When Bruce Stein looked at the eSports space over a year ago along with fellow partner and Golden State Warriors owner Peter Guber, the viewership numbers they saw were “truly breathtaking,” especially in the college world. It was just one of the reasons why the pair decided to venture further into eSports last fall, with the opportunities there to not only partner with a team but also build companies that didn’t necessarily exist yet, according to Stein.
A long-time executive with experience in consumer product and technology companies, Stein is now the operating Chief Executive Officer of aXiomatic, the new eSports ownership group and platform formed last September by Guber, Los Angeles Dodgers part owner Magic Johnson and Ted Leonsis, Chief Executive Officer of Monumental Sports and Entertainment.
“Money is sometimes a commodity. Finding people you can work collaboratively work with is sometimes more difficult to find,” said Stein, who added that this isn’t meant to be a “passive investment” for anyone involved, which includes more than 30 senior sports and entertainment executives and companies. “This isn’t as much an investment with a specific destination, it’s a journey.”
The first step was partnering with a team, and one that caught the group’s attention was Team Liquid and its Co-CEOs Victor Goossens and Steve Arhancet, so much so that aXiomatic acquired a controlling interest in the team in September.
“Anytime you get into a new venture, success is probably 90 percent based on the team and 10 percent based on the idea,” Stein said.
“(Goossens and Arhancet) were two people who had been very diligent and thoughtful about the way they had been building out their team franchise. They were very early getting into the space, which showed us that they had a nose where opportunity existed.
“We have to take our lead from the gaming audience and see where applications make sense. That’s why Steve and Victor are part of our group. They help keep us focused on what is and what isn’t authentic to the space. I think each management group will need that so they’re not trying to shove square pegs into round holes.”
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As aXiomatic becomes more formalized alongside Team Liquid, Stein said that there will be a forthcoming announcement during the first quarter of 2017 around a consumer products group that is being created.
Additionally, an intellectual property arm will be part of the larger aXiomatic organization, as Stein explained without going into specific details. He also said aXiomatic will look to serve underserved population segments such as women, minorities and young kids.
“Our mission isn’t to own everything. Some areas we’ll invest or we’ll own. … We may just decide on M&A activity that has more significance,” Stein said. “It’s still so early that a lot of that hasn’t been mapped out besides all of the investors we have on board who are excited for this ride.”
Over the next 12 months, Stein said he and the investor group are closely following a number of areas, including which publishers will end up franchising games in addition to player compensation models, especially given the new wave of money being invested into the sport.
“It’s going to be interesting to see how audience experiences evolve as well,” Stein said. “Twitch is the destination where most of the viewership goes, but there’s also more and more live events. There’s going to have to be some strategic direction brought to how do we distribute that content to fans and how many events are the right number of events for teams to attend. These are all evolutionary questions that would come along with a new sport.”