Overwatch League, Schuster Smith, Andy discussed on The Business of Esports
Automatic TRANSCRIPT
More interesting is less the price pool and more who's competing in the market. I think there is a push and pull and attention between competitive and we saw this at Overwatch league for sure. Competitive, not integrity, but I would say competitive concerns and optimization. And those who had audience and could actually bring in views and have personalities people wanted to follow. I thought we were oftentimes putting the attention on the wrong things like price. And not concentrating enough on the personalities that a we were trying to build, or B were already out there, and we could go on. It feels anecdotally anecdotally at least to me like there's no difference these days between a $1 million price pool or a $3 million price Bill, right? Like there's sort of this point where it's big enough that it gets a lot of attention and a lot of eyeballs and there's probably a huge number that gets more attention, right? Like call it 25 million plus where now it's a major event that mainstream media covers even. But everything sort of in between that one in 25 sort of doesn't really matter, right? If it's one or it's four or 6, it doesn't seem to have a huge effect on the audience. Andy, I'm curious, you hinted at this idea that sub nation is doing a league of its own. I don't know how much you can talk about it or say about it. But I'd love a little bit of insight there in terms of what are you guys sort of bring to the table that you think is unique or that learnings you've taken from your time, for example, at Overwatch league, either things you're doing or not doing as a consequence. Sure. So to tease a little bit about what we're building, it's something really. So I mentioned that that focus on personality that focus on individual players. Versus focus on the competitive whole, we're building something around pro athletes as a gaming as an eSports and a gaming platform and there's a lot of athletes out there who want to get into eSports. Want to get into competitive gaming, have tried, but have found it incredibly difficult. It's not just like a guy like ocho Cinco, right? To use to use that or even juju Schuster Smith. Shuster, she was just about I always mess that up. You can just flip on Twitch, but to which account in that everybody from their IG is going to migrate over. They're finding it difficult. And I think what we're seeing as the opportunity is to create a container to create a platform for them in which we are giving them a kind of a turnkey solution. At the very basis level. But B also providing a place where audience is starting to aggregate and already is. So while their whole audience has been coming there, there are plenty of people who are already into it, are into this intersection of professional sports and eSports, if you will. And receptive to what they're offering and bringing to the team. Yeah, what else can I go ahead? No, I'm curious, because in your own models in your own sort of internal discussions, how much of a traditional athletes fan base do you think will come over to whatever they're doing on the eSports side? Like, is it 80%? Is it 50% or is it 5%? I'm curious and I don't know if you have that data Andy, but sort of roughly or anecdotally at least. I don't have specific data, but I can tell you that, yes, I believe it's closer to, I wouldn't say 5%, you know, I'm an optimist, but I don't think it's in the 80% range. I don't even think it's in the 50% range. I think it is closer to call it between ten and 20%. I think that's a safe assumption. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's, I mean, there's a few reasons for that. Now, not really audience or gaming related. If you look at like a social account, for instance, think about the amount of users there that are junk users, first of all. And are not following you into any endeavor. But then in addition to that, yeah, the people that are following you in a fan of you and also a big fan of eSports and video games is a smaller subset naturally. And I think that the last part of that is the challenge in getting somebody to migrate over, no matter who you are, even if Tom Brady were to turn on an eSports or tomorrow. It'd be a big deal. I'm sure they'd get a lot of people, but there's so much noise out there. And so much happening, you really have one shot and if you miss it, it can be really hard to make a big deal and get people over there. I think migration is a challenge. To other platforms. And what is the pitch to the athletes? What are they buying into? Is it the idea that this is going to expand their fan base? Is it the idea that it's just something cool for them to do in the off season? What is the pitch to the athletes themselves? Yeah, so I think athletes think about gaming in a few different ways. And that tailors the pitch, obviously. So in one way to your point, yeah, sometimes it is something just that they like to do. That they think it's cool. They're competitors, right? These are guys that are used to performing at a high level, so they're doing it. They say, if I'm doing this, I might as well stream it. I want to make it worth it. I want to do it at a certain level. So I think there's guys who just love the game and want to do it like that. There's also a number of guys that see this. And this is, I think this is really savvy. See gaming as one of those ways in which they can diversify their brand and give themselves something that not only offers other engagement and commercialization opportunities around their personal brand, separate from their team, but also sets them up post competition. For when they're not competitors anymore, right? They get injured or they just retire. Or they kind of fade out of the competitive spot pipe. They're setting themselves up for the future. And I think that's really smart. Jimmy I don't know if you had anything else on this. I wanted to switch gears to different I feel like we could have a whole episode just on this east coast element, honestly, 'cause we didn't really even scratch the wow and hearthstone that you had mentioned before. Well, I'm going to come back to that actually. I just want to get on the marvel has bro Mattel, I think what's so cool about some of those experiences is it all revolves around interesting IP, right? Whether it was marvel or Star Wars or whatever the nerf, like big IP brands halo, things that you worked on in a context that wasn't actually gaming, right?.