Panel: Riding the Wave of Esports

you think there will be a few sort of like interesting discussions going on which would be good I'm I think if everyone is like seated we're good to go and well thanks for for joining for a panel discussion and I would sort of like I like to emphasize the discussion part and I am sure there will be plenty of discussion between the panelists but also if there questions or views or opinions from you guys here in the audience beats with like keen to hear them and and of course of like answer questions and what I would like to do first is I think most of you have already solved like sorry yeah so

problem with the mic were blah blah we can post this one yeah okay hello no your honor we're good to go all right so it may be very briefly an introduction of the panelists because you've already heard some of them some of them speak so sort of like starting

sort of left to right right to left depending away sitting we've got Merrick and his works at at Jeeva he's a senior game designer they're very much involved in eSports as you probably gathered from the question series has been asking and a very soft like competitive player himself there's like dota and Starcraft 2 if I'm not mistaken you've just heard Nasser speak he's with the Jordanian Olympic Committee and the titania and eSports Federation if I've got it correct and also a gamer and we've got Nabil and apologized for supply keeping it with first names of course your surname was a bit of a challenge for me and he's with somebody who are some like organising events and conferences and and have their own sort

of like gaming eSport Division of its nabila's in charge and organizing lots of events in Kuwait and the Gulf region and what maybe look like more like further afield as well and before kicking off sort of like the panel discussion I had a few slides which hopefully writer left sorry if I mean if someone could get the slides up that would be good as an event organizer myself this is this is a nightmare no like for us for their event organizers I actually we just yesterday had a life even in our mobile game and literally everything went wrong so this

feels like basically replay of yesterday's it's it's yeah guys so you are you able to pull this light up okay well I'll just wait for that and yeah hopefully now let's see if this left hand right actually works you wanna start without slides I'm yeah I could I could do that and I mean let's do that just give me one sec was this so I mean starting without the slide so you have to be something like a little bit creative but speaking to hopefully some like game designers and game with creativity is not that much of a problem so the the topic of the panel today is like how to join the eSports wave and first of all I I had a really cool slide

about waves I pick way down out and yeah okay I think we're getting there yeah so I think it's sort of like no longer a discussion that took like eSports is big it's a wave and it's all very cool and it looks very easy but in fact it's not so easy so what kind of wave are we actually talking about I mean we've heard people talk about monetization and yes monetization is still sort of in a way in its infancy and I think you may have seen slides like this at conferences showing for black fairly big numbers of like how big is this market or how big will this market get and what I find sort of like a lot more interesting in a way to solve like see and show how eSports has been involving and I don't have a slide but

it's just talk like a little sorry I was working with an eSports company a couple of years ago and two of the streamers that were working there French French streamers and they left set up their own thing on Twitch and they were doing quite alright and at one point they had the idea Misurata and dark to do a twitch marathon for charity so they organized the twitch marathon two and a half days invited lots of other twitch streamers and they did that and they raised 170,000 you not bad and so default well this was a success charity very happy so the year after they did it again and guess what five hundred thousand euros for charity and so this year they fought well five hundred five years for charity that's going really well I said they did it again this year and and when they were done I smoked like so

sort of a thing on my Twitter from the French president mr. Mac Rome who was congratulating them on racing three and a half million euros with so fact which eSports matter and to me that sort of like tell us a lot more than these numbers that sort of like research companies can put together because it really shows the engagement with players engagement with the community and sort of like how fast this is growing and clearly if if there's so much money to be raised in something like a Twitter marathon and there must be sort of like money in the eSports way so again not surprising that there's lots of people sort of like trying to jump on the eSports wave and that this everyone look like ranging from developers publishers league organisers event organisers lots of media groups jumping onto this as

well as tech providers and hopefully I'd like to hear a little bit more about whether we can at some point see the IOC sort of like joining the wave as well and I don't know and and the other question I would like to solve like throw for the panelists a little bit later is are we talking about one way is it is there just one thing like eSports or is eSports sort of like a collection of a multitude of of different things and that's why the panel is here and we can sort of like throw some questions at them I always would like keen on doing that and so may be good to start off with Merrick I mean to show his sort of like dedication to eSports he's pretty so work hard for eSports not I mean who would jump on a plane from Prague having just organized a live event just to come here have a talk and then sup like fly back today that's Marek and so mark you've been involved at Chiba doing esports esports

on mobile and somehow managed to so flight get to like 400 million views with your games so so not quite there but not quite there we are moving direction I think and jump in right here yeah just a short intro about myself especially for the other panelists so they know I start as a competitive player I've competed on national level in multiple games in starcraft 2 a competed in international level I was the corner of the biggest gaming place in the country we had 80 computers along that for four years the nestled mistake and started making games and right now I make my living by developing PvP mobile games what my passion realized with eSports and as you said I did just the massive life even in our country in our mobile game but I always willing to debate his sports and when I seen the opportunity to debate someone on actual Olympic Committee on the life event there was a no-brainer even when it means I will not sleep for the next 36 hours so there are

investments to everything and on behalf of my country where we try to convince them to consider in sports or even before I suppose I try to convince them with chess and they are really reluctant to even open that conversation I'm very surprised and pleasantly surprised that you have much further and much more open minded approach towards that regarding the base that you mentioned I would say that if you are a developer it's not a wave that you want a jump on majority of the eSport games that exist and make a lot of money are really old and a few exceptions are either completely funded by the developers something like overwatch or before smite and heroes of the storm both of them are discontinued already because the developer ends up kind of paying the players to play the game which is not a healthy scenario or of course if you are anomaly like a fortnight you can invest two hundred million dollars over the next year and you will have your eSport regardless so is there a way for developers jump on easily yes but prepare a proper

warchest good so may i within way to discuss two parts the wave and to discuss i you see I'll start with argument regarding the IOC and Olympic Committee's and government recognition of eSports this is something that not a lot of people have given a lot of attention to in Jordan but one of the reasons why the Jordan Olympic Committee is the actual representatives of eSports in Jordan is because we're trying to send a message the message we are trying to send to the international community and to our local community is that we are supporting it because we understand that we have a lot of athletes in Jordan who play the sport so we cannot not look at a fact we have numbers we have numbers on the ground we have top

athletes we might as well be part doing something that that's sick that is organically successful so we have a lot of athletes and that we should have representation for that and an umbrella for that and we are having an issue with the international eSports Federation IeSF because it is the first time an Olympic Committee has applied to become a member directly as an Olympic Committee they're saying you need to it's nobody no Olympic Committee has requested this because usually they try to look lobby with Olympic Committee's but I have a major community in Jordan I cannot leave them unrepresented and this is why we have the committee within the Olympic Committee and we've done that ahead of time regarding the IOC and regarding the wave yeah so the IOC the the a good friend his name is

Patrick Bowman sadly now the late Patrick Bowman Patrick Bowman was the Secretary General of FIBA which is the International Basketball Association and also was the president of something called sport Accord or the or gave as it's called today which is the General Assembly of all International Federations was the main guy within the IOC who was pushing for for the IOC to join the wave okay sadly he passed away during the Youth Olympic Games in Argentina last year and that has slowed down because a lot of people look at it in a traditional way and what I was discussing regarding sports that jumping on the wave has decreased though most of the people who want the IOC to join the wave are making a very valid argument with a one major argument if you do not if you don't join the game now the game will be the game or eSports will be

become maybe one day become bigger than the Olympic Games themselves so you might as well organize it right now and this is an argument that I've been making you might as well join now even if it is just to be able to be part of the regulation to be able to regulate it and how it because how you become part of it because the wave is too big and could be bigger than you in the future and and and I think that's what I had to say right now go ahead to add on to the the involvement on a governmental level with with eSports this is something that I honestly was surprised but that we have someone a country in the Arab in the Arab world that has taken that initiative and and is pushing forward and is trying to to achieve an unprecedented achievement whereas where I speak I speak on from a Kuwaiti standpoint it's the

furthest furthest thing from from coming to reality and just right now we are in the we are in the process of setting up the Federation and eSports for the Quai de Sports Federation which will hopefully become a stepping stone towards achieving more organized or structured regular regulatory boards for eSports to add about riding the wave it's it's it's a massive wave and it just grab your surfboard and jump on a jump in because it's it's one hell of a ride and it's something that we we are enjoying and it's something that we we're learning everyday we're we're we're we're part of it now and we just want to see it through we want to make sure that we deliver the best we can deliver from from from from that stat from that point and like I said we're

learning every day because there's so much to learn there's so much to there's it's it's a vast field of information and meeting people like Merrick will also help us understand a little bit better perhaps of one question especially regarding the Olympic body because in Europe we had a big history of something that was basically European Championship es si si and we found a very interesting problem in Europe especially with team games because usually in team games welders can't distract dota a league of legends the teams are not from one country the games kind of break the borders we have members from all over and when we had the European Championship one of the problems was that the games were not at the highest skill level because the teams that are usually normally playing together they couldn't play together because of different nationalities and every time this body has reached some form of traction because the games were not played at the highest level what

ended up it lost the viewership players or the viewers were rather watching the normal matches in the organic tournaments as ESL or something in the States rather than watching the European Championship just because the level of the play wasn't as high isn't that something that worries you with bringing the Olympic Committee which is just based on the nationality especially for the team-based games because you will have players like miracle that will play in his team in DotA but bells will say out of five nationalities but then he will need to make a national team to compete on the Olympic stage it's not something that you thought about while doing this entire process we're it's too early to even reach that level of discussion and that level of worry because as many of the people who have have dealt with us and dealt with eSports in Jordan or at the Olympic level we didn't even we're not even within that realm of discussion of whether what's going to be the final product would be interesting

enough or not we're just hoping that it becomes a discussion in the first place that nations can be represented now there's a note here miracle or others would be very interested to play at the highest level if it was to be organized by a top body like the IOC why not for only the financial return because the governments will pay their athletes to play but more or less for the international recognition if they wanted it so if you had the chance as a gamer to go and get an Olympic medal for your country you will think twice about it you might say you know what I'm more interested in money but sometimes you say what why not my amount of time invested I'm training already I might as well play for my country and be able to be on that equal stage with other athletes from other sports like the flattens does that make sense well like sadly Czech Republic I not

disprove this argument with ice hockey we are we have some really good ice hockey players that played in the NH cager but when they are supposed to play for the national team they just can't be ours because there is no money so from Stanford like I want to believe what you are saying but from the at least history country that I represent on this panel if we do not do that I think I think that having having national teams the represent a representing the country in eSports is important and like you said you have different teams that are based in Europe Asia of the states that are a collection of the best talent that are that is available to represent the team and the respective game so and like you said you have the thing and a child you have a thing the best leagues in the world but when they come back they should compete for their country for the name of their country and which also goes back to the stage of you saying there's no money being being paid in it again this is I believe a responsibility for the national bodies that are creating these

teams to provide them with the funding to provide them with the necessary resources - exactly - because if if a team exists if League of Legends Jordanian team exists and you have Jordanian players playing in Korean the states and around the world and if it's Jordan's responsibility to bring these people to the people to play for the national team same applies for different countries as well it's not it's it's ok can I kind of run maybe a little experiment here because but what I'm hearing is yes it still Soph like very early in the discussion and stuff like in an Olympic setting we'd be so fact talking national teams and yes those teams might not be as good as sort of like all that normal pro teams but then again that the counter-argument could be well and would it be more engaging or less engaging for for viewers any sports enthusiasts to sees who reflect players from their country to

sort of like do really well in a tournament could that be as much fun as just watching the best match I mean I could watch a Premier League football and it could be really really great and I could be supported my national team might not be as good but it could still be fun is it could be a different experience so I'm curious for like from the audience which rather see the best team or which you rather see or would you equally be happy to see your national team compete at the highest level at an Olympics and and and then also like to have your views on that so so hands up who it's who would love to see only the best teams or who would love to cease would look like their country's best players on an international stage in getting recognition like best teams

personally I I was watching the tournament about on national basis by all I'm just saying that in history already had so similar body that tried to organize such thing in Europe and it always over time lost more and more viewership that I'm not representing my personal view I love watching our players to get completely destroyed in games because we are really small country that limits the pool of players but that doesn't change the fact that what already happened so I'm just like pointing out that this is not for the first time we were discussing this in the history of eSports I think I think what you're saying is correct and it's it's something that people is that you should be worried about if anything ever comes up with with the similar strategy or a similar formula but it's it's I in my opinion it's okay to try something and fail and then learn from those experiences to to move forward to the

better with a better better thing last comment sorry is that a lot of games especially team-based games I have actually marketed themselves as they break the borders and this is something that goes directly against this national at the base which is I think like step to overtake in this process because III know definitely did the International has really marketed in DotA in a way that they have teams based on multiple layers of multiple nationalities and even League of Legends be proud game that they are really proud of the factor that they it's a diverse platform for people all over the world but the breaking borders part also works on teams from different countries playing across borders against each other so it's a multi argument it does not mean that the players on the same team need to be different anyways argument encounter arguments there yeah I just want to go back to the wave II and I'm gonna talk about this more from a business sense the wave does exist I

go back to the same argument of monetization entering into the eSports market who many of our joy the Jordanian investors in this have faced this is just like entering in to any sector into the food market into the IT market into any standard sector you need you need to have proper business plans you need to see how you're gonna monetize you need to see how you're gonna profit you're gonna spend money on and I think this is sometimes lost within the model on how tough it is to make money out of this wave it's not an easy market it's actually one of the toughest market yes there's a lot of attention there's a lot of viewership there's a lot of people playing there's a there's a huge community but that does not mean there's a lot of money for everybody and and

this is one area of argument and Zoe is preparing with Nabil to give a comment there I'm sure others many of our local investors will tell you the same it's not an easy market it's not something to jump into you need to study every single step and be very organized in how you can be sustainable in this market go ahead if you look back at the pie chart that you showed us and it had about 49 percent of it was what sponsorship 42 sorry 40 42 percent was function tip what what are these sponsors making out of spending four hundred and fifty million dollars into sponsoring eSports there isn't really a tangible return on investment with with with their sponsorship so it's it's mostly an investment in the youth and capturing a segment of the market that's going to probably have brand loyalty whatever it

may be building on what NASA was saying is monetization is a very crucial part of it and it's a very difficult part to to to achieve these these sponsors they spend crazy amount of money and most of the time they make nothing in return and this is this is a this is a an argument we have with a lot of companies we work with and they tell us okay I'm gonna spend with you this amount of money what are you gonna give me back in return other than the event that you're gonna going to be organizing for us so this is where we start to bring in and bring in different discussions like okay you're going to be capturing a specific age group from this we're from this age of that age and these are your new your future potential customers depending if it's a bank for example what is a bank going to benefit from 13 to 15 to 18 year olds other than opening up the young store accounts the this is this is a struggle that we face whenever we

whenever we're to pitch for something or this or have that discussion and it's a very very important part it's very important for us to know exactly how we can make the best the best out of it make most money out of it by giving back the best quality that we can as well and CDC sort of like Ivan I mean we've got the soap like the Middle East and the European perspective here I mean do you see big differences in how the monetization is being approached I mean you mentioned bank accounts with some of the companies we were evolved in they were doing just that banks and telcos were using eSports to reach an audience that they would otherwise find more difficult to to like engage with and get them to open accounts get them to get credit cards and subscriptions to the mobile services I mean do you see big differences in also within the region like how do sponsors look at it and how does that affect how events tournaments are being

organized is it like one approach for the whole market or is it sort of much more it's the way we do it is we try to personalize it with every client that we approach and a lot of our clients are actually surprised when we suggest collaborating with a different sponsor and they're there hey they're not usually they're not usually prepared to respond sorry for that inori's it's mobile gaming it's okay yeah I would just look at it from the face especially based on this graph where you see that the growth is like 34 percent noise what's interesting and that that if we look like five years ago majority of the sponsors for eSports were sellers of peripherals like steel series razor beep companies that could directly monetize supporting the software and hardware software and are exactly in Tallinn and just in the recent years we see the upcoming of the big investors like coca-cola Mercedes we see football teams

buying actually eSports teams because and I think that's the other part of you already mentioned is there getting that very specific demographic that's almost untagged untargetable by any other channel of media which is very certain very specific male audience between H X and Epson I think we're wrapping up but I've got no how much I think from a local perspective that has a lot of experience with the local scene I don't think our events are getting in a lot of sponsorship money not enough am I right or am I wrong they

oh let me just add to that so this automatically takes out of the spy locally takes out sponsorship sponsorship the total sponsorship market for all of sports in Jordan does not go beyond two to three million dollars a year for all of sports so all sports across does do not get Federation wise do not get more than 2 to 3 million total so take sponsorship out of this pie advertising nobody sees the return on investment unless it's online and global take advertising out of that one merchandising in tickets I'm not gonna even have that discussion media rights again if it's not online it's not gonna work and game publisher fees listen in general this high if I was to look at it at the tour in the Jordanian market does not apply today and its lack of the fact that it doesn't apply makes the job of a

committee or the sector much tougher to find alternative monetization model for our local market or to make the return on investment sexier for sponsors and advertisers but in a bad economic market that's quite a tough argument to be made I think something we didn't touch on here is whenever America's speaking he's talking about Europe whenever we're speaking we're talking about Kuwait we're talking about Jordan talking about Dubai I I think I think it's time that to to progress forward and to actually get where we all want to reach we need to in my opinion and I speak on behalf of my company in Miami and my partners is we need to be more collaborative with each other and we all need to have a similar goal and work together towards the sheet achieving that goal and steps need to be taken the right steps need to be taken which already Jordan have have done by achieved by creating the Jordan eSports Committee Saudi Arabia have it and

the way II have it and Kuwait is in the progress and I think this this is this is a good a good start for for moving forward towards having a Middle Eastern body that can govern a government such such events because as a market when you look at the market size the Middle East is a massive market and however when you break it down individually it trickles down into four four five six million people per market and that's where the sponsorship money can start coming in when it's more a more cohesive system and I'm gonna use the word ecosystem here because there it's it's it's lacking in this part of the world many different many different elements you need to all gel in together for us to be able to start talking about 450 450 million dollars of sponsorship or anything close to it in this part of the world even it's not just it's not just a jordanian struggle it's a struggle we face in kuwait as well it's a struggle

that even if we we started we just recently entered into the UAE market and it's not as glamorous as people people people make it to make it no because we have the same okay that because we had the same we had the same impression about entering the UAE market that it's going to be although all the hardware companies are based there the software companies are based there we started knocking doors sorry no budgets oh we don't want money we want screens sorry we can't give you screens okay next company next company next company and we've knocked on so many doors and everyone has the same same response we don't have the budget isn't that a little bit of like how things were like started in Asia and Europe I mean at some point there was not much of an infrastructure or ecosystem and there were so like a few companies who like pushing it out there starting to organize tournaments in an organized way and on the back of that and that has taken time it started to grow I mean in

America Fiat is for sure like if I look back at like 2002 2003 first events in the country and we were going door by door exactly what you are describing we went to Nvidia and asked like we want 80,000 chakram is just transfer like 2000 euros free 2.5 ton which is nothing well we wanted some support and it took us a very long time to develop some relationships when we first got like 20 graphic cards for prize money and then we went to Intel and we kind of slowly build these relationships that peaked at some point of returns and now I think the overall investment into eSports by those big companies Samsung Intel and peripheral art and so forth around five to six million dollars but we are a small country so it looks quite living and holiday but it took a very long time and I think what you described if you separate the Middle Eastern countries that don't do not look at it as a region then you kind of look at it's fine that Jordan is really small market it the same thing would kind of happen in Europe I mean in Europe Sweden Germany

and Poland are the strongest eSport markets and if you would put them out and look at every single European state separately it would also look super weak but nobody is speaking about eSport in single given state we are always speaking every sport in the whole region I think partially because travelling is so easy now in Europe it is really nobody cares if the tournaments but in Denmark or is if it's in France in Paris everybody is just like this is a tournament we're doing that in the in the region wait time for questions ok so I mean this is your opportunity of say so anything you wanted to ask about eSports and I must have and the guy said here now so like to give the opportunity for questions here I have a question yeah mark you guys are working on mobile eSports yes where do

you see mobile eSport Howdy's how how big do you see mobile eSports becoming in the next five years well the first thing that I would like to avoid is comparing it to the PC sport I don't think one they'll overlap the other I think it's not I'm just trying to stay that for the early that it will be two separate branches if we look at China I already mentioned today pop G pop G MOBA is four times the size of pop G PC which I learned just like two months ago when I was shocked by it so I think mobile eSport will be really big especially in the Asian regions but we are kind of slowly getting there even in the European and the rest of the Western world I think good example is clash Royale however when I was in Helsinki two months ago and I've discussed with some of the people that are behind the clash rally which is the biggest mobile eSports in Western world as of now they are not so far evaluating it as a success they are simply using eSport as a marketing tool to prolong longevity of

already monetizable product because they still rake up 1.5 billion of revenues every year with the game and they are just trying to prolong this state when the game is relevant so I think in a Western world we have a long way to go and it will be very difficult path but in the in the Asian world where there is already a generation of players that never played on PC or console they are only played they only played games with phablet or mobile I think there we will see insane amount of growth and I think although I'm not passionate mobile competitive game rather be very honest I love my PC games my old PC games I'm very conservative in this I'm still looking forward not as a player not as maybe not even as they're organized but as a viewer all right now the million-dollar question is what about the new streaming on-demand gaming services do you think those will be popular with eSports like the Google stadia and the Xbox services on the Apple arcade no not in not in the next 20 years do you see translating from mobile to 2

those services no I don't believe in those services I think those services are gimmicks to scam investors okay that's I think it's always good to sort like leave it with a very sore like clear and Stark comment alright well thanks very much guys for it thank you you're inside right Cheers you