The Reality of Esports Teams

[Music] got a little video to flick that's before it starts which just shows which will show off sort of our journey through eSports when we started in 2040 [Music] [Applause]

episode powerful intro I'm done with young from a co-founder of eminent gaming so premier eSports Club that operates in the UK and I knew earlier we had Adrian who was CEO of enthusiast gaming as luminosity as we call it Tier one organization were probably more at a national level so what do we do we pride

ourselves on building teams that can compete on an international level our most recent success being in Rainbow six where we took a group team from the grassroots level and went through the ESL path the Pro straight from the National League's to the Pro League within six months even more recently our second iteration of their team we took a another grassroots team straight through the Invitational qualifiers beating teams like g2 team vitality along the way I also run TLC studios creative agency that creates or focuses on eSports content which works regularly with big brands such as its al Red Bull but today we're going to focus on sort of like the realities that I as

an eSports team owner face it's not often highlighted the media and it's it's sort of what will highlight what won't create in the space today so I'd need sports team one of the first things that we do is obviously we have to select again to choose how to expect again well obviously we want we want games which can expand sort of our fan base so numbers is the game but it's quite simple to say that yes numbers will bring it bring it in but there are a number of factors that sort of affect that one of the first factors when one of the major ones which hits the headlines is franchises versus non franchises obviously I walk during tighter price tag just to enter millions and millions of dollars is what closes off the space for a lot of teams including myself well that's not to say they don't have that place in the space because franchises

eliminate a lot of the uncertainty that teams might face in the space so you could be sort of like an imploding team I may have reached that climbed the ranks and reached I live the LCS then you'd have to expand your sort of support to be able to support in the international level team which is more resources houses whatever it may be relegation and to run the risk of relegation which obviously can topple your team just as quickly as you made it for example at that wave of rainbows across they reached a pro league in just six months typical the business deal takes 12 months 18 months how do you build that quick enough to support that team when they're doing so well so when it comes to fried franchises is quite controversial topic it closes off that some paths to Pro that everyone loves that underdog that just goes through right until the end another thing that we we always look at

look for is publisher support so we compute in Rainbow six League of Legends these games have a lot of publisher support whether it's through third parties like yet so directly with the publishers themselves right when we operate in the league's we have open channels where we discuss issues or problems that we may have and they will address them and keep dressing them working with them that is a very very important point because we have data that they lot they organizers might not have which will improve the industry in ways that they cannot come throughout so aside from sort of publisher support we also have well the game itself well you know another speaker mentioned a game has to be easy to learn but very hard to master so in essence you should be able to understand it very easily but also have enough stats such that you can I guess create sort of plays are

unbelievable creators hype moments that we all live for we all watch eSports for and I mean earlier the speakers had like there was it's no sort of reason to participate in live stadiums but I often when I speak to people who are aren't engaged in the space I will show them maybe my favorite set my favorite players of all time the number one thing I always point out to them is the electrifying audience in the background I went to yes I won Birmingham and I loved it I know nothing about dota 2 was that audience is fantastic I don't go there for that every time so what if we think about the space as it is it is entertainment entertainment to the core these thoughts isn't sort of like the deal and all it's

sort of the five senators only engage with it so if the game isn't entertaining to watch I can think of a few pub G who there may be people who have what up G will find it very difficult to watch League of Legends is is fun to watch do you have lots of flashing lights but since the core of the game is sometimes difficult to understands easiest games to understand are the cities Cisco rainbow six it's easy two teams are fighting out to come via set of objectives so that's basically what we face want me to decide to to choose game obviously we'd like to compete in as many games as we want but fundamentally our resources are limited so outside of outside the games themselves it's like how do we choose place players those millions of them how do we pick out the top point zero zero zero

how many percentages it's easy to say that you're very good again but there are sort of skills that come important that aren't very current how do we keep on building these award-winning teams these teams that keep driving their way through despite against all odds against all the support that the other teams might get and quite frankly it comes down to very soft skills teamwork their aptitude and and these are sort of the qualities and attributes that we look for on addition to that content is a very key thing you'll notice up the slideshow is scrolling through a whole series of content because we believe that content is at the core of what a sports team should be creating we are entertaining the audience that's what we are we use games as the medium to entertain I could be the one of the few T insightly against grow and go we need to win me to

win we need to win i supplicate it's easy we can win if we want to so we focus on the content the stage but there are some sort of problems that the industry faces obviously the industry is quite a young one with the junk being a young industry it means that there are a lot of sort of players out there it's not consolidated it's not mature we're one of many teams in the UK that operate to the scene and I'm sure we won't be at last I think one of the problems that there it exists is is sort of lack of information information as a lot of speakers have pointed out today it's key to how we develop space simple things sort of like what taste that's very important to us is what engages our audience so that

includes that what that might involve is like finding out what the audience cares about for example one of the reasons why we've we've completely fled despite it being so complex is that it's a game that caters to everyone it has what so it can capture people who are interested not storytelling anime whatever whatever it may be so we like to emulate that by telling stories in our own way through graphics through videos through social media and have fun doing it the most important thing is having fun because community in eSports is the most important thing just like James Dean said the community can bite back at you if they don't like what you're doing just as much as they can support you if they love what you're doing I don't know if any of you know I'm them all have heard of an eminent past anyone know so it's quite quite recently I think we we

managed to get trending on Twitter on Star Wars released night because we were an underdog team nobody heard of that went on through to beat you to some vitality and people loved it which hashtag UK massive is now belongs to us so what we need to sort of do in the space or what what we needs to do is that we need to collaborate more with information whether it's with information whether it's with 20 organizers because we are sort of operating in such a way that there isn't well everyone's sort of operating and doing their own thing and hoping for the best and that is not sort of like the

ideal way to go about it especially when you have certainly canard problems such as the market for lemons one of the problems that we face in the team is is how do we distinguish ourselves none of you in this room have heard with me today or our team and that's a problem we're one of the best scenes in the UK and you haven't heard of it but you'll have heard of other teams that like fnatic or endpoint or whoever it may be sorry I think I think it's sort of all good and well as well like for me to sort of talk to you about what teams face and have a guess of what what you might want to know but I think what I might do now is just open up to Q&A because there are the questions that you might have whether it's how do I deal with players

how do I fight team how do I treat its game how do I decide what content from a fight in my half so with a few minutes left on the clock I'm gonna open up to Q&A do you guys have questions yes you are my favorite custom person today you mentioned about how you decide which games deaths butters have you thought about mobile games singers it's kind of cheaper to are an interesting one they do have sort of numbers behind them and I find that with a lot of things information is quite difficult to come by we do get like a lot of applications from mobile gamers from Asia which is where it's probably the biggest and they want to obviously be part of the team

the difficulty is separating like like good teams to the bat how do we how do we actually know that they're great of that we have to usually I always speak to a team before I decide to pick them up on top of that like yeah it doesn't deserve the market of sponsors that we we bring on we primarily have been focusing on PC but that might change in the future it depends on how it is especially I don't know if you have seen streaming on mobiles there's quite a difficult thing and content creation is quite an important core focus of what we do as well what else I know when you first set up your what's called team yeah why did you like fund the the do you have a after invest your own money out

of your own pocket first to get like the players on board did you pay them or just a group of friends just when we started where was basically myself my brother a group of friends one thing to be professional yeah pro players my game csgo I love it yes really bad at waivers but that's beside the point so when we started we all we had was sort of like a logo a name and about maybe 50 pounds of the pocket between us it's a way that we sort of grew it's basically turning about 50 pounds into how do we think about how do turn that 50 pounds of value to 500 pounds a lot of it is if sort of you just go into sort of a startup environment so you have to do learn to do things itself so a lot of these photos are actually taken by myself the video content is captured by myself or and then we may be to sort of create the video content and then obviously we'll do a lot of the social media management ourselves data

management so in the background I run the aggression models on our social and other analytics and find that all of our graphic content increases engagement compared to non original content by 50% statistic like that I can find but it's very difficult to process raw data and that's sort of that's sort of what I like to do to distinguish ourselves is a high quality sort of team when we go to approach sponsors and it's something that they appreciate or and it's also what spawned the side company DLC where we work with ESL creating content because we understand the space we understand what consumers want and we understand how to make things entertaining as Anna thank you I think that's all we have time for unless anyone's got any more questions oh you do have what do you guys have any more questions if not I have one if a developer as a developer yeah people

know how really well how to work with influencers but they still don't know how to work with eSports yes so if what any of the people here develop a great game they want to work with eSports how would you recommend them if they want to for example work with the eSports team either to start working on the market or even to test and co develop some features so it's very difficult if I figure out who which teams to approach if you are develop there I think that when you when you develop a game you should sort of put the community first because eSports is essentially the sort of that most engaged part of the community and not necessarily not necessarily having one team team's perspective is what it's going to be one fits all solution you have to work with

a variety of teams because different teams might have different specialties one might specialize of fps one might just specialize in MOBAs so I think a lot of that goes down to sort of the research and research all the teams ourselves and the pupil that yes you want to be working with whether they obviously got along with you and whether they can provide the feedback that you're looking for yeah thank you thank you very much please give a big hand of course [Applause] [Music]