Esports - The Brand Opportunity.

[Music] I think I butchered your name of sorry so I'm indeed Celine like home I come from Jinxy sporty jinks operates the largest TV network dedicated to eSports in the world and I don't have we also operate an online platform an online magazine dedicated to eSports natives and studios a production company specialized in create in the creation of video content for brands involved or willing to be involved around eSports so foreign will be produced all the video content for OG lately someone I think that he'd mentioned that a few panels

ago but a few years ago I was in an arena with 25,000 people I think here in the UK and all these people were chanting the DHL name like popularly DHA DHA DHA I was in the arena three hundred thousand people were also watching this from home and if you wonder what this even was it wasn't some sort of award for logistic company or it wasn't a rock band called DHL it was actually the ESL one evening gam now one of the most watched dota2 event I think in the world so DHS decided to sponsor this event and one might wonder why the market leader in logistics decided to sponsor an eSports event and I would like to show you one of the activations there hey guys welcome back to ESL one Birmingham now you might have remembered I did a little bit of work for DHL before delivering some presents to our

wonderful pro players here but you know we have to deliver some stuff to the other people the I can't do this alone but like any true hero I always have somebody that can help me and that would be my little courier here my little helper Effie but walking is something not a lot of people do at these events we like to sit but Effie bought he's a courier he's made to move he's gonna bring me my stuff he is bringing you stuff we're having a little quiz show right now I'm gonna ask you don't a trivia question if you get a right Effie fought well let you have something from his beautiful swag bag let's see if you are good enough for him listen to me if you don't like this kid you don't have to give him anything all right he's wearing a team secret shirt he's not very trustworthy but if he's what you want go for it all right one more chance now if it's not like everyone knows except for me so you've chosen pretty badly oh he's nervous there might be a bounty hunter around here or something he's pretty afraid come my little son so what is your name Jesse Jesse welcome it to the quiz show would that be but would it

make it everybody he's very cute how many times has RTZ joined evil geniuses add cakes I think it joined it twice but I mean and got kick once and left once more people to help in this grand world of Birmingham [Applause] alright well thank you so much happy but we gave out some good prizes I think you're a great courier and you just spread and love on time directly and efficiently just like DHL a normal everyday life maybe one day you guys will get to be happy bought by yourselves but for this event he's gonna be with me for the rest of the time my son so the video is quite cool and

the activation was but the question is why did DHL choose to invest in eSports and that did actually work because something we hire at least hear a lot is that eSports is an ish how big unaged needs to become to stop being an ish because is is it really that small and actually it really isn't actually in 2019 news ooh the data research company estimated that there were more than 200 million is for introduced across the world while 1.7 billion people were aware of eSports interestingly the market grew by 12 percent last year to which 433 million viewers across the globe and the segment with the highest growth was among the eSports enthusiasts it is the watch professional eSports more than once a month so as you can see the audience is

already big it's still growing this is clear and if the opportunity is quite clear for consoles or out where brands the opportunity the opportunity is actually a lot bigger than that eSports is made of many different games players and leagues and actually as many player Abbot's as there are games while the sport industry is quite still long it represent conference between of contemporary digital services and user behaviour so who are the he's bought viewers first the majority of eSports fans I think we all know that for Millennials according to my chest 65% of the is box viewership is aged between 18 and 54 and according to global web index in 2016 one in five million years were watched eSports but

if the if the misconception is that eSports is pretty much limited to college kids around the 20s mine share actually found that that a large proportion of eSports viewers are in their late 20s and 50s 60% of fans are between the age of 25 and 39 you can also see on the graph that if remain largely outnumber women in sports they are not out of the game depending on the surveys for a recent survey from News and found out that 22% of eSports fandom was female and news who goes all the way up to 38 in the most recent researches interestingly in the countries where his box has been around the longest that's where you see the biggest or the most in the better I would say gender parity it tends to

prove that the eSports or the women's share in eSports is bound to rule as we go it also turns out that the eSports viewers are not impoverished single men quite far from that according to mine share in 2016 almost a third of this box viewership at an annual household income of ninety thousand US dollars or above and 58 percent of those aged 25 of children of the home the good news and not of good news I would say for brands is that they are not only I earners but their passion for his birth tent grow with their income they are willing to spend and 67% 67% yes of those who have more than 100 king who earned more than 100k per year in 2016 said they spent most of their free time

around is box when the actual average in the gaming or in the eSports segment is 49 percent 60 percent of Ishrat viewers or fans are also said that they are ready willing to travel to see them their favorite games tournaments and players but as any Millennials they are less likely to watch TV and then other generations according to do what the number of 18 to 34 year old watch TV in an average week decreased by 10% since 2016 to 77 the eSports viewership odd sorry I should say the linear viewership the TV linear the linear TV viewership remains large don't misunderstand me but it got some traditional broadcasters worried and all the more has it also eSports fans tend to engage less with additional spots on TV than other generations as a matter of

fact 70% of his box fans on Twitch spend more time engage with his Potanin traditional sports so we know that eSports offers access to an audience of large audience of very engaged fans many of which are difficult to reach through traditional media many brands understand that and have started investing proof is in the profits revenue which according to news ooh reached 1 billion last year and the ad revenue among the sports revenue which according to eMarketer who grew by 25% last year to reach 200 million so brands now are aware of the power of his box and this box audience I think that's less and less difficult to convince marketers but the challenge now lies with the real difficulty is in how to engage with those viewers and through

eSports in an efficient manner because if this part can be a true opportunity for friends it's also a real challenge according to Nielsen again 58% of eSports fans see brand involvement in this box in a positive manner as long as they add value to the experience so it's not just about slapping down your logo in the spot affair and waiting to see results because that's not gonna happen brands need to be seen as genuinely interested and invested in developing the sports industry before signing any sponsorship deal of partnership brands should really ask themselves what are we bringing to the eSports audience or what added value are we bringing if the answer doesn't come easily then maybe it's time to review the copy because if brands think that they can survive a mistake in this sport industry no they want not the audience and eSports fans

are engaged and are clearly not scared to publicly stone a brand that they think is fake of missed an opportunity in the opinion however if you study your audience if you pick your influencers wisely and get them involved in the making of the campaign or even better in the making of the product if you can then those will open for you the brands that do the best are the ones that have a consistent and sustained presence in the sports industry think about Intel with the IEM katowice or HP omen or DHL maybe we'll see that bit later on eSports is also hugely scalable which is an enormous benefit for brands you can activate IPs nationally or internationally as you want and as your budget allows

and I would suggest and the last point I would say is that there is an opportunity there but the space or the window to enter the space and get a strategic advantage is now closing and a lot more brands are now investing brands want to engage or activate around this box should do it and should do it now with some advices there are many agencies or constituents we discussed that a bit earlier who can help with that but I would like to show a few examples of companies that I think were quite relevant and the first one for example is KFC in China in 2019 so KFC always relied a lot of always made gamers a copula of the communication strategies since 2015 in 2019 they worked with a data company called vent action to create an algorithm capable of

giving out the results of a game based on in-game stats hence the coronel ki thanks to : l ki KFC increased the daily viewer or their daily presence on League of Legends by 17 minutes they generated 1.9 million comments directly directed to KFC online and they managed to trend on Weibo these Chinese social platform interestingly it's the only League of Legends sponsor that ever managed to trend on Weibo other interesting activations this one was in 2018 by McDonald and people were turned in the blast poster he's in Copenhagen could see those signs everywhere McDonald decided on its own with his creative agency to match their menus through csgo terms fans loved it it went all over social networks huge success just so you know

neither blessed no evolved were involved in this campaign it was McDonald with gdb directly another one interesting is Jeanette so this one is pretty standard they activated through team solomid people got bit in exchange for buying content through the streamers pages it this one for me is interesting because Jeanette not obviously uses old-school tools to measure impact of campaign and like brand recognition of purchase intent after the that campaign the communication manager confirmed that Wizards proved they made the right choice to invest in eSports and the last one I only have a few minutes want to recite around [Music]

where did you the video already is nice fans loved it but if you wonder what a cool activation can create then how much fans engage with it this is the next video and I don't know if I can posit just watch the difference between fans you see any other sponsor and when they see DHL on screen [Applause] they went trading trending all over social networks that funny is the best one I think like

friends almost also voted online for the manager who decided to sponsor all the events to get promotion and as the DHL managers to give him a promotion so I think that's it and I'm being on time yeah perfect so we're gonna go to questions there all right first you then why did they single out DHL is it the dude robot and all the campaign before because there are over they all equivalent sponsors of the event I think it's a mix of DHL doing activation DHL are the proper strategy around is Fox and they created contents before with the influencers from yourself being involved in their videos they were all over the event and not just with logos but with the robot and giveaways I think you saw that on the first video but they distributed lollipops which is the stupidest thing to give away people were crazy about it

we had lollies everywhere they ran contests they created videos after that people just loved it I think the biggest takeaway from this campaign is that a nice box cottagey for a brand needs to be a strategy and not just oh I'm gonna sponsor this event put my logo somewhere and that's it I'll see if people like me thank you I was I was actually at Birmingham Tina did lovely the THL and I believe that they were one of the brands that operated well in space just because they were very authentic and genuine but I wanted to ask if you had and you showcased brands that worked well but like to have examples in your mind of brands that didn't work well in the space yes I have one I don't feel confident giving the name its traditional TV network created wanted to sponsor and sponsor its own eSports event created that with traditional TV

production companies the event when it's live and on her at the same time but due to technical issues they chose not to broadcast the event at two sides one was an influencer tournament the other one was the grassroot tournament they decided to go for the is the influence of tournament and left completely assigned professional players excuse my french but it was a shitstorm online people complain we received emails when we had nothing to do with it and jeans and we discussed with that traditional broadcaster after that and then said never again we're never gonna touch them again because we keep they now keep receiving emails saying you shouldn't have done that don't do that you know nothing about it it was a nightmare for them I knew you would that was my question was about some of these

brands do you think they'll be looking to employ people whether it's in the marketing site or stuff like that who are interested in eSports specifically for these kind of things like DHL did to try and replicate I I discussed that very recently actually just for lunch today and I hope that people will start recruiting from within these spots in other media's and big brands or companies I hope so I know that some of them are still asking questions and are still picking the dough gamer in the team to fill that role I think it's not enough but I hope they will I had another awesome

when ninja recently he's like sponsored by adding us right now so it do you think that's something that other said clothing or sports brands will like to do is kind of pick particular personalities rather than sponsoring events that's the beauty with is box you can either decide to sponsor a global event or you can sponsor a team or a very specific player within the team or livestreamer who was actually not part of a team and outside of the professional sector again now some some influence sales already have capsule campaigns and capsule collections within with brands or with such as closes brands such as adidas and others I think we will see it more and more and eSports I think is still trying people are still trying to understand whether eSport is a spot is a bubble somewhere or he's just

entertainment I think people will realize that it's more and more her lifestyle and you are an eSports fan as you are interested in sport and doesn't define you entirely but it's still a big part of who you are so I think we will see more and more brands like Trudy's perfume and Procter & Gamble going to a spot thank you and I have to check but I think we have some for one more if you guys want to ask a question it's like so I just want to comment I think find it funny that people have so much difficulty understanding how brands work with eSports but it's pretty much how it works with every entertainment in sports you have brands sponsoring events and teams and players so I think it's just a natural evolution

it's a profitable business and brands we want to be part of it right thank you very very much you [Music]