While some esports team owners are looking to strike gold in this hyper growth stage of the esports business, GSW Sports Ventures VP Kirk Lacob preaches patience. This virtue may seem at odds for such a busy exec. In addition to running the day-to-day operations of the Warriors' esports group, he serves as the team's Assistant GM and is involved with construction of the $1B Chase Center. These responsibilities taught Lacob a key lesson about picking good people to help things run smoothly. He said, “I learned a lot about the structure of esports leagues, how we want to mold our esports organization. I believe people are the single most important thing. I really like the people we have right now.” He has learned a few other valuable lessons since the ownership group got into esports. Onstage at the Lagardere Sports esports Rising conference, Lacob laughed and said, “In some ways my assumptions (from the past year) were all right because I assumed I’d be wrong. We thought we’d be able to run through sales cycles much quicker, figure out what our jerseys were going to be quickly. Sometimes third parties are slower but sometimes you’re not ready internally to move forward. Most importantly, it’s just be patient.” Lacob added, “The hardest part for me is other people learning to be patient. It’s not easy. People reporting to me get upset if we lose one game or the deal doesn’t close. Instead of worrying about the problem, I ask them, ‘How are we going to solve it?’”
CROSSOVER APPEAL: Lacob says there are “similarities and differences” in fans of basketball and esports, but his group is now working on messaging to engage and convert them to both. “We want to reach some esports fans for basketball reasons," he said, "but how do we reach the basketball fans to get them interested in esports?” Lacob said hoops fans can become esports fans. He said, "It can happen. It happened to me.” However, Lacob added, “We need to create new fans, not just port over fans. I want kids to be a fan of what the Warriors do, to be a basketball fan and a League of Legends fan and not baseball or football, unless we somehow find a way into those sports, and then I want them to be a fan of those, too.”
