Facundo “Kala” Calabro CEO
Julieta “khizha” Grillia, Evelin “chjna” Acuña, Florencia “Flossie” Gaitán, Irene “lady” Giménez and Sol “solxiz” Checa make up Isurus’ roster. The team has already won several tournaments in Brazil and is one of the top female teams in the entirety of LatAm. “Playing with Isurus helped a lot to kickstart our way into professionalism as players and to see esports as a job. We realised that our goal was to become a top team in LatAm and that it wasn’t going to be easy. The organisation was crucial to reach that goal” says khizha, team’s captain. Chjna explains that “Isurus made it possible for us to participate in more tournaments since we were invited and also because we could afford to travel and play the main events”. Women in gaming and esports have been struggling with discrimination for years. Almost every female player has experienced it, and it remains rare to see a male team with a woman on it. “It doesn’t bother me that we had to gather together a female team. Everyone that has dedication, responsibility and patience to train and compete can succeed. You can play good being a man or a woman” says Grillia. The creation of female tournaments helped girls to keep playing. Acuña explains that “we
Julieta “khizha” Grillia Isurus Gaming captain
Evelin “chjna” Acuña
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MOSTLY
MOSTLY
MOSTLY
THE cool kid
THE FAN FAVORITE
Check out on hurrah.gg: “Wildest Fans”
Check out on hurrah.gg: “When Youtubers become Casters” for Ubisoft
Esports is today what rock’n’roll was in the ‘50s, and your brand wants in. When you show up to the party, you blow people’s minds—like a minefield, but fun!
Everything your brand does is for the community. Whether it’s through influencers or experiences, you’re all about adding value to fans to generate brand loyalty.
Creative community activations
Influencer activations & offline experiences
for Nestlé (LION Cereals)
MOSTLY
THE Tactician An ad campaign that fits like a glove with your brand platform Esports needs to be in your marketing mix, but as part of a larger constellation of existing brand messages and goals. Once you’re in, you’re here for the long haul.
Check out on hurrah.gg: “Esports Moments” for Coca-Cola & Domino’s
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THE supporter Sponsorship & content creation Using the brand equity of endemic actors is the safest way to penetrate the space when you’re new. Choose the right allies, and activate them based on clear benchmarks.
Check out on hurrah.gg our long-term work with OMEN by HP
What type of esports marketing is made for you?
One answer per question only. Choose wisely and go with your gut! Figuring out your next marketing move in esports? Wonder no more. Grab the nearest pencil and take this 5-minute quiz created by esports ad agency Hurrah for a glimpse of your glorious future.
What is your brand’s relationship to esports?
Not our first rodeo. We’re ready for our next big move
The first time you experienced esports, you thought...
We’ve dabbled or are ready to enter, but seek an added value
OMG. THIS IS SO COOL. We need to get involved!
We know esports, but could use a tutorial
I don’t get it, but it feels kinda contagious
Wait… what’s esports? Total newbie
Ahh, this is where the kids are hiding I haven’t been to an esports event yet. Any recos?
How risky does your brand play?
It’s a no-go without a clear ROI We like to play safe, but are ready for a change Data can convince us to take calculated risks KPIs can come later. We’re looking for creative flair
Your campaign doesn’t go as planned. How does your team react?
We take quick action & don’t leave the community hanging Memes on Twitter… memes always do the job
*Rubs hands together* Time for round two We consult with partners and customers to understand what happened, and adapt
What does team-building look like in your company?
Drunk karaoke
If your brand was part of an esports team, it would be...
Escape game! Team BBQ in the park
The pro-player with 1M followers on Instagram
Country retreat
The coach The MVP The team’s No. 1 fan
Your brand is more into making...
Branded video content Offline experiences
What’s your marketing sweet spot?
Interactive campaigns
Empowering others
“Snackable” social media posts
Generating engagement Creating “World’s First” creative campaigns
How big of a splash does your brand like to make?
Building brand awareness
Go big or go home Our commitment will pay off in the long term We’re just testing the waters; no need for a splash We want to be to esports fans what Heineken is to football soccer fans (we say football in France; deal with it)
What’s your take on the results? Let’s talk about them. Shoot a WhatsApp to your contacts at Hurrah, the premiere ad agency for esports and gaming:
CEO
Mathieu Lacrouts (00336 32 39 79 57) He likes sweet drinks.
CCO Angela Natividad (00336 32 39 79 57)
She’ll ask weird questions.
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interview
Mark Balch
Bayes Esports Mark is an esport maven and has been in the betting industry for over a decade. At Bayes his expertise will drive the vision behind the company’s products, and he will be the go-to guy for those interested in both co-operations and partnerships. ark is an esport maven and has been in the betting industry for over a decade. At Bayes his expertise will drive the vision behind our products and be the go-to guy for cooperations and partnerships.
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The Esports Journal: You are a new company created by two big industry players – DOJO Madness and Sportradar. It must all be very new to you, but do you already have a clear purpose and strategy about your future growth and expansion? Mark Balch: Bayes provides media customers, betting companies, esports organizers and more with reliable data solutions, analytics, probabilities and visualizations – backed up by our very own machine learning algorithms. We want to be the One-Stop-Shop for Esports data – for right holders (tournament organisers), data
Mark Balch Head of Product & Partnerships
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consumers (bookmakers, media) and service providers. ESJ: The data distribution deal with Riot Games is certainly a landmark achievement. How do you think access to more data would help us regular fans, i.e. the people who tune in to watch for the sake of pleasure? MB:Bayes is transforming raw game data from League of Legends esports competitions into a common format and delivering them to data consumers. This partnership will revolutionise access to League of Legends esports data, enabling the community, betting companies and third-party operators to create a wide array of services and products, bolstering the sport ecosystem. ESJ: We don’t have the hard evidence to back the claim, but our impression is that esports betting doesn’t generate as much profit to sportsbooks. How do you feel about this
and do you see a growth trajectory where the wagers placed on esports could one day beat mainstream sports competitions, in terms of total sports handle that is. MB: Economically, esports runs off the promise of growth, just like many other industries. While it is obvious to say that esports cannot match traditional sport, 20 years ago it practically did not exist and is now a thriving multi-billion dollar industry. We strongly believe in the future of esports and competitive video games, and as the gaming population ages, we gain access to more wealth and better paying jobs, which will in turn increase the volume and profitability of the industry and especially betting. At Bayes, we want to be part of the solution to the data problems. Delayed livestream collection, fragmented exclusivity, latency issues, lack of transparency and quality all hold back the esports betting product. We see a future where betting companies and other businesses can create awesome new products and experiences.
interview
ESJ: Do you see mobile esports growing as popular as – for a want of a better word – ‘regular esports’ here the West, to use another broad term. Or, perhaps, it’s more a matter of what works in different regions, i.e. mobile competitive video gaming is all the rage in Asia, think Honor of Kings, but not necessarily in the United States, for example. MB: Fundamentally esports is the result of good video games, and the competitive human spirit. Consoles, PCs and Mobiles are simply tools that are available. Some parts of the world have access to different tools, mobiles are much easier to access in Asia especially, therefore have far greater potential – in both the video game and esports industry. The west has grown up with PCs, and it shows no sign of being taken over by mobile esports, so I believe there will be some regional divergence. This is very common with traditional sport; Basketball, Aussie Rules, Rugby, Cricket, Ping Pong are all sports which see success in different countries and regions for different reasons. ESJ: How far are we from a world in which we see an endemic esports sportsbook rival a mainstream sportsbook in terms of pure numbers? Is this even a realistic statement to make? MB: Firstly, I am not sure it matters. We should not measure our success by how close or far we are from traditional sports numbers – is Twitter not successful because it is not as big as Facebook? Esports will be successful, but until we live in a world where everybody has grown up playing games their whole lives (maybe 15-20 years from now), sport will have wider appeal in the foreseeable future.
wagers? Do you think data providers also have the moral and legal obligations to help younger audiences stay clear of any betting processes before the legal age? MB: I believe there is no difference to sport. Kids also love football, why would that not also invite a young audience to bet? Betting companies and casinos are on the shirts of their favourite players in the Premier league. Why is this an esports only problem? There are discussions taking place right now about regulating betting players who are under 18 in some jurisdictions. We and the betting industry have a duty of care to ensure that minors are not placing bets, and fraudulent activity is brought to attention. Otherwise everyone loses, therefore it is in everyone’s interest that we create a healthy and legal ecosystem. ESJ: Do you see Bayes tying up more partnerships in future and what publishers – if you are allowed to disclose this information – do you have on your mind? MB: Our negotiations are very promising. Of course, we will keep you informed. ESJ: What synergies do you want to achieve with your new and future partners? MB: We want to build relationships and technologies which solve some of the distribution problems of the esports industry. Publishers, teams and tournament organisers have valuable information about matches, players and events that they need to distribute
to their fans. Right now this is a very vague and fragmented process which is entirely different for each game title. We want to build better pipelines and write standards that will ensure that media, endemic and non-endemic alike can get all the information they need as fast and reliably as possible and at the same time give tools to the organising side which help administer their operations. ESJ: Can you share with us one of your boldest predictions about the future of the esports industry? MB: Esports is a sub-culture of the video game industry. If you look at the history of video games, the market crashed in 1983 and destroyed a lot of hope for the future. Now it is the biggest entertainment industry on earth, bigger than the box office and music combined. We see a future where new and exciting video games create their own esports culture and we see dozens of games which have an esports scene the size of Counter-strike, Dota and League of Legends are now. Video games are fundamentally fluid and ever changing, I see no reason to think that esports will be any different, so we are building to be equally flexible. ESJ: After all the hard work, what are the esports titles that people play around Bayes’ HQ? We have had big discussions within the team. I’m a League of Legends fan, but the Dota 2 and Overwatch groups are also very strong. Not always easy for me We even have a few who are looking forward to the new release of World of Warcraft Classic!
ESJ: Do you feel that esports invite a rather young audience to place Meet the Bayes team, from left to right Mark Balch, Martin Dachselt, Sven Lund, Wolfgang Siebert
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regulation
ESIC
The Case for (Some) Regulation in Esports Esports Integrity Coalition @ESIC_Official
ay 2019: One of the major differences between esports and traditional sports is the lack of a governing body or even a sense of a “centre” to the industry. Also, of course, the games are owned by different companies with different philosophies, ideas and resources and these companies are, fundamentally, in commercial competition with each other. Consequently, it is widely felt within esports that an overarching governing body is not necessary and, in fact, best avoided if the traditional sports models we’ve witnessed over the years is any example – bloated, top heavy, patronising and corrupt as many of them appear to be. Esports companies, particularly the pub/devs are reluctant to cede authority to any external body and why would they?
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Unfortunately, this free-for-all has some distinct disadvantages; chief amongst which is the complete lack of agreed or implemented standards across key areas of common interest to the esports community. More importantly, these are key areas to some very important and powerful external stakeholders beyond the esports community - non-endemic sponsors, broadcasters, politicians and civil society.
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regulation
We’re talking primarily about the three interconnected areas of concern for any esports organisation; whether it’s 50 people playing and watching Madden in a Florida club or 20,000 people watching the final of IEM Katowice. These common concerns are: 1) Youth Protection – the esports community skews young and lives online where abuse is rampant. 2) Live Event Safety – what could possibly go wrong, right? 3) Integrity – cheating to win or cheating to lose – match-fixing. In these three areas there ought to be agreed objective, externally monitored standards that apply across the industry. Obviously, the standards would need to be tiered to take account of the difference between online and LAN events, large and small and different game communities based on objective risk assessments. It is the absence of these standards currently that is particularly concerning. First, because they’re a good idea in themselves, but, second, because their absence is increasingly drawing the (unwelcome) attention of politicians and administrators to esports and what they see will not please them. There is, of course, a third reason why the major industry players should be considering getting together and developing a credible form of selfregulation and that is to create barriers to entry for incompetent or under-resourced new entrants to the market. This is valid because, currently, the esports industry is referred to often by outsiders as the “wild west”. This serves no-one well, but it is constantly reinforced by poor attempts to join the scene with small, badly run events that then run into problems with prize money, bad sponsorship activations and technical foul-ups which undermine the credibility of the whole industry. I would hope esports would consider ESIC the logical and best solution to the 3rd
common problem we’ve set out above. It is where we operate and where common solutions have been implemented by all of our members and can easily be adopted by everyone else. We don’t have the expertise to deal with Youth Protection or Live Event Safety, but that expertise can be easily acquired if we were correctly resourced by the industry. On the Integrity front, the threat is very real and getting worse. We recently collated the suspicious betting alerts received
already been played, but is broadcast “as live” by the tournament organiser without that TO clarifying to the community that the match has already been played – a common occurrence in esports and an indication of the naivety of the esports industry with regard to betting on esports), has fixed the match or has heard about a fix. ESIC is probably seeing less than 10% of the actual fixes in esports due to the underground nature of much of esports betting, primarily in China and the USA and betting on esports in the USA is going to grow rapidly since the repeal of PASPA Football spends millions of dollars on integrity efforts globally every year. Tennis just spent in excess of $20m reviewing its Integrity efforts and has an annual budget of more than $3m. Esports spends less than $250,000.00 pa collectively – it is simply not enough.
from our betting operator, regulator and monitoring services members’ network during 2018. The figures are alarming and should constitute a loud wake up call to the esports industry; especially pub/devs. Suspicious Betting Alerts in 2018: 74 (compared to 39 in 2017) DOTA2: 32 (16 in 2017) CS:GO: 20 (17 in 2017) Warcraft3: 11 (1 in 2017) Starcraft2: 4 The rest 7 Not every suspicious bet alert means a match was fixed or that a fix was attempted. Sometimes there are rational explanations for the betting patterns that triggered the alert. ESIC has discounted those alerts where there was an immediate obvious explanation that was not an integrity threat. Suspicious bets in sports betting generally indicate that the bettor has inside knowledge, already knows the outcome (in instances where the relevant match has
It is time for each part of the esports industry to acknowledge that it cannot isolate itself in its own world without consequence or recognising its place in the overall ecosystem A fragmented industry will never perform as well as an organised one. It’s time for the powers that be to lock themselves in a room and decide whether they want to make their own rules or have rules made for them by unsympathetic politicians and bureaucrats. For further information about ESIC, please contact: Ian Smith, Integrity Commissioner ian@esportsintegrity.com Phone: +44 (0)7798698201 Website: www.esportintegrity.com Twitter: @ESIC_Official The Esports Integrity Coalition (ESIC) was established in 2016 to take responsibility for disruption, prevention, investigation and prosecution of all forms of cheating in esports, including, but not limited to, match manipulation and doping.
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We were established in 2016 to take responsibility for disruption, prevention, investigation and prosecution of all forms of cheating in esports, including, but not limited to, match manipulation and doping.
The esports Integrity Coalition works with esports stakeholders to protect the integrity of esports competition. We are a not-for-profit members’ association and we can help you, whether you’re a tournament organiser, game developer, esports league or betting operator offering esports – join us! 54
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Leo De Biase BBL Founding Partner and ESL Brazil’s CEO
YES: We have esports in Brazil
W
ith 3.5 billion fans across several continents,football is the most popular sport in the world.
Whilst it remains some way behind this, esports is fast making moves. In 2018 56
alone, esports engaged more than 395 million viewers globally. This number is expected to rise to 456 million by 2019. According to data and analytics firm Newzoo, revenues are expected to total US$1.7 billion by 2021. As a part of this growth trajectory, the
Latin American market will play a significant role, and within LATAM, Brazil is undoubtedly the leading light. Currently, Brazil is the third largest country when it comes to esports consumption worldwide, behind only China and the USA. The country has 75.7 million gamers, with 18 million of them being classified as esports viewers. In 2018, the Brazilian gaming market generated revenues of over US$ 1.5 billion. With such significant growth, it is no wonder that many companies are looking for ways to connect to this audience, but it is clear too that in order to fully capitalise on this potential, proper guidance is necessary. After all, this market is still new and brands may tread a bit carefully when navigating these new waters. However, the potential rewards that
brands
section), a pizza oven and social space dedicated to the esports experience. BBL’s headquarters, nicknamed BBLair by the staff, has already hosted major tournaments, such as the Valor of Series regional finals, the finale of the LA League CS:GO, and the Superliga ABCDE Championship.
BBL Arena
await those successful in reaching ‘the promised land’ are expected to be fully worth the effort. “Companies no longer know how to talk to millennials. TV no longer talks to them and movies are not interactive enough. This generation are heavy users of AdBlock, which makes it even more challenging to impact them. At BBL we have created innovative solutions with differentiated formats that make that impact possible - even if they are using AdBlock”, explains Leo DeBiase, BBL Founding Partner and ESL Brazil’s CEO. It was precisely for this reason that BBL came into being. To bridge this gap between advertisers and their target demographics. Brands are able to reach their target audience through leagues, tournaments, content channels, events and influencers, all facilitated by BBL. BBL holds the exclusive ESL license for Brazil and produces all of its shows and content for local audiences. In November 2018, BBL inaugurated its new headquarters in São Paulo. This includes a total of 1,600 square meters of space, made up of six studios, a broadcast control room, a 300-person arena (including a VIP
Jovem Pan Radio (“JPR”), the largest radio station group in Brazil, is BBL’s partner. Not only does JPR have a huge presence in radio, it also has a large internet footprint due to its Youtube channel, with more than 100 million views. BBL and JPR together bring the production and transmission of radio and internet programs focused on esports, interviews, analytical and didactic content, humorous sketches, selections of best and worst plays, and much more.
Case Study The Success of Superliga Superliga ABCDE, a League of Legends tournament, brings together the most prominent teams in the Brazilian scene for a fun, fan-focused and lighthearted experience. Superliga was created as a gift to the community which supports League of Legends. They get the super competitive CBLOL as their National Championship and Superliga as their lighthearted, meme maker; in essence the fun championship which works as an official off-season tournament. The strength of this approach was validated by partnerships with NET (largest Brazil ISP), Burger King and Uber Eats. BBL worked with Burger King and Uber Eats to create an activation called “Invasão do Zeva” (“Zeva’s Invasion”). Nothing like this activation had ever been seen before in the Brazilian gaming market. Inspired by old TV shows and adapted for an esports approach and audience, the idea was a perfect fit for the brands.
“The Burger King / Uber Eats activation with Zeva (an esports narrator in Superliga) was a success and generated a lot of impact in the community. In fact, it had such an impact that it even increased sales”, says Leo De Biase. “By monitoring social media, we have seen that the championship’s audience started to consume Burger King more often especially while watching the games and/or the livestream of the influencer surprised by Zeva.” This case is just one example of the creativity allowed by esports and brought into being by BBL.
The future of the Brazilian market Brazil is known for dedicated and passionate fans and this is also true in esports. A great example of this was ESL One BH (in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais) in June 2018. Even though the championship started on the same day the Brazilian National Squad debuted in the World Cup, almost 15,000 people went to Mineirinho stadium, watched matches, cheered and showed their passion for the game. The Brazilian audience in esports is projected to surpass 30 million people by 2020, according to Newzoo. In terms of a battle for future audience, and winning hearts, minds and adoring fans, the ball is seemingly very much in esports’ court. According, once again, to Newzoo, there are currently more young Brazilians aged 10 to 20 years old, interested in esports than there are in football. This is significant indeed for a nation known worldwide for its love of football, and says it all about why companies and stakeholders in the esports space would be foolish to overlook the largest nation in LATAM and South America. 57
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