AGORACOM Small-cap Investor Relations Blog

• Esports gets bigger and more exciting every year
• eSports turns 20 this year, and it is almost poetic to see Blizzard’s Overwatch taking it into the future when it was Blizzard’s Starcraft that kicked off the whole phenomenon
• The sci-fi RTS is the 5th bestselling PC game of all time, and its popularity resulted in the creation of eSports in South Korea.

By Isaiah Mayersen on September 16, 2018, 9:05 AM

The big picture: New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft has brought Overwatch League team Boston Uprising, and the CEO of the New York Mets Jeff Wilpon has brought the New York Excelsior. Other executives from major sports teams, along with the usual eSports investors, are pushing the Overwatch League into the spotlight with other professional sports. eSports is about to get a whole lot more serious.

eSports turns 20 this year, and it is almost poetic to see Blizzard’s Overwatch taking it into the future when it was Blizzard’s Starcraft that kicked off the whole phenomenon. The sci-fi RTS is the 5th bestselling PC game of all time, and its popularity resulted in the creation of eSports in South Korea. But what has always been lacking from eSports? The answer used to be franchises and region-based teams, but if you’re one of the 300 million people who has been watching eSports in the last year, you might have noticed that’s changed. What’s lacking is money – eSports only generated $700 million last year. The NBA made a little less than $8 billion last year, and the NFL was somewhere in the ballpark of double that.

Overwatch League’s debut season was the first to have teams represent individual cities. Now, Blizzard has hired executives from the NFL and NBA and broadcasting specialists from Fox Sports and sports channel ESPN. After the finals in July pulled in over 20,000 fans to Barclays Center in Brooklyn, it’s no wonder they’re looking to expand. Blizzard has already announced franchises in Atlanta, Washington, Paris, Toronto, Vancouver, British Columbia, and says it’ll be bringing more Overwatch content to ESPN.

eSports is even more popular in China that it is in America, and China will be adding teams from Guangzhou, Chengdu and Hangzhou to its Shanghai team.

All this makes Overwatch League a “viewable product with audiences that can be marketed and carved up,” according to T.L. Taylor, who studies eSports and online gaming.

The president of Kraft group, Jonathon Kraft, says his organization has watched eSports closely but hasn’t moved on it now due to the untested and unpredictable nature of its previous business model. While the local team model hasn’t been tested on eSports before, he says “it’s not the wild, wild West anymore. There’s a structure. There’s substance.”

Despite being linked to their hometowns, all the teams play just outside of Los Angeles and they get free accommodation there, too. The only eSports that has players living in the towns they represent is NBA 2K, which has all the players commute to New York every weekend to play.

Riot Games has also been considering local team business models for League of Legends, the most popular eSports in the world. However, their head of eSports for North America, Chris Hopper, believes there will be diminishing returns if they expand into multiple cities: “We’ve sold out events because of the relative scarcity of presence in that market.” There’s clearly still a long way to go before eSports is running in parallel to NFL and other major sports, but who knows, maybe one day it’ll make it into the Olympics.

Fortunately, this hasn’t stopped executives from the Los Angeles Rams, Philadelphia Flyers and Sacramento Kings from all buying into Overwatch teams. Stay tuned for the Overwatch League to make a big splash in 2019.

Source: https://www.techspot.com/news/76457-overwatch-league-dials-up-notch-nfl-nba-team.html

• The esports branch of Alibaba Group’s sports affiliate (Alisports) is moving to Chongqing to develop a strong resource platform for its esports scene and build an international esports street, according to Times and Marketing Interactive
• Currently based in Shanghai, the move is a continuation of the “1+2” partnership agreement that Alisports signed with the Chongqing Sports Bureau, Chongqing High-Tech Zone and Jiulongpo District at the Smart China Expo last month, the Chongqing Economic

Artyom “dfs” Kutateladze

Currently based in Shanghai, the move is a continuation of the “1+2” partnership agreement that Alisports signed with the Chongqing Sports Bureau, Chongqing High-Tech Zone and Jiulongpo District at the Smart China Expo last month, the Chongqing Economic. Alisports will also work with Chongqing High-Tech Zone to build an ‘international e-sports street’ in Jiulongpo District.

Alisports aims to boost the sports industry and benefit more partners and consumers through e-commerce, media, sales, TV broadcast, smart technology, cloud computing, big data and finance service. Additionally, Alisports also organises the World Electronic Sports Games (WESG), which AirAsia came on board for this year as the official airline partner.

Additionally, Alisports will also organise large scale sports events and networking sessions to boost the cooperation of foreign and domestic companies within the local sports industry.

Source: https://cybersport.com/post/alibaba-esports-relocate-build-international-presence

• A Canadian eSports company is the latest to try and offer its own cryptocurrency
• Canada Cup is introducing the eSports ecosystem digital token (because, apparently, it couldn’t be creative enough to come up with a unique name), which will reportedly empower all gamers through the creation of a digital eSports currency specifically for the community

BY Erik Gibbs ON September 05, 2018

ESE will offer a medium to transfer value, reward both casual and professional players and compliment the current fiat-based payout structure. The token is designed, as described by Canada Cup, to fill a gap that prevents a number of casual gamers from being rewarded for their participation.

ESE token holders can passively earn more tokens through Canada Cup’s “staking rewards” program. This will provide an additional income source to both gamers and organizers, which will help them finance future participation. An ESE Loyalty Nodes program is also anticipated, and is designed to provide stability to the token award program above and beyond the passive awards users can accumulate. The staking rewards and Loyalty Nodes programs won’t be ready until sometime during the first quarter of next year.

A community wallet, representing 17% of the token’s initial supply, will be used to give back to the community. It will offer a variety of prize pools, player and team sponsorships, scholarships, charity donations and eSports advertisements.

Canada Cup, which was founded in 2010, hosts a number of tournaments for a variety of fighting games and is behind “the largest and most prestigious fighting game tournament in Canada,” the Canadian Fighting Game tournament.

According to the ESE white paper (in pdf), the currency will solve a number of problems, including complimenting fiat payouts by adding ESE tokens from the community wallet, which would increase the value of the total prize pool to support professional gamers financially and make it easier to transition into a gaming career.

It also promises to broaden payout structures to allow more players to reap rewards from tournaments, which means rewards are no longer limited to the top echelon of players, but can be extended to casual players due to an increased prize pool. Lastly, the currency will encourage tournament organizers to continue hosting events by supporting these events financially with ESE tokens from the community wallet to ensure that these events are sustainable, according to the company.

Source: https://calvinayre.com/2018/09/05/bitcoin/canadas-esports-tournament-creates-own-cryptocurrency/