Rufail and his fiancee, Hannah, enjoy spending time at the arboretum in DallasMIKE RUFAIL
Esports organization Team Envy moved its operations to Dallas late last year after receiving a franchise spot in the Overwatch League to compete as the Dallas Fuel. Since then, Owner & CEO MIKE RUFAIL has been reacquainting himself with the Lone Star State, where he grew up before attending college in North Carolina. Rufail admits that working in esports often times blurs the line between work and fun for him. But while most people would see that as strictly positive, the gaming exec says it does have its downsides. Sometimes his fiancee, HANNAH, has to let him know he is “doing too much work” and needs to focus on the family the two are trying to start. Rufail caught up with THE DAILY to chat about how he balances his work (or is it play?) with family life.
PARTYIN’, PARTYIN’: We have an Overwatch League match on Friday night against the Florida Mayhem, and we have a big watch party going on in downtown Dallas at Mac's Southside. I’ll be there to watch the match with fans from Dallas. It’s usually a pretty cool little watch party. I knew we were going to have some diehard fans in Dallas, but I didn’t expect the amount of hardcore fans that were already here. It’s been a really eye-opening experience, and it’s been a humbling experience to see so many people really enjoy what we’re doing. Any of that fandom that you see in Dallas for other sports teams has absolutely translated to the Overwatch League. The fans can talk to me about all the technical details of our team just the way I can speak to them about it.
WORK HARD, PLAY HARD: Saturday is usually filled with watching our teams play and compete. We usually have some team playing on a Saturday and Sunday as well. Typically I’ll spend my Saturday just watching them, and I’ll be supporting our content team a little bit and talking with partners on the team about performances during the day. At the same time, I’m watching some of the personal streams on Twitch that I enjoy. My favorite stream right now is someone who we signed recently, King Richard, who plays “Fortnite.” I have a triple-monitor setup so usually what it looks like is there’s one of our teams playing on one screen, a stream of another team or just another person I like to watch on Twitch and business in the middle, with email. I’ll be on the web taking notes and taking care of the overarching business. Sundays are really important because if our teams are competing on Sunday usually it means that we’re doing really well. I think I’m usually one of the busier team owners on Sundays just because we’re typically a podium team in most games.
FOR THE CULTURE: Right now, I’m spending a ton of time with my fiancee. We’re expecting our first child in October. So we’re about five months into the pregnancy. What we’ve really loved to do lately since we moved to Dallas in November is just drive around North Texas. We spend a lot of time driving around the Dallas area exploring. We’ve made that really fun, and at the same time it’s duly helpful to our business because I’m discovering all the local home marketing area we have. Learning about the culture around DFW is something her and I love to do. We certainly have some favorite pockets. We really enjoy going to some of the nature preserves around here and like being outdoors. The arboretum in Dallas is beautiful. So we’ve gone to the arboretum a lot. But we also love going to Trinity Grove in downtown to get a meal.
KEEPING UP WITH THE JONES’: I grew up as a big sports fan, and especially of Texas teams. I’m a diehard Cowboys fan. Definitely enjoy watching the Mavericks play, and I also cheer for FC Dallas. So I spend a lot of time going to games. I like keeping up with the year-to-year modernization and progression of professional sports teams in Dallas. So it’s been great to move back here and to go and attend more games. I love being able to go to games as a fan, and cheer for the teams. I think that’s really important in learning the overall business of professional sports teams here in Dallas.
