AUSTIN, Texas — It has been nearly 18 months since Sacramento Kings co-owner Andy Miller co-founded NRG eSports, an organization which currently fields players and teams across seven titles, including Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Rocket League and Overwatch.
Miller was joined by co-founder and Sacramento Kings co-owner Mark Mastrov along with notable athletes Alex Rodriguez, Shaquille O’Neal and Jimmy Rollins as investors. The launch of NRG eSports came at the onset of traditional sports owners and athletes entering eSports, which now includes ownership groups purchasing eSports teams, the Houston Rockets having an in-house eSports expert, NBA teams like the Philadelphia 76ers and Miami Heat investing in the space and NBA players such as Boston Celtics forward Jonas Jerebko purchase a franchise, too.
The Kings’ Miller spoke this past weekend at the annual South by Southwest Conference on a panel titled, “When eSports Win, Cities Win” Some soundbites from his panel:
On the economic impact of eSports and forecasting/trends to watch over the next five years…
Just to see the size of the audience, the growth of the audience and the desire of fans to interact with teams and players doesn’t exist right now except online…Fans want to be a part of it. There’s a whole ecosystem around it. I look at our numbers now at NRG. We’re about a year and a half old, and we have a lot of star power when it comes to some owners. I can compare that to our audience with the Kings, and it’s 20 to 30 years younger. It’s all day, every day, whenever you want to turn on anything with NRG and our players’ channels. There’s something on probably 20 to 22 hours every single day. There’s hundreds of thousands and millions of people a week who watch us, which is way more than most NBA teams.
On what will it take to have eSports fans, who are digital natives, to attend events in person…
They’re dying to do that right now. Every one of these Major tournaments sells out in a matter of minutes. … We have players who have 20,000, 30,000 concurrent people watching when they stream on Twitch. Guaranteed those same fans would love to watch them in person, interact with them — that’s a community. eSports is your community. Instead of in high school where you have the jocks and the burnouts and the drama kids now you have the League of Legends kids, the FIFA kids, the NBA 2K kids. They want to spend time with each other.
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On eSports culture, which is still male-dominated and can be racist and sexist at times…
I think the culture of gaming has been inherently male-dominated. It’s becoming more and more equal, especially around live events. … We have a woman, Hafu, who is arguably the most popular female player out there and doesn’t play a team game, she plays Hearthstone. She’s a positive role model, she’s great. She has a pretty good size following, so you can do it. It can be done. There are certain communities that are way more masculine than others and way more troubled when it comes to commenting. The reason why the label gets attached on some level, depending on the game and community, there’s an unprecedented level of interactivity. … It’s young, and everyone thinks they can be a player, which is one of the great things about eSports and everyone thinks they know what they’re doing better than the pros. They can talk right to them. It’s hard if you’re 19 years old, and you’re up playing a pro sport for the first time, and you’re doing your thing. Then you have a thousand people telling you that you’re amazing and you suck at the same time. It’s a lot to digest.
On all of the investment money being directed towards eSports over the past 12-18 months and how to navigate it…
It’s challenging. There’s a lot of venture money, and everyone is saying, ‘Oh my gosh, there is this giant audience.’ … On the team side, there’s big audiences but not big revenue. The ecosystem around it is pretty big. I can tell you that we have a startup a week saying, ‘Hey, why don’t you try this chat bot? Or ‘Hey, why don’t you try this new thing for Twitch?’ ‘Hey, can you look at our virtual reality setup?’ There’s no doubt they want to reach this millennial audience who has disposable income.
On how the eSports industry is combatting corporate marketers who normally spend marketing and advertising dollars around traditional sports …
They all get it that, ‘Hey I can see it on ELEAGUE on Turner, it’s not just my kid watching it on Twitch in the basement anymore.’ Some of the issues with the type of behavior and the communities. A lot of games have a foreign viewer base. If you want to market your current product in North America, and most of the viewership is in Russia, then that’s not going to help you. Overwhelming male but it’s changing. Everything is changing in its favor, and it’s only a matter of time. … You now have dozens of teams in Europe who all picked up FIFA teams, the 76ers bought two teams, the Miami Heat got involved, Delaware North with the Boston Bruins — it’s the maturation just like any other type of industry. You have a million little teams run by players then it got a little more sophisticated with investment money coming in. You have this giant audience. Twitch continues to innovate, and Facebook and others are going live. Now you’re like, ‘OK, I’m a forward thinking brand, and I want to get in front of millennials who have money. Where do I go? OK, but how do I go? What are the next steps?’”