Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - Esports Series ft. Charles Conroy

Episode Date: July 21, 2020

In this episode, host Ryan Alford sits down with Charles Conroy, the Vice President of Gaming at the Switch. Conroy is well-known in the eSports world -- he's been in the game since 16 years old, and is considered one of the founding fathers of eSports in North America. There's a lot to unpack in this episode. Ryan and Charles discuss the business models of eSports teams, how teams and players make money, marketing strategies in eSports branding, and the role of the Switch in streaming services. To follow along in our eSports series, follow the Radcast on Instagram, @the.rad.cast or follow our host on Instagram, @RyanAlford For more information on the Switch, visit www.theswitch.tv If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the Radical Marketing Podcast. Here is your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast, the Radical Marketing Podcast. Excited. Today is the second of many guests we're having over the next four to eight weeks in the esports industry. It's been a fascinating discovery of really just the breadth, scope, and size of,

the industry and really excited to have today's guest Charles Conroy, the vice president of gaming at the Switch. Charles really appreciate you coming on. Thanks for having me, man. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, sweet. So let's dig right in, Charles. So VP of Gaming at the Switch, a lot of past experience in the esports realms. I know with teams and events and all of that, but maybe let's just start right down the line of, you know, give everybody that a condensed version maybe. I say that because we keep these to 30 to 40 minutes. I know anyone, anyone's life story or business life story might be longer,

but would love to just dig first in kind of your background, any sports and just kind of the general career path for you. Absolutely. So I'll make it as condensed as possible. 16 years of my life, but yeah. And in 1999 as a player playing Counterstrike, you know, found this game online with some buddies. And we found out that there were live events to participate for cash in this thing. So put a little team together, my friends.

We drove down to Dallas, Texas. And we played in our first international tournament. And this was about 2001 at this point. And when we were there, we realized people flew them all around the world to compete for what was, I think, 50 grand at the time, which was a huge deal. we absolutely annihilated. We didn't do well at all. I had no idea how good these guys were, but I saw a business there. So I ended up taking my team going out and getting some corporate sponsorship from some endemic brands and putting together a really solid roster of some of the best guys in the country.

We eventually became the number one team in North America, went around the world, representing the U.S. We played in the East Sports World Cup in France. We were on a TV show in Korea for two months where we actually lived in like a player village and saw how massive this thing was getting. And at that point, I was putting my full force minded. I was quite young at the time. I started the company when I was 16. Wow.

So when I was 18, it was when I was doing all the traveling. I was also a freshman at SMU in Dallas. So I was trying to balance college and running this company. And then DirecTV came out with a TV show, which would be the first example of franchise leagues in North America. So they had eight teams fully funded by DirecTV in four different games. They had a big draft at the Playboy Mansion, which I went to when I was 19, certainly a high of my life. And they,

every 19 year old stream. Literally. Yeah, I was like, it's crazy. And they're like, what are you here for? I'm part of the video game team.

This is before it was cool. Do you have your fake ID? I didn't need it. I didn't need it. You're already in, you know? Yeah, all right. So that was pretty crazy, right? This new league had come out.

Each team was given like a $600,000 a year budget. They paid for apartments for everyone in L.A. Plus your Pridim and your car. And these guys went from making $500 a month as players to $30,000 a year for an eight-week season. So we're living in L.A. for eight weeks, filming this TV show. My team didn't do so well, season one. We killed it. Season two came back and we're the strongest competitors in the league.

but it's just a real experience. So this was on TV around the world. They then expanded internationally. They built the league a little too fast too soon and burned through about $45 million in two years. Wow. I'd have a season three. Yeah, it was really over the top.

They took e-sports from, all right, we're going to pay Jets $500 a month, and it's a very niche thing to let's go as hard as we can. It's got NFL producers. Let's get NASCAR guys involved. And it was awesome. It was just a little too early. Yeah.

no wait. So that shut down really abruptly. And it was sort of a dark time for U.S.C. sports because people felt news for it in direct TV couldn't do it with $45 million in two years. Maybe this thing wasn't going to happen. You know, it was going to go the way of professional bowling where people will watch it, but it's about as big as it's going to get. And so it was an amazing thing to be a part of, but as fast as it rose, it crashed that quickly as well. So at that point, a few of us regrouped a very close friend of mine, Jason Lake. who, you know, sort of an iconic figure in e-sports now and had ran complexity gaming prior to this TV show. I was like, let's rebuild complexity. I at the time was 21 finishing up at SMU,

and I, you know, wanted to do this full-time. We were made doing this full-time. We didn't have any cash. We had a great brand, and we had a bunch of stars that were available to us that had just spent the last two years on international television. So we had talent. We had a brand, but we had no funding whatsoever. So I went to CES for the pitch deck. You know, Jason and I, and another guy named Jason Bass, who ran a website called gotfrag.com,

which is like to ESPN.com of e-sports. We got together and we started this team. I literally walked CES with a pitch book, like a fifth book. Going up to every booth I thought would be even interested in gaming. Creative Labs took a gamble on us right there at CES and committed to being our title sponsor for the team for the, year. They gave us enough money to launch your organization, relaunch it, I should say. And we were off

to the races. Once we were back as really the only North American independent Eastports brand that had survived this massive shift in North America, we had a ton of support both from fans and companies that wanted to hop in. So we built the thing back up pretty quickly. I ended up having a product line of Best Buy of complexity products, which is the coolest thing at the time I'd ever worked on. You know, all of our partners would work with us to have our players test products and optimize them for gaming. And then, you know, we kind of tell the story of the team and the design process on the back

of the box. And we got a rev share in all those products. So that's when we turn complexity into a real business. You know, we're all doing it full time. And then, you know, after a lot of success in the space, Twitch came out. and the viewership numbers for e-sports really became apparent to two brands out there. And a ton of money, once Twitch came out, a ton of outside money from sports teams started coming into e-sports.

And it happened fast, man. We're talking nine months. All these teams went from ideas to $15, $20 million in funding. So we're seeing everyone around us get funded, and we've been sort of concentrating on the fundamentals and not fundraising. Yeah. They needed to shift at that point because we were operating on like a $3 million. year budget versus teams that had a $12 million year budget.

And they were getting cash after being around for two months. We've been around since 2003. This was 2015. And so we really needed to shift our focus and go after some of that. And once we did, we had a ton of offers for cash because complexity being the oldest brand of North America appealed to a lot of brands. We ended up telling the company to the Dallas Cowboys, which was an insane process. you know there's a lot of parts of that process or just it's insane right i mean you're this is

something we started i was in a college dorm room literally jason started it in his house and you know it's nice enough to bring me in after the championship gaming series but to now he's sitting across from the cowboys right uh was crazy their vision for the team overall won out uh because they fully integrated the team in the cowboy system so there's eat with the cowboys uh for breakfast and lunch they have the same mental help facilities that they have access to all the physical training that goes into it. They built them a gorgeous facility,

the GameStop Performance Center out there in Frisco at the Star. So once the Cowboys purchased the team, I was out and my partner Jason Bass was out, and then Lake who founded it, stayed on as a CEO and he's done a fantastic job with that brand. Still a very good friend of mine today, and they're absolutely, complexity is absolutely killing it.

They've arguably the best counterstrict team in the world right now, and they won the Madden Championship last year. and so they're doing great things for the Cowboys Day. Which brings it to today, hopefully this wasn't too long. That was perfect. And I was, I left gaming for about a year because I've been in them since I was 16. I was now 30 at the time. And I just need a little break.

Ended up opening a restaurant in New York doing something completely different. But out of blast, but really missed, you know, the industry I frankly was one of the forefathers of. So I had a few offers to come back. and a buddy mine at the Switch that talked to me about what they do. And what the Switch does is we're the world's largest transmission broadcasters. So we take live events and we put them on TV,

including Super Bowl, the Oscars, the Emmys, even the Royal Wedding. And beyond that, we produce events. So we have mobile production in the cloud. We have remote production in actual physical facilities in Burbank. And in COVID America, obviously, that, well, COVID world, really, not producing on site has become very popular. So we've been doing a ton of remote production for the PGA, for conference Cigna, in the traditional world.

And we're a world leader in e-sports now in infrastructure and transmission. So almost every live e-sports event is using us in some way. It's been really exciting. I've been there for a year, building out, for a year and a half now, building up the e-sports vertical. The response has been phenomenal, and I'm glad we can bring what traditional sports has from a quality level to e-sports. Yeah, that's awesome.

A lot to unpack there. Yeah. You've kind of touched so many levels of it. I want to start, like I could start a lot of places, but I want to start with the complexity part. You know, you obviously had the experience early on as a gamer and all that, which is interesting. But unpack a little bit for someone,

because I think it was hard for me. I get it now, you know, having been, you know, somewhat of a gamer when I was younger and, you know, following it peripherally, being in an agency world where we had some sponsorship deals when I worked on surprise and stuff. So I got it and get it at a holistic level. But for someone kind of listening to understand

exactly what was complexity. Like I know you said, well, we put teams together, we won tournaments, but as a brand, as an entity, what was and is complexity? What is the business model for someone kind of hearing of what complexity is? Because I think sometimes those things kind of get thrown out there, but I think people are like, I don't understand. How do people make money in gaming and what exactly is this? Yeah, I got you, man. So complexity is a gaming organization. We call it a team.

and underneath that banner of complexity gaming, there's players that play various titles. So you might have five, six, seven, eight games under one brand. So complexity is the overall entity. And it'd be like an entity owning a major league baseball team, an NBA team, an MLS team, and then putting it all under one brand. So let's say the Giants, right,

which is football. The Giants also had Giants baseball. The Giants also had Giants soccer. And that's how gaming works for the most part is very few brands that are competing in one title because gaming is fluid. The most popular game is changing. So while the NBA is the established,

you know, I'll call a ball and a hoop game. And you play, if you have a ball and you have a hoop, it's basketball. Well, there's 10 different types of shooting games or 10 different types of movas, which are the games you see with the up top view and the little guys running around. Yep. And so there's multiple ball and hoop games in one category.

So you might have multiple teams in the same type of game or a shooter like Fortnite, right? That's a shooter, but so is CounterStrike. Totally different games, totally different fan bases. So you'll have different teams all under one brand. And so that's what complexity is. And that's what we both. And how does complexity make money? So there's a lot of different ways to make money for an e-sports team.

the most traditional way, which is corporate sponsorships, right? That's back in the day, that's how we did it. You got a sponsor that paid you. So Mountain Dew comes along and sponsors complexity. I'm not saying that's definitely who you had a sponsor, but as an example,

Mountain Dew knows that this is an affluent group of people that are into this. And no different than sponsoring the NBA or a facility or anything else, Mountain Dew comes along and goes, we're going to sponsor you for X dollars and X placements, brand placements, not just logo placements, but activations, if you will. And so that's the primary monetization trigger. Yeah.

And you do a lot of cool brand activations. So these eyeballs are the hardest eyeballs to reach and they're also the most desirable. It's young people. Everything's all young males. It's actually a lot of females that watch gaming. you're looking at 14 to 45, higher disposable income than an NBA fan, higher disposable income than actually most sports fans. And they don't watch TV.

They don't, you know, read traditional like papers. So how do you get these guys? You get them with their eyeballs on their eyeballs on Twitch. Their eyeballs are on cool integrations with their favorite team that they see on Twitter. You know, different product drops. You have to get to them organically and you have to be smarter about how you get to these guys. But once you do get to gaming community, they've shown they're very willing to support brands that come in and support of the space. BMW, I think, has done an incredible job this past year, doing a huge rollout with five teams and they painted some of the cars and the team colors.

And they had the guys doing driving tricks and talking about why they like BMW. and some people are like, wow, BMW is a luxury brand. Why would they do that? Well, a lot of gamers can afford, I mean, what's the starting BMW, like 40 grand, 50 grand? Yeah. That's not out of the reach for this market. That's actually very much in line with these guys that, you know, our 22, 23, actually probably work in a tech space or, you know, make more cash than, you know,

your average citizen. And, you know, they have a little. a little bit more money to spend. And they're willing to spend it. They're willing to put it into premium products if you target them the right way. Is the words IT in the title for 80% of this demographic? I mean, a lot of people would think that, right? But e-sports fans are just like any other sports fan.

Like they enjoy what they like to enjoy. They do everything under the sun. And I think there's a very common misconception. exception. Yep. It's all live in their mom's basin and her three pounds. I teed that up because I think that's what people think, you know? Yeah.

It's so far from the truth. It's like. Totally. And it's just like an NFL fan, right? Come in all shapes and sizes. This demographic has largely not been like that. If you look at these pro players, a lot of them look like you or I, you know, so I'm a little bit more like you.

It looks at a gym. A little bit more than I do. Hey, I got to make up for all my other. deficiency somehow. But yeah, man, it's all across the board. But, you know, from a financial perspective, this demographic does have, you know, more income than your average sports fan and they've shown that they've been willing to spend. So back to the complex examples, so sponsorship.

So it's less about putting teams together. And obviously winning, you know, the fund is in the winning, you know, putting the teams together. you want them to win. But is that less important than the influence of the – is the team gaming influence, though? Is it kind of a chicken or the egg thing? Like, you need to put together teams that win to get the influence. You get the influence when you have teams that win.

Yeah, so interesting point. So there's also a ton of other ways to make money. I'll run through those really quickly. Yeah. Break steals. So teams are getting cut in our media rates for these tournaments. And when three or four million people are concurrently watching, that can be real money.

And I think the future of e-sports income for these teams are in meteor rights deals, much like the NFL. So media rights are becoming a huge topic. Product drops. So a lot of these brands now have interesting clothing lines. The addict just did I deal with Gucci to do a limited edition watch and stuff like that sells because if it's limited and again, 100 days, face clam, they do product drops. They shut down parts of New York, literally streets because hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people, not hundreds of thousands, thousands of people have come out. And their, their fan base is

rabid for new stuff. So there's a lot of ways to make money outside of just winning. And I use Face Clan as an example. They really are a brand out there. They have a movie studio. They have one of the top channels on YouTube gaming. They have a content house. They make their money off producing really interesting content. And winning is very much. secondary to them. What team was that again? Phase clan, they're called. Okay.

So they have like any probably, I could look right now, but like 8 million Instagram fans. So they really engage through media and content creation and creating this lifestyle brand that's really cool and relatable in the space. And then winning is part of that.

Obviously they want to win. They compete in e-sports. But if they lose, they're not going to lose money. Yeah. other teams rely on the winning to get the views to get the sponsorships. Got it. You build the brand big enough and interesting enough it supersedes the winning. I mean, it's no different than other businesses in a lot of ways.

There's a lot of teams I can name right now that are not winning that are huge brands. Hey, I'm a Knicks fan. It's tough, man. If you want to go to the garden, it's still $250 for a ticket. and you're like, man, the worst team of the league. What am I? Yeah. Yeah.

It's, yeah, it's, yeah, then the brand's huge, regardless of they haven't won in 20-something years, right? Yeah. It's tough. But I know. I tried to, you know, I came quasi, New York fan living there and for all the teams. And it was not the best of time periods for, the baseball was good. But, you know. The Yankees will always be interesting, right?

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. is the media rights, that's fascinating. You know, Twitch kind of set this views of fire, I guess, in many ways, correct? You know, with, I know it's every, you got Facebook, the now defunct Facebook gaming, I guess, or soon to be called something else, if I'm saying that right. So Mixer rolled in the face. Mixer, is that what's shut down?

Shut down in becoming Facebook gaming, right? Yeah, they rolled it under Facebook's umbrella. Facebook's a huge play in the space. YouTube just made it a huge play. So as an example, the overwatching Call the Duty Leagues, which are lizards run leagues. So they're the traditional franchise system.

They travel around the world having these tournaments. People buy markets. They own that market and they own, you know, all the resources within that market and they can solicit deals, etc. But the media rates deal with Twitch was reportedly worth $45 million a year for the right to broadcast that league. Now the people that pay a spot on this league is anywhere between $20 to $40 million, depending on which franchise spot you get, if it's an expansion, et cetera. So they, as part of that, get a piece of that deal, right?

Twitch did not renew that deal, and they went out to get, the league went out to get a reported $160 million for a two-year deal, two or three-year deal, depending on who you talk to with YouTube. Wow. And it got the media rights to that league. Which league? The Overwatch League. Yeah. These are much like you're seeing like the WWE moving over to Fox, right? Yeah.

So just like that, you know, when NBC lost the NFL back in the 90s and it went over to Fox, that was a huge deal. So that is happening in gaming now. You're seeing serious money being put towards broadcast rights. Yeah. It's crazy. is and I did wonder the first time I watched Twitch, I was like, these guys getting royalties on any of this. I mean, you're being in the business, you know,

like eyeballs in media traditionally. I was kind of like my head first went there when it came out. Now sounds like that's becoming the hot topic. Yeah, and I mean, streamers are making $15, $20 million if they're big. Everyone used the example of Ninja because, you know, every parent has heard of Ninja. I have a funny story when I was in Vegas and Ninja was there and Champ Bailey was there. And I'd say the people going up to Ninja for an autograph were 15 times out of Champ Bailey.

And it was all parents being like, we were there for the McGregor fight and he was there as well. And every parent was coming up. I need this for my kid. Like he's a rock star. He's on the cover of ESPN magazine. But his exclusive deal to stream was $30 million a year just to stream on the mixer platform, which he got paid out on after they folded. but he's also got his own Red Bullpen. He's one of the faces of Samsung.

I mean, he's getting paid $500,000 in appearance. So for him to show up in an event and put him on his Instagram and tweet about it, that's 500 grand. So the streamers are making serious money at the top level. Everyone uses him as an example. It's obviously the extreme top. Yeah. You know, a player on salary is going to make in a given a counterstrike using 20 grand a month.

So that's 240, 250 plus prize money. your players are making $500,000, $500,000 a year, you know, and then endorsements are coming in. So this is a lucrative opportunity for guys that want to go pro. I mean, I had some buddies actually in the NHL that are making less than my sports buddies. So in other words, I had the same discussion on a previous guest. I should keep encouraging my kids to play then. Sounds like the opportunity is there, you know. I get that question a lot.

Probably every Delta flood I'm all when I sit next one when we start. talking. They're like, so my kids should do this. It's such a balance, you know, it's like, I don't mind it. I mean, I game and I never, they play. They're still kind of in the Fortnite. I mean, they're all, they're not really quite at the age where I want them like, you know, blood and guts blowing people's heads off. Like, you know, I mean, I don't, I mean, I get that. But, you know, my 10 year old seems to be in the higher echelon for his age group for Fortnite. So I don't know. They're, they're coming out with a ton of leagues, like sort of a Boys and Girls Club model or younger gamers to game in a safe space.

And there's multiple startups doing that right now. And it's really interesting because parents want to encourage it. But they also, you know, you don't want your kid online talking to some creep. Yeah. You got F bombs flying and like, you know, I mean, I don't call on my kids. I mean, Daddy's not always had the perfect mouth. But at the same time. But this, it's, there's been some bad players in the gaming space, I think, as far as just.

just the, from language to, like you said, some things out there. No different than any other thing or entity, right? There's always the good and the bad. So there's a ton of startups trying to cater to that need and making a safer space for that age group, much like a Boys and Girls Club of America. I will say to your point, as far as people coming into the space, and I think very relevant to your audience here,

the biggest thing I can state, if you're going to enter the Eastport space, is you have to come in organically. they can they can smell BS a mile away people have thrown money at it and failed much like the TV show I was on right they spent a bunch of money they did it wrong and they tried to fit a game into a linear time spot which is not easy to do because sometimes they run long much like a baseball game is extra innings etc but there's so many ways to come into gaming in a great way and to capitalize on an audience that has cash and is willing to spend it and is energized and excited and will help your brand out and digital space, retweeing you, following your Facebook page, et cetera, et cetera, and help your online metrics blow up. But you have to approach it in organic way. And if you don't, you'll burn out really

quickly. Yeah. And to that point, you know, we're talking some, we've been talking big, you know, we talked about Ninja, the biggest gamer in the space. We talked about big brands. I'd love to know your perspective for small to medium business because it's such an, you know, again, as a previous guest we had, we said it's unattainable for a small and medium business to have an NBA, you know, sponsorship, you know, like, or in an MLB or something like that. But esports is still, it's certainly not nascent, but it's still early enough that there's ways. So I'd love to know, how do you bite off organic, real but small chunks for small to medium businesses? Are those opportunities out there? Because I think a lot of brands in that medium size, small, it's all of the

game, but even medium size, they don't even know where to start, you know? Yeah, absolutely. So there's a ton of ways for small and medium businesses to get involved. One way would be partnering with an individual streamer, so maybe not an entire team, but partnering with someone that you think an evangelize your brand are a couple streamers, and then activating them in really cool ways. If a brand's creative and they're smart, then they have a small budget, it's fine, because the digital world is a very huge world.

you can create really cool campaigns from people's houses now, and in the COVID world, you kind of have to. And gamers are smart. They appreciate funny or witty or cool campaigns that are out of the box. So if you utilize one piece of talent really well or two pieces of talent really well, you don't need to spend the money on a whole team. With that said, there's a lot of teams out there that are starting out that have good players behind them or interesting personalities.

You know, that would be like a mid-tier team. consider them like semi-professional. And if you activate that talent in the right way, you know, you can get a ton of ROI and a ton of bank for that buck. Yeah, I love it. Is, um, let's switch a little bit, literally, to the switch. Talk about that platform. I'm a name drop a little bit.

One of my good friends who actually lives here in Greenville, but out of New York is Scott Cole, who's the voice in the VAT, Um, one of the voices. And so Scott and I did a radio show back about five years ago. We're both Clemson fans and did an old radio show, but good friend, great guy. And, you know, he's been, last night I was watching the NBA 2K tournament, um, on ESPN2. So I just go to the end showing the growth of this, watching virtual basketball. Um, but I'd love to know, like, is, is in understanding what.

the Switch's role in watching something like that broadcast, like ESPN 2, is there's got to be a transmission going on. You've got teams playing a million different places. I'd love to understand the role of the Switch as it relates to esports and transmission and these types of things. Yeah, absolutely. So ESPN is actually one of our biggest clients. Love those guys. So hi to them if they're watching. Yeah, so we operate in sort of a three or four-fold capacity. if there's a live event, the first thing we're going to try to do is bring in connectivity.

So we'll bring in, you know, two private one-gig lines of internet. This will never touch the public internet. So it's on our fiber network. It's fully protected. So it's not going to go down. If it does go down, so we have the other one,

but hopefully it doesn't go down. Yeah. It's not going to get hacked. A big thing in e-sports because it's a very technologically literate group is, you know, DDoS attacks and things of that nature. You can really mess

an event. Since this never hits a public internet, you can't do that. That's not a challenge to anyone out there. I'm just saying, you know, enable any hackers out there. Exactly. So, you know, once you have that private internet, they can use that for their event. We can then put it on our network, which is, you know, you can distribute to any SPN or to one of our 800 U.S. partners or partners around the world. So once on our network, you can put it in like a pool feed and people can just grab it. We do that for like the iPhone launch. Let's say Apple's launching an iPhone, you know, and you want to grab it as CNBC, or you want to grab it as Bloomberg, or you want to grab it. I don't know why you do this for ESPN, but for example, for ESPN, you can just

grab it from our bullfeed, which is, which is great. We can then transmit that anywhere in the world. So if it needs to be linear, if it needs to be satellite, if we need to use bonded cellular, or if we just do OTT, internet transmission, any of the internet. anywhere in the world, we can send that video signal. And we do all the encoding and decoding for that on our side. Because like for the Super Bowl, right, they need it in a ton of different formats in various parts of the world. And we can convert all that in real time and send it out in whatever format they need.

And then the last part, the services that we offer is production. So we can produce the entire event, nice to bolts. We can allow you to use our cloud-based production product or one of our remote control rooms. you know, we're, you know, people traditionally are bringing in trucks, but the remote control rooms are replacing that. For example, the PGA is being produced out of our Burbank studio because a lot of people don't want to fly around the country right now. And people are worried about, you know, not only that you're a T&E budget, but just getting sick and wearing out your people. So these guys are waking up. They're going to the control room in Burbank.

They're cutting the show and they're going back to their own bets. And that's going to be, I think, a very positive. popular service moving forward, obviously due to the condition of the world, but also just from a convenience, you know, from that standpoint. So we have studios and control rooms out there in Burbank. And for e-sports, we're obviously utilizing those. The cloud-based product has been super popular because you can produce and cut an entire show. It's like having a control room on your web browser. We just released that. So that's been very popular in the sports space. Is that self-serve? Yeah. So you basically would book a time slot.

lot. And it could be any time. So we can have as many instances running at one time. But you'd say I want three hours or I want five hours over this weekend to produce. And you have logins and you can spin it up yourself. And then your whole team is on their computers, wherever they're in the world. And you're cutting a show as if you're in the same room. Wow.

That's cool. Is that a commercial quality? Like, is that how attainable is that for like what kind of, not to name the pricing per se, but how are we talking about like you know it's a much easier price point than like running one of the remote controls physically right so it is i think attainable for anyone wanting to do a legit production yeah i think the price point's crazy competitive yeah we've got a lot of response to that and again with distancing becoming a thing do you need your guy doing the the replay edits in in the room with you like is that totally necessary and the answers no it's not um you know this guy that's

cutting the replays doesn't need to be, you know, within this one space, the guy next to him in a patrol room. Yeah. As I try to thin out that control room, we've come up with really creative options. And this was in the works, you know, for a year and a half. So way before COVID. And now this happened and we're hopefully an option to keep people safe during a very difficult time.

You know, but less people in one space is sort of the name of the game right now. and we have creative and affordable ways to do that. That's cool. So what's your day-to-day role as far as growing esports within Switch? You know, like, we mentioned pre-episode travel a lot. Like, what's kind of the nuts and bolts of what you do now and trying to grow e-sports for the brand? Yeah, so my job is to, it's a business development role.

It's to attain, you know, so leagues out there have transmission options and have production options. And we're obviously the best one. So my job to just talk to people about the switch and what makes us different. But because it was a new vertical, I mean, we launched it a year and a half ago. It was a lot of travel. It was about 160 days last year.

It was like 20 cities, 12 countries. It was a lot. It was awesome. It was fun. But it was, yeah, it's a lot of time dedicated to just getting out. there getting the brand out there and explaining why we're different and you know we've gotten great results we signed ESL called duty league overwatch league plus pro series and we play um so out of like the top six leagues that's five of them so it was uh it was a big year for us and thankfully the

market's taken to what the traditional sports world has had for the last 32 years in the switch um and the results is speaking for themselves we're very happy and as these sports grows and becomes, you know, more sophisticated and its technical needs. We're happy to grow with it and be there to support it. That's cool. What's your favorite game? So I was a counterstrike player, so that's my favorite game to watch. I just think it's perfect.

I think the most balanced game on the planet. And so it's still a huge game. It doesn't get as much air time on like an ESPN because it's only about terror is planning a bomb and then people defusing said bomb. Yeah. of self sometimes. Yeah. A great story I have.

It's a marketing story. You'll love this. Back in the early days of Eastport, it's like 2009. It might have been early. It might have been 2006. It was early on. It was back when we were playing in like the back of land centers and hotel ballrooms are the biggest thing on the planet.

And you're playing 50 grand prize. Tylenol wanted to come into the space. And they sponsored this really sort of rag-tag team. really good players that were very rough around the edges from Southern California. They were really good, but like, you know, you guys were known as, I don't say like the bad ways of e-sports. That's a bad, like a good thing. But, you know, they were sort of the outsiders,

but they're really good. They never really had a corporate sponsorship because of just the way that they interacted. And Palinol came in and said, hey, we want to get into e-sports and start the team out of outch gaming. And so they sponsored these guys for, I believe it was 10 brand a month plus. computers. At the time,

it was a lot. Yeah. It was a massive deal. So they came to the first event and they watched where Counterstrike was and it was literally about guys shooting each other and they had the planning bombs, fusing bombs.

This was not so long after 9-11, right? Right. They immediately said, take our name off the team. Keep the cash. Don't worry about the computers. Rebrand the team back to whatever you want, but we're out.

somebody had signed the deal and didn't realize what it was right and they came to this event and they were like what the hell is this and like bombed a fuse like can you say bomb defuse? It was an interesting thing to watch I wonder if that marketing guy lasted much longer

all at all. I don't know I mean I don't know I guess 120 grand for them is not really anything drop in the bucket yeah but just the way that went down was funny soon the other complete opposite example would be BMW coming in

and really thoughtfully taking a year and a half to put together to deal with the right teams and the right games. Yeah. So some sponsors come in and they don't just blanket sponsor every team. Like they'll be like, all right, we only want your non-shooting games

or we only want this. So, you know, violence and shooting and that stuff is a no-no for some of these brands. Exactly. Where's it all going? I mean, what's the what's the

I don't want to say the end point but like where's the you know you've got speaking of someone you know the popularity of the counter strikes and the shoot shoot them up games is we'll

simplify it I'm sure some gamer would would not appreciate that over simplification of you know third player first player all that stuff but uh where is all this headed just about to explode even further with broadcasting and those kind of things that we're going to have seven stations

that are broadcasting games on direct TV like you know where's all this headed? I mean, look, you're you're talking to a real believer here and I, you know, I've been able to have a pretty incredible life because of e-sports and it's a rocket ship right now. The numbers don't lie. The viewership numbers are insane. They're a lot bigger than a lot of traditional sports. Kids are growing up like your kids, for example, playing these games. you know, less kids are playing football, for example,

just learning that out there because parents don't want their kids to play football. They're consuming content much differently. It's not like, you know, even when I was a kid coming home and you had sports starting at 7 p.m. or 8 p.m. to 24-7 access to all this stuff. There's a tournament going on every night in multiple times. It's around the world. So if you want to watch something at noon, you can watch something at noon.

you're interacting in a much different way. You're not sitting in front of a TV. You're actually involved in the experience. It's chat options and second stream options. So I think the market is speaking really loudly as to what they like. It may tell people all the time. You don't have to get it. It's not a debate to me whether e-sports is popular or not.

Right? There's numbers. You can say, I don't understand it. That's totally fine. There's a ton of live sports that I'm watching. I got in a, not a debate, but a huge conversation with my buddy yesterday about cricket. He thinks the same thing in the world. I don't get it, you know, but I don't have to get it.

He's from India, it's huge in India. And I don't need to get it to understand that it's a massive value where we're from. And East sports is the same way. You don't need to get it. The numbers are there. It'd be a missed opportunity if every company is not looking at an Eastport strategy right now. and thoughtfully looking at one at that. Again, we've seen companies enter the space the wrong way

so many times and get burned for it. You could do more damage to your brain than good if you're lazy about this. The numbers are going to continue to go up. Whether linear TV is the option or the go-to? I don't know. This fan base didn't grow up watching linear TV. Most of them don't have cable.

You know, the majority of them don't have cable. They get their TV through. YouTube TV or Hulu or whatever. So everyone's like, well, how many channels are we going to have? Is there going to be a dedicated ESPN? Well, yeah, I mean, there is. And there's a couple companies trying to do that right now, then being one of them.

But there doesn't need to be. I don't need to turn on channel 37 and see e-sports because I have my computer anywhere in the world with the internet connection. It's greatly easier. Yeah, exactly. Well, Charles, man, really fascinating. I mean, I really appreciate your insights. your background.

I, you know, it makes me want to play like a game or something while we're talking. I did this. We thought to another guy like wanting to, throughout the old contra cheat code.

Yeah. If you remember it. It's like up, up, down, down. It is, ah, man. Love right, love right, VA start. Right. Yeah. You know, it brings back the memories.

but now it's so darn complex. Like my brain goes a little sideways, unless I'm playing like Rocket League or Matt, you know. And I mean, there's still people ask me like when I play all the time. And if I'm going to sit down and play a game, I like the single player story games because you can zone out and chill for a little bit. Yeah.

Like Legend of Zelda. It's a good time. You just chill for a couple hours and you play a game and you zone out for a little bit because multiplayer games can get really intense. And as a guy that played, it's hard for me to like, well, I don't want to use a Jordan example, but I'm going to go ahead and do it. Jordan doesn't play a pickup game and play a casual pickup game. That's not how Jordan operates.

So I was a really, really, really bad e-sports version of Jordan. Never had any success as a player, but I'm going to go ahead and say, I can't get the Jordan scenario and pick up game. Yeah. Well, I'm sure you're bad as a lot of people's good with the company you're keeping. So Charles, man, really appreciate the time. I know our listeners will enjoy it. And I hope you stay safe there in New York.

And if you travel through the Greenville area, let's stay in touch and we'll grab a beer or something. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Ryan, for having me. And thank you ever for listening. Really appreciate it. Great. Hey, guys, it's Ryan Alford.

Really appreciate everyone listening to this episode of the radcast. Follow along at the dot rad. dot cast on Instagram or at radical. That results. And we'll see you next time. To learn more about radical, visit radical.company on the web or follow Ryan on Instagram at Ryan Alford. Thanks for listening to the Radical Marketing Podcast.