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SBJ Esports: YouTube Optimistic After Year 1 With Activision


 

The world of Dota 2 esports is in a rather odd state of limbo at the moment. While the game's premier tournament -- The International -- continues to build the largest prize pool in esports history, the event, slated for last month, has yet to be officially rescheduled. Without The International and its corresponding circuit of smaller events, players and teams (outside of the upper echelons of competitors) are struggling to sustain themselves. Now, with perhaps a year until the next iteration of The International, all eyes are on the game's publisher, Valve, to see if the company will step up efforts to help support an ecosystem for what is one of the top esports competitions in the world.

-- Trent Murray

 

RECORD AUDIENCE GIVES YOUTUBE OPTIMISM FOR FUTURE OF CDL

  • Ryan Wyatt, global head of YouTube Gaming, said that while there have been some growing pains, he’s happy with the first year of an Activision Blizzard partnership that was capped by record viewership for the Call of Duty League (CDL) championship game, reports SBJ's Adam Stern

  • Earlier this year, Google signed a three-year, $160 million partnership with Activision that included media rights to Overwatch League (OWL) and CDL for YouTube, while Google Cloud also scored a notable business win by becoming the video game maker’s preferred partner in that category. Activision previously had a streaming deal with Twitch, and the swap has led to viewership drops this season, which is common in the first year of such a change. But Sunday’s championship match between the Dallas Empire and Atlanta FaZe earned a record audience number for a CDL game, which has given all sides optimism heading into offseason planning.

  • “We’ve gone through growing pains as part of the transition and we’ve tried to tackle that collectively, but I was absolutely thrilled with how it ended,” Wyatt told SBJ. “I’ve been in the CDL scene for 11-12 years, from the very grassroots of competing and commentating, so it’s very personal for me and to see this culminate in the biggest Call of Duty Esports viewership was awesome. To see it happen on YouTube in the first year, that really made me very happy and taken aback a little bit -- and it’s got me very excited for next year.”

  • As for OWL, which is just starting its playoffs, Wyatt noted that the three-year-old property is “making progress, and I’m glad to see it is climbing back up and we’ve got some things that are very exciting for next year.”

  • Wyatt noted YouTube, which has 2 million people watching gaming content daily, is eyeing large growth for its live-events business -- which is part of why the company has a big focus on gaming and esports. "It’s not just (really important) for gaming," he said. "Livestreaming is happening so much across music events, esports events, presidential debates, Elon Musk launching rockets; we do it all on the live front and continue to develop and improve how we serve that to our users.”

 

PANDA GLOBAL HIRES FORMER CIRQUE EXEC TO DRIVE MERCH SALES

  • Esports organization Panda Global is turning to a former Cirque du Soleil exec to drive its merchandising efforts. Terrence Turner will join Panda as Lead Merchandise Strategist, leading a newly hired team of three other execs. While Turner’s experience is largely in themed merch for companies like Hallmark and Disney Parks, he explored esports opportunities during his time at Hershey Entertainment & Resorts. “I was part of a group that looked at esports as a possible opportunity to add to the experience in the park that they were developing," Turner told TEO's Trent Murray. “It gave me a window into how passionate people were about it, not only from a player standpoint but also from a viewer standpoint -- and what the potential opportunities were for merchandising."

  • Turner now finds himself at a rather unique organization with the esports ecosphere. Rather than invest in large franchises like League of Legends or Overwatch League, Panda Global focuses entirely on 1v1 games such as Street FighterHearthstone and Super Smash Bros. “That point of difference from the rest of esports was attractive to me,” he said. Turner emphasized the importance of not only leveraging what makes Panda Global’s brand unique, but going even further to understand the differences in the organization’s fans across different game titles.

  • “One of the things that I would try to avoid is that one-size-fits-all mentality," Turner said. "If you're a fan of Game X, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're a fan of Game Y under the same brand umbrella. So one-size-fits-all tends to lead to making things fairly vanilla. You don't want to force things into one singular view.”

 

Panda Global's current merch agreements include an eyewear deal with HyperX

 

NFL/NBA PLAYER AGENCY ADDS ESPORTS DIVISION

  • DEAL Elite Athletic Management, which has a history of repping NFL and NBA players, is looking to build on those connections with athletes as it launches a gaming division with the signing of two Madden NFL gamers, The Esports Observer's Trent Murray reports. DEAL President Myles Poston, who will spearhead the esports efforts, tells SBJ that this new division will focus on Madden and NBA 2K due to the significant overlap of stick-and-ball pros playing these video games.

  • Poston: "One of our goals is to elevate [our signed esports players’] brands through sponsorships and partnerships, and also to integrate our professional athletes into the esports industry." DEAL reps current NFLers in Cowboys CB Jourdan Lewis and Raiders DT Johnathan Hankins, as well as former pros like Charles Woodson and Shawne Merriman. The agency also in the past repped NBA players like Penny Hardaway and Robert Horry.

  • Why start with Madden? Signing pros for the EA Sports title -- pros who are already experienced streamers -- will enable DEAL to not only learn more about both streaming and the esports space, but allow the agency to leverage that experience and established audience to help its own NFL and NBA clients develop their own streams. The aim is for those clients to then in turn provide a crossover audience and boost the agency’s Madden streamers through collaborations and cross-promotions.

 

GRAND THEFT AUTO V MAINTAINS LEAD AMONG LIFETIME PLAYERS

  • Grand Theft Auto V and its 58 million total lifetime players was enough to maintain its position -- for now -- as the most-played active title on Xbox One and PS4 as of June, eclipsing Fortnite by a narrow margin of just one million total players, according to the latest data from Newzoo Pro analyzed by SBJ’s Andrew Levin.

  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare placed third among a list of several top franchises’ most-recent iterations, boasting 49 million total lifetime players -- the number of players the title has attracted since its launch. Modern Warfare was the No. 1 game on Xbox One among the top seven active titles. In addition, the Call of Duty franchise as a whole held seven of the top 25 spots for lifetime players among all titles.

  • Fortnite coming in at No. 2 is significant given GTA V was released in September 2013, while the former was released more recently (July 2017). For this same reason, Modern Warfare and its total lifetime audience is especially significant, given its release date of August 2019.

    Meanwhile, Minecraft also surpassed 40 million players. Rounding out the top seven among active titles: Apex Legends with 36 million players; Rocket League with 30 million; and Destiny 2 with 25 million. Rocket League was the only sports video game to crack the top 25 among all titles.

 

 

SPEED READS

  • AT&T has removed its Warner Bros. video-game business from the list of non-core assets up for sale, deciding it was too valuable to unload during its effort to pay down debt and streamline, according to people familiar with the situation, reports Bloomberg News. The gaming unit is home to titles like Harry PotterWizards Unite and Mortal Kombat 11. Sources said the division -- potentially valued at $4 billion -- had "attracted interest" from suitors like MicrosoftTake-Two InteractiveElectronic Arts and Activision Blizzard.

  • Warner Bros. has named Daniel Cherry III Senior VP & GM for its DC brand, effective Sept. 7. The role was created for Cherry and will see him work alongside Jim Lee, chief creative officer & publisher at DC. Cherry was formerly Activision Blizzard Esports CMO, and before that was with the Devils and Prudential Center. He was an SBJ "Forty Under 40" honoree in 2017.

  • A recent cheating scandal around Counter-Strike: Global Offensive competition has led to event organizer ESL, along with 13 member teams, appointing Alexander Inglot to develop and create a commissioner role for the league, TEO's Kevin Hitt notes. Inglot will look to build a collaborative structure to optimize governance, build the ESL brand and explore new revenue streams. He will be joined by Hans Jagnow, who will support him as the VP/Operations.

  • Esports betting is coming to New Jersey (a mobile sports betting state) via Allied Esports. The state recently approved such bets, and Allied is creating the first opportunity for legal esports betting in the state around Counter-Strike: Global Offensive -- specifically the Allied-organized VIE.gg CS:GO Legend Series tournament, which runs through Sept. 13. Figures show that New Jersey’s sportsbooks took $315.1 million in bets in July, up 91% over June and up 25.4% from the same month last year.

  • South Asian geopolitics has spread into the gaming world, as the government of India has blocked 118 Chinese apps amid heightened political tensions in the Ladakh region. The list includes multiplayer shooting game PUBG Mobile, one of the world's most-downloaded mobile games. The list also includes other mobile games such as Arena of Valor and Marvel Super War.

 

 

 

Enjoying this newsletter? We've got more! Check out SBJ Media with John Ourand and SBJ College with Michael Smith. Also check out SBJ Unpacks on week nights, as we look at how the sports industry is moving forward amid a pandemic.

Something on the esports beat catch your eye? Tell us about it. Reach out to either Adam Stern (astern@sportsbusinessjournal.com), Trent Murray (trent@esportsobserver.com) or Austin Karp (akarp@sportsbusinessjournal.com) and we'll share the best of it. Also contributing to this newsletter is Thomas Leary (tleary@sportsbusinessdaily.com).