With the industry watching, it’s go time for Turner/WME-IMG’s ELeague

Esports is more than 15 years old, but this is its biggest week yet.

ELeague, taking its place among Turner’s brands, launches with coverage this week.

ELeague, the Turner Sports/WME-IMG joint venture, launches Tuesday. It doesn’t have the largest prize pool or a long-standing reputation, but its establishment pedigree and linear TV ambitions has sponsors, investors and rival media companies watching closely.

The joint venture will gauge initial success by how participants and esports fans react, said Tobias Sherman, WME-IMG’s global head of esports. The startup convinced some of the industry’s most prominent teams to join, including Fnatic, Team Liquid and Ninjas in Pyjamas.

“It’s less about how many numbers we get on day one or day two; it really doesn’t boil down to that,” Sherman said. “I think initially it’s about making sure the players, we exceed their expectations, and hopefully we exceed fan expectations.”

The 24-team ELeague debuts with three nights of online-only coverage on Turner sites and Twitch, capped by a TBS showcase airing Friday from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. ET. Each week is a self-contained tournament of Valve Software’s popular game “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive,” including two days of round-robin play followed by an elimination round.

That model repeats weekly for six weeks, followed by a “last-chance qualifier” tournament to advance to the league playoffs, which culminate at the championship finals on July 30. The total prize pool for the season is $1.2 million.
ELeague is walking a marketing tightrope: Expand the audience — and therefore appeal better to sponsors and advertisers — while not alienating existing fans. Esports enthusiasts are passionate and protective of its organic, grassroots history and are weary of the larger world now eyeing its money.

Sherman said the league expects to bridge that gap through its broadcast tactics, focusing on the human interest stories they believe will appeal to all parts of the fan spectrum.

“Authenticity has been our battle cry and featuring this in a way that shows respect for the culture and the history that’s already gone into esports,” said Sherman, who joined WME-IMG along with his business partner, Min-Sik Ko, when the agency acquired their esports talent agency Global eSports Management last year. Ko is now the ELeague’s commissioner.

As of last Thursday, ELeague had sold full-season sponsorships to Arby’s, Credit Karma and Buffalo Wild Wings at $2 million apiece, but it remains optimistic it will fill eight categories by the end of the season. Sony Pictures had bought a five-week run in the studio category, and Turner Broadcasting President David Levy said a deal with Geico was close. Executives also expect ad inventory, on both television and digital, to sell out.

It is promising ad buyers a 0.3 rating on the TBS broadcasts, a number that’s on par with what NBCSN averaged for its IndyCar races in 2015, underscoring the experimental nature of televising video games.

It’s season one, but it’s no pilot, Levy said during a panel discussion at Coca-Cola headquarters May 11.

“We are all in,” he said. “We just built an incredible studio. We went after who we believe are the best athletes, teams and players in the league. We’re putting up real money, real purses, and taking a very slow step in this, in the sense that we want to make sure we keep this thing authentic and real.”

To underscore the point, Turner made the ELeague a linchpin of its crucial upfront presentation in New York City one week later.