Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - Esports Series ft. Magnus Leppäniemi

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

Ryan sits down with Magnus Leppäniemi, VP of Marketing and Head of Esports at Esports Entertainment Group. This is the first episode of several in the Radcast's Esports Series. Magnus and Ryan discuss the growth of Esports and it's many layers. Magnus breaks the ice in the categories of gambling in esports, sponsorships, and twitch. Follow along in our series! Instagram: @the.rad.cast and @RyanAlford | Visit our website for more https://www.radical.company/ For more information with Magnus and his work, visit https://esportsentertainmentgroup.com/ and www.vie.bet 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, it's Ryan Alford. Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast, the Radical Marketing Podcast. The first of a months long, we'll call it four to six weeks series on the up-and-coming segment that is e-sports, video gaming. As I have a Nintendo player growing up, you know, It excites me in a lot of ways, even though I have children at home that play way too much Fortnite, which I'm going to get into a little bit with our guest.

But really excited to talk about esports, the growth of it from a marketing perspective, the growth of it from a platform perspective. There's so many layers to e-sports, one of which I'm excited to get in with our guest today, Magnus Lepa Nemi. Am I saying it right, Magnus? We went over this pre-show, but I'm trying, man. Hi, Ryan. Yeah, you're doing good. You do really good. It works.

Good, good, good. He is the VP of marketing, the head of e-sports at e-sports entertainment group. And Magnus, really appreciate you coming on the Radcast today. Thank you for inviting me. And thanks for having me at the podcast. Great. You know, Magnus, I want to get into it as I was setting up a little bit for the episode. A lot of layers of e-sports really want to rack into your knowledge-based.

But I think we'll start with your background and business and industry in the esports arena. And then we'll kind of go down the path of e-sports gambling, which is going to be, I think, a fascinating topic for a lot of our listeners that don't realize the growth of that area. But, Magnus, if you could just start, let's hear a little bit about your background. Yeah, my background has been in sales and marketing for a long time. and actually started working with the selling Nintendo video games already back in the 19904 for the Nintendo Entertainment System there.

That's where it started. But that wasn't the ESPort at that time. I mean, I didn't know about ESPort at that case. But actually, a little bit later on, jump, make a jump, as I said, to 20, 28, 29 there when I was working at a Nordic distribution company called Pan Vision,

where Capcom was one of our clients that we worked with, and they released Street Fighter 4. That's where my first entry into e-sport was. And I was meeting actually the people over the Dreamhack that came to me and say, hey, you should do esports. It's huge. Fighting games are huge. I like,

ESport gaming. What is that? I heard about Dreamhack. And it's like, it's usually on the weekend. Why do I go there? I work Monday, Friday,

those kind of things. But that was my first entry into that space. And that's where I start working with those guys. It was Thomas Patrick and they're still at the, at the Dreamhack. They've been there for a long time. Really good meeting those guys to be there. So that's my entry.

And then I started at the Dreamack in 2013. Came from, actually from Panvision over then to Dreamack. And that was an interesting move. I met Stefan who hired him. He said, you're never going to have a day that looks the same when you started Dreamack. And it has been a crazy ride from when I'm starting. I mean, when I started Dream Mac, we were 13 people. I was number 14 there.

I think Greenmark did four, maybe six events that year. And then it actually took off. I mean, we entered into the U.S. markets in 2016. We did one event in Austin, 2017, three events. We added in Germany, France, Spain. It was crazy ride. So that's my whole thing there. And as I said, I've been working with partnerships for Dream Mac,

since that part, mainly focusing on the on the US side for Dreamack already in 2015, where I spearheaded Dreamax partnership saves for the US events coming in 2016. What's, you know, you said a keyword there that I'm going to call out because of how many quarters I spent at the arcade on Street Fighter. Like, do you, I mean, like, I think I could have started seven businesses with the amount of quarters I put in the machine. One of the greatest kind of, you know, I don't know, I'm not a platform,

but just game, enigmas of all time, was Street Fighter. I just remember. So you worked on Street Fighter 4? Yeah, we were on Street Fighter 4. Yeah, we launched that in the Nordics together with Capcom. I mean, it's crazy, as I said.

I mean, how big that game was. I mean, it feels like we're missing the Street Fighter. I think five years out, but it's not that big as it was at that part of that. But as I said, it's a game that really everybody can play, everybody can be there. Even if you're a bottom basher, as same as I am, I'm just hammering the bottom. So if you actually calculate the moves, you know how to do that, then, you know, the best people are even calculating the frames happening there. So it's crazy.

The fireballs that I would throw with kin, you know, I would take out bison before, like, you know, like all these character names are coming back to me. And I guess you have one special move that you always use. Oh, yeah. And then you run. Yeah. Well, I had at least three. I would pull that spinning kick off, like right in the perfect time.

And then no one had a chance except for some of the big players. But so what's, I mean, so where's, what are the big games, you know, now? Like, you know, my kids are playing Fortnite. I know a lot of the first person, third person, arena game shooter. get into some of, you know, those, but like League of Legends, Counter Strike. I know where's most of the activity? I know it's universal call C-sports, but is there segments that are going faster than others? I mean, as I said, I mean, saying esports, it's like saying sports,

so many different games in there. And usually it is the traditional ones that are the biggest one, League of Legends, Dota, Counter-Strike. Of course, the three biggest ones, that has the most viewerships, that has the most teams, it has a huge ecosystem for both tournament organizations or teams to survive and be in. And then you have the up-and-comments like, as I said, Fortnite is coming there, Overwatch League, Colodew League, those are also coming in there, as I said. And, sorry, Rocket League is a great game, but they're actually taking, building that ecosystem and Rainbow Sift, of course.

There are games that has been for a long time as the first three on the other ones are coming there. So I think it's great to see that there's more games coming into the, so to say, more ecosystems. Both tournaments, tournament organizations can survive, but also teams can be there. So that's great. But as I said, I would say an up-and-coming segment that we're going to watch and see more coming is the mobile games. that's going to be huge. I mean, not everybody can afford a high-end PC

that you need to compete in, in, in, in, in, in, in, everybody has a mobile and it gives you the same

capacity to play on. So I think that's the huge coming. And also with new games as Fortnite, a PubG Mobile or Call of Duty is there perfect. Those are really going to make sure that I think ESport on mobile is going to be the one that actually grows really fast here. Talk a little bit about your role now as head of e-sports at the company and the gambling side. Let's transition a little bit into that in your role.

I mean, as I said, esports entertainment has two entities right now. We bought Argyle, who is in UK traditional sports and casino besting. And then it's YGD, who's the e-sport betting part. We're not going to have the traditional sports books there. We're not going to have the traditional casino thing. It's all going to be e-sport and gaming. So that's something really building out there. We want to be the best.

So be the best, or the go-to sites when you want to bet on e-sports and gaming. So if you want to bet on the, if you are a gamer, you're probably going to look at the counter-strike or League of Legends or Dota games. You don't look at traditional sports. That's one of the categories we don't want to be.

And those are actually, They think about the games. They are very knowledgeable about the games. They know what they want to bet on. They also have that kind of in-game betting what's happening, what's going to be the next part, those kind of things. That's one of the target groups. And that's really interesting.

How can we talk to them? Is that to sponsorships? Is that through activations? How do we build that community? And that's one of the things you also want to see that we are we're building an esport community. We are a part of the esport community in there. What's the profile of the game?

I'm sorry to interrupt. What's the profile of the average gambler of e-sports? Is it a gamer themselves? I mean, it's two categories. One of the traditional one is that the people that play Counterstock, those are about 21, 24, and they want to bet on the games to know and the teams they vote for.

Really, you have those guys. And then you have the second one. The second one we're also talking about. And that's happened during the pandemic time, and those that used to bet on horse racing, racing games, NBA games. When that stopped, they didn't have anything to bet on. They really was looking for things to bet on. And it was like maybe some Division 2 in Peru or Division 2 in Belarus to bet on.

But then was e-sport. And there was still traditional sports running, but on the virtual way. You have the Formula One, you have the NASCAR, you have the NBA 2K League, you have the FIFA, you have the Madden. And people were moving into that and started betting on those things. because they understand the game. Because if you, if you, if you, if you, if you, if you never play Liga Ledyne, you will understand because it's tradition.

But if you look at, if you never play Ligo Ledyne or Carta, you don't understand what's happening. Yeah. What are you going to bet on? You can bet on who's going to win the game. That team look nice. That odds look nice. That's all.

You don't have that insight, what's happening in games, that part. That's where we see there's two things. People that, but, and the same goes. for the people that are betting on League of Legends or Dota, they won't bet on traditional sports because that's too casual for them. They don't care about that stuff. So that's, those are the two things we see there.

What's the highest, what's the number one game that's bet on in the US? Counter strike is number one. Yeah. Yeah. Counter strike is by far the biggest one of those three. I would say Counter strike, league and Dota are the two big.

response. And then how far behind are the traditional sports of NBA 2K or, you know, Madden or something like that? And is it like a distant 10th and 12th or is it like, are they right there behind them? No, it's a distant. There's a big distant there. Even if it, even if it, it was a pick, those, those, those gains grow during the pandemic, but it's not closest to CSCO, because that's, that's the biggest by far. People know that and they understand. stand the game also. So I think that's that is the biggest one. Yeah. So there's there is, I would say

there's a lot of a lot of ground for those to cover to actually to be at the same level there. I'm going to ask a question that I wish I knew the answer to, but just assume the answer is yes. Is it 100% legal in the

US to gamble online on e-sports? No, no, it's not. I mean, If you're going to gamble in the gambling license, you need, it's 52 states. There's 52 licenses to do that. So if there's no, not every state has a license where it's actually open up for betting in every country. We are looking to get the New York license.

Hopefully we get that soon. So that's coming there. But then it's only for people that actually within New York that can bet and use our things. But if people are logging on with a VPN to service in whatever other country, that's possible to do that. But as I said, but it's not, it's not legal in that way,

I would say. So right now, it's not legal for anyone in the US to gamble on e-sports. I don't think, there's not, there's not any US entities that are offering esports bets,

I would say. Yeah. In the US market. If you're based out of California, if you're based in Denver, I would say, you can't bet on account as you have, the casinos that offers that things to do that.

So that's not. But you can bet on it. I guess it's not illegal if you go outside and use an foreign betting service. But there's no American ones that are offering Eastport betting. Okay. That's what I was asking though. Like, I mean, if I go to a site like a rivalry or like, you know, some of these other, I think players that are going up, if I visit them from the U.S.

and I place bets there, I mean, is I'm. I guess I'm, I think a lot of these rules are being written as we speak, aren't they? Yeah, I mean, yeah, they are. I think it's, that's all, all companies can see that that thing is pretty lucrative for them. And I think it is, it needs to be regulations and those kind of regulations and rules in place to make sure that best thing works and it's not, there's no shady business, whatever. So I think that's one of the things we're really working for to make sure that we are on the side and we don't have any gray market those kind of things.

We want to actually have the license in the U.S. it's able to offer bets in New York for the people living there. And then we look, of course, at other states to do that. So we want to be that. And I think that's also part where we have that when we're listing on a NASDAQ, we want to be the most transparent betting company in the U.S. on that part. Of course, we need to be there because we have the SEC watching over us what we're doing

and checking our books and all that thing, but also with a multiple license. They can also check our books 24-7. So we can't do any gray market things. But we just want to make sure that we are doing the right thing there. I don't think people have completely gotten their heads around the scale of all of these things. Even myself, you know, I have four boys under the age of 10. They all love video games.

They play. at some point in this interview, I'm going to ask, you know, can they actually make a career out of this? So hold your answer to feel later. Can they actually, can they make their parents rich doing this? No, I'm kidding. But so hold your answer to that. But I don't think from the events to the teams, you know, like,

you know what you know. And you're into circles that you are. But as this has grown, seeing the followings that the players have, that these teams have, the whole ecosystem of this is hard to even get. As someone in the business of these kind of things, like myself, it's hard to get your head around just how big it is. It is huge, as I said. It is a several billion dollar industry. I'm not sure how many billion dollars it is, but it's huge and all that.

And as I said, there's teams that are trying to make money participating in league. and in tournaments to have the earnings and of course there's the players that are the superstars and making some greatos and making some huge money on doing that and then of course yeah and then you the tournament organizations

that try to sell in the sponsorships and trying to get the exposure in that they also have some things where they make money and then you have of course don't forget the influencers the guys they also it's part of that the ecosystem also providing that some of the people are former

pro players and some of the pro players and some of the pro players I also need to do a streaming or trying to be in flats. So there's a lot of ways in this to make money. And it is, as I said, it's a huge business for everyone to be there. But of course, there are still some things where I think the business needs to grow. And I think it can learn a lot from the traditional sports. I mean, there's still some gaps there for how do you go from your sons going to them again? How do they go from there being at their bedroom to the big stages?

what's the steps, what the leagues they're going to play. And that's not, that route is not really set there. But if you play basketball or you play football, it's like you start a minor, juniors, all those steps, that's not in e-sports. That's where we need to, we need to build that within esports so people can find their different way to be better and find a way to compete in.

And that's why we need more leagues. We need not just, a lot of the ESPort tournaments are for the big, for the big, for the big tier one teams, the biggest teams. But they, maybe that's 25 teams in Counterstrike, but there's so many others. How can we make them successful? How can they grow?

How can we get more people playing in Counterstack? I can make a living out of that. If you look at traditional sports, where you have your hockey, NHL, AAHL, all those things differently. And if that doesn't work, you go fly over to Europe and then you have several leagues never come to the playing. But that's not the esport,

can't build that part yet. And I think that's what we need, really, that's what the Eastport need to do. Take, take some of these, the best things for our traditional sports and make sure that we move that into the Eastport. So you have all these different leagues and different levels to play in. Because everybody can't go from the bedroom to the big stage area, or if it's the Cologne, or if it's in Shanghai or whatever. That's a huge step.

What are the middle ones and how can you find the career or route there? Yep. I think you nailed it because I've wondered that. myself, like my kids are playing or doing whatever. And I'm like, it does just seem like, again, from someone that's not in it every single day, this leap from average casual, either the average casual player or you're the superstar at the events, you know, it just doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of middle ground. But it's interesting, you know, transitioning a bit to like the marketing side of things and the sponsorship

and all of that. I mean, big brands have gotten, you know, into this space, obviously, in the U.S. side especially. I mean, I know it's worldwide, but, you know, I think you're seeing more of it from the U.S., see Nike getting into the space, seeing, you know, a lot of those brands. I mean, what's your perspective, you know, on the sponsorship, partnership side with brands and, you know, as a second part maybe to that? How, I, I, I, I struggle a little bit with knowing and seeing the growth of this and wondering how the small to medium brands get involved. You know, the money's gotten so huge. I see how Nike and Adidas and, you know, insert, you know, Monster Energy or whoever that makes, you know, sense that has gotten involved in this.

But I don't know what the baby step is for smaller to medium brands. Maybe it's hosting tournaments. I don't know. but you know, two-part question there. I mean, for the big brands, it's a way to talk to, as I say, get involved and talk to the community, be a part of that community. Because how are you going to reach, if you're 18 to 20, 18 to 30? I mean, usually traditionally was if you're marketing, I did that a lot of times.

I was marketing new games, if the new Sonic game or if it's a new, as I said, part of that was street fight to go for that. We bought, you bought banner ads, you bought ads in magazines and you bought, and if you want to be really crazy and cool with the campaign, you bought TV ads. But none of that, if you're 18 to 35, you don't watch TV anymore. And maybe I think we, when I was a Dream Act, we had a, we're looking at the numbers and people spent like six minutes per day watching tradition TV. But they spent, but they spent 74 or 75 minutes on watching YouTube or Twitch instead. So where are you going to put your money?

That's where you're going to put it in. That's how you get engaged. And esport is one of the things where you can actually get that engagement. And it's also something with these brands know. And I can know whether it is to sponsor a team or a player because they've done that in basketball. They've done that in football or whatever. So that's something they know.

And I think that's the big thing for them to get in, meet that new target group. They can't use the traditional way because those, are dead there there's nobody watching that and also if you do banner ads some people they have they have ad lockers you're missing that out too so how do you this is a great way to do that but of course it comes down to a little bit of intensity what are you doing not just coming in and plus your logos everywhere because that's not work you actually need to do some as a you need to do something for the community how can you be an abler for something doing that that's one of the key things for for brands to get into these but even small or big ones i think that's that's that's that's that's a

a thing to do there for them. So as I said, there's a couple of great example you mentioned Nike. I also think what ESL did together with Mercedes, how they actually, I would say gave them the hands, hey guys, follow us. We will show you a way

into e-sport how to work that and where they start and work in smaller ways, creating some activations for them. Like what Mercedes-know put that in, providing the players with the ride in Mercedes and they have like their favorite at Spotify playlist playing when they get into the car,

those kind of things. They made commercials with the teams, those kind of things. I know they also, they have a Mercedes on stage. Classical things that actually is, the company knows what it is, and they understand it.

So you don't have to go and talk about how does it tournament work, how's the bracketing work, what's it sport. I mean, that's not kind of. And then ESL together and Mercedes developed that part. The same they did with DHS. I think that's another one. They actually are really good on that partnerships there and also make them create a lot of involvement.

The AHL or Mercedes is a part of the whole activation of the events there. So those are, I think, two good examples with the team over at ESL, with those two mega brands that are not traditionally anything into esports. And also the shoes again where they actually can, they feel comfortable really, Because usually it's all putting, let's go counterstack. It's one of the biggest one, and it's easy to understand. But then you have all the violence experts coming in there. How do you as a Mercedes going to tell to your people that, yeah, I'm going to sponsor a game,

but somebody gets shot in the head. It's terrorists and counter terrorists and all those. It's like France. No, that's not a discussion. We can't take that. We don't know how to answer to the community or to the people asking those questions. And even if the players doesn't see that there's a shooting somebody in health, it's a team game, it's team tactics, everything like those kind of things.

It's the same. I mean, it's not just running around. They're doing everything with the purpose. They know what they're doing. They're putting things over there. The smoke is going over there because it's going to block them or those kind of things. It is a really tactical game there. It's the same as soccer.

You know, the bowl needs to go into goal. But then there's all this different tactics, all this different kind of plays you need to do. that's the same in this case for a counterstrike. But it's easy to understand there. And looking for a medium, smaller, I mean, smaller brands that are still cheap to get into e-sports, compared to what it costs to sponsor an NBA team or whatever. What is cost to buy in and whatever.

It's still cheap. Of course, the prices have gone up over a couple of years. But I think there's still room for the prices to really grow there because the value get out of that, the viewership, the engagement you get from the fans, because if you do it right, the lobby you're going to get from the fans in the community. It's huge on that because they really appreciate the company coming in,

doing something for them, making sure that they can actually see that e-sport or gaming is something serious for them, not just people that come in and like, oh, you just play games. You don't have anything to do. You just go out and do something else. Exactly for them competing, it's something they want to do there. There's something they want to look at. We have to do that.

But I think for those guys, I think it's a smaller step that's not necessarily running tournaments, but you can sponsor tournaments, so you can sponsor players, you can look at your local teams, how can we get them out there run, give them a baseline to grow and hire the players, trainers, the team to be better, those kind of things. And of course, there's traditional sponsorship that helps, but also you can do a lot of activation around the sponsors, it's not just having that logo plus every way. How can you work with that tournament organizations to get the best thing? What activations can you do?

What things can you provide it? I think it's always going to talk to people there that you want to sponsor activate. What are you looking for? How can we help you? That's a good question to start with. Then tell you, and then they're going to tell you how you can do that. And then you can tell these are the goals I want to meet. What are the KPIs I have?

these sort of things we need we need hit and that's a good starting point for talking about it talk about maybe a few more of like your day what's your day to day looking like what's your day-to-day activity you know as the head of e-sports and on the gambling side you know what are some of the the you know maybe kPI is for you or where you're you're trying to take things um with the entertainment group yeah i mean i only been have a four weeks. You don't have it all figured out yet? Come on.

I should have. One of the things we are, of course, one of the things I'm, we're building out the plan. I mean, YGD, our platform for esport petting is new. Nobody knows that. So we need to build a brand awareness. How can we do that? How can it be, get people to know our brand name? And of course, one of the thing that I know is working with is sponsorship.

So we're looking to sponsor, we're looking to do some sponsorship leaves. tournaments, we're looking to do with teams. So that's one of the things. Of course, we're looking at what is the best teams to sponsor. What are games we want to get into that? So that's something we are investigating. We are talking to teams, tournament organizations, and looking at what are our best options to get our brand name out there.

And the second one is, of course, conversions. Everybody, we need people to start betting on the games. We need to do that. So that's also how can we build the brand, and then move this to conversions and to people playing on our platform. So those are the things. And of course, that's the YDD, but also then we are looking at how can we, Esports Entertainment Group is not betting us as one vertical that we have.

We also look at other verticals within Esport because esport is so, there's a huge umbrella. There's different parts there. So we are looking at what are the different, what are the other verticals we're going to enter into within Esports? That's also something we've been looking at. So it's hard to fight fraud in sports. That's, I mean, I mean, it's, you know, I mean, it's almost regulated now. I mean, the bigger sports, you know, are so regulated and, you know,

if some NBA player was tanking, you'd know it. But I would think in these sports, at least in the early, it's not the early stages, it's been around a long time. But it's, you know, in the early stages of the gambling portion. that would be a concern I mean of course I mean I would say with any sport people it has been cheating it is

regularly if you look in every new game there's sheets happening it is wall hacks where different things that happen so that of course that that creates a lot of I mean for we providing odds on on games where we don't know is we need there's an

do we know there's an anti sheet in there so people can't cheat on those kind of things so we need to be sure that that every those kind of things are at play And then we also have all the people that are betting that are exploiting, exploiting if we have any missed anything in our offer terms that we're doing at. Of course, that happens too. So you need to be cautious and what the things you're doing and providing to the market. And I mean, we have been running some campaigns that people have tried to exploit.

And we have to say no. We have to block those or say no to those guys because they are not using it as in the terms. that we wanted to be there. And then we, of course, we said no, and then we have to cancel, some kind of the campaigns there. But it's different where we run campaigns to do things, and then you have the esport things also where there can be,

people can, you have that in traditional sports where people are going to take a dive or they can forfeit them out or lose a game purpose just because they're better on something like that. But I think esport has taken a lot of precautions against cheating and those. kind of things. And so those are the two things we also are, of course, looking at.

How can we take care of those things? As I said, but then it's also building the esports entertainment brand is in different verticals. We want to just not want to be a betting brand. We want to be more about esports and entertainment part. If it could be production tournaments, it could be tournament platforms. It's a lot of things we're looking at that we're going to dive in to do that. Is in the U.S.

you know, I know worldwide counterstrike, League of Legends and all that. I actually have one of my good friends that I've worked with for a long time, and we actually did a radio show together back in the day. He's the voice of NBA 2K. He's on ESPN2 regularly now. On Tuesday nights, they do the league games. And so my perspective has been grounded a lot in the sports. I played sports growing up in the sports game, played Madden in all of those.

games. But as teams go and as the popularity of things, is it still is slanted towards those Counterstrike League of Legends, even in the U.S., as far as the players and teams and all of that stuff? I mean, usually the teams, if you look at Dignitas or you look at Cloud 9 or you look at other U.S. team, they usually have, they have some. several, they play in several games. So they usually have, if you look at Big Muitas, for example, they have a Counter-Strike team, they have a League of Legends team,

they have a Rocket League team. So they're trying to be in a lot of games there and trying to be competitive in that. So it's not just that you're a big unit as a Counter-Strike team. They actually have more teams where they're playing in. So that's where they can actually gain more fans than like the Rainiers because that's just hockey.

I mean, there's no New York Rangers basketball team as the Knicks, whatever. So I think that's where they can gain a lot of more fans, a lot of more engagement than just having, because if you don't care about soccer, or sorry, hockey, you don't care about the Rangers. But if you don't care about the counter strike, but I care about League of Lenters, I can still be a dignitary fan. Or if I don't care about those two by a Rocket League fan, I still care about dignity. So that's where they actually gain more fans in there. That's, I think, an interest in mechanics, how it can be active in different games and still be relevant, even if people don't like that type of game.

Now, that Rocket League I can get into. Now, I play that with my kids. Yeah, I don't know what it is. It's the weirdest thing when I saw them playing it a couple years ago. I was like, the strangest thing, you know, using cars and everything else to push the balls in the thing and things blowing up. I was like, this is the strangest mismatch of things. But, God, it's fun. It's simple. It's simple. I mean, it's, it's, it's a simple game. The ball needs to go on the

and you have a car to drive that and you can do some crazy shit with that car. Yeah. I mean, I love that game and it's, I think that's a perfect game where it's actually can be super competitive but also a cash-up. Yeah. You do something we have played with your friends in the sofa. I don't want to say drinking beer, but I'm saying that. Oh, no, we'll drink some beer. I'm drinking a beer when I'm playing. You can, of course, do soft drinks also, and you can do things, whatever.

You can do a monster or you can do a beer, whatever. But it's like hang around playing game, and you can do that. I think that's the beauty of that game. It is that simple and it's easy to play on that. Yeah. You know, as we kind of close out here, I think one topic that's probably important that I know is fueled a lot of the growth, which is when you, and you mentioned it earlier, Twitch.

fascinating. You know, again, back to these layers, who would have thought? And I guess having watched my kids now, it doesn't surprise me and, you know, enjoying watching other people. But that whole voyeurism of who would have known how popular it would be, I guess to watch other people play video games. But that has really exploded, you know, the growth of it. And I'd love to know just your overall perspective on Twitter. and, you know, that layer. I mean, Twitch is a layer. I think that's, I mean, they've been wiping the competition for a while.

I mean, mix is shut down, move over to Facebook. So it's going to be in a lot of what Facebook gaming is doing. I mean, Twitch, what you call it, status is dominant. They're like the number one for esporting, even going or live shows, I would say, because it's not just the esports. It actually, all the influencers, like, I mean, go, in there, Tim the Tatman or his lyric, those guys, or Dr. Visorspect, they are there and people come to watch those guys play. It's interesting. So I think Twitch has a dominant place in the

market, and I think they're still going to continue doing that. But there will be other platforms and not sure, Facebook's going to do that, but it's growing that part because it's, that's how the young kids are consuming content today. It's not, I mean, if you put a TV remote and so six, six, eight, eight year old kids. They're going to start. I can't do that. I can't scroll.

I can't do that. I can, I can't post that. I can, it's commercial. How can I get past that? They don't, they don't see, they don't watch linear TV anymore. It's the way how to consume it.

If it's YouTube or if it's Twitcher, which are the biggest one, I think it will continue for a while doing that. I mean, prechester has a lot of competitors that hasn't survived there. So we'll see what happens there. Is, you know,

I mentioned it earlier. I've given you, you know, roughly 30 to 40 minutes to think about it. So can my kids become the next simple or, let's see if I can challenge some of my big gamer names in the space. But can they get there? And how do they get there? And is it like the, you know, what is it the chances of your, you know, your child playing? And like, you know, I'll speak to U.S.

Like the NFL is like 0.01% like you're going to make it. Is it, is the odds that that's stacked against that they, it can become a career or are these like actual avenues? I mean, there are actual avenues. I can see there's a, I mean, there's a lot of new businesses growing. I mean, there's like something, I mean, as I said, they were playing Fortnite and look at Guga who is 16. He won three million dollars. Yeah. Thank you.

I mean, I guess he spent a lot of time playing games. So they need, I mean, it's all about dedication and commitment. How much can they play? And I think it comes to the parent is like, oh, you can't. eight hours you need to go out. The thing is they have all friends online. They don't, when they go out, nobody's out there. So like, who are they going to hang with?

All the people are doing that. But the thing is, you, you never say if the kids go out and hang in their park, right, I was still like, good, you're out. But the thing is, if they play eight hours video games, it's going to be a lot of noise about that. But I think that's the thing's changing. If you, I mean, they have avenues to do that. I think there's a lot of things they can do that way.

Play more video games. be competitive, train about that. And there's like something I heard about in the US where it's like people are paying somebody to come home to be a tutor's to play how to play a fortnight in the best way to do that. So that's something good.

And I heard they were paying like 400 bucks an hour to get that people in. I like, okay. I also made some, I'm an e-sport, but I made a wrong career movie. I should be competitive in Stan. So it is.

But I think it's, you need to practice. It's all those hours. You look at the game and look at all the players that are spending eight to ten hours per day playing that game. And the thing is you need to focus on one game. You can't be fortnight and can't be counterstrike and a league of lead. It has to be one game and you have to like that game. They can, but it's a small chance to be as good and coming into tournaments and playing for that.

What was it, three million at the Arthur Ashe Stadium last year? crazy van anything any perspective on valerant you've heard of that uh that game i mean is it sort of following the fortnight model that's such an interesting you know someone you know that's making a lot of money with the uh thinking through the economies of these things let's charge 80 dollars a game no let's just give them all away and sell dances and content and everything else and make even more money that that whole that whole free free to play sort of model. It's that crazy.

I mean, it is that free-to-pay model has been the most successful because if you pay $69 for a game, you're not paying anymore because you think you're only to pay and you're not supposed to pay anymore, but the thing is you get a game for free and then you're buying, as I said,

the skins, the downs, it's a T-shirt, and now you're spending actually $1,000 or $2,000 for that because it's like, and it's all those micro-transactions. It's only five bucks here, it's five bucks there, five bucks. It's like 20 bucks per day, and then it's for a whole year. You're in there.

So I think it's, for them, it's a smart move, and it doesn't cost anything to create this, the usual t-shirt or skin or dance. It's small costs for doing that, but it's, I said that people love that, and then you create some awareness around it, and they make some part of that limited and all that. Then you get the prices up.

Look at CSGO, and all the skins for the weapons, where somebody's worth value at 25 cents and somebody's value at 25,000 dollars. Yeah. But it's the same big skin. What's the difference there? But it's like it's somebody, it's only five out there. It's rare and it's cool and all that. So I think that's where they actually, that's the money.

That's a money maker for them. Looking at Valorant, I think that's, it's going to, it's going to grow. I think I haven't really. And that's where maybe I need to invest a little bit more, how they're going to do that. Are they building the same way as they did with League of Legends? having their own series building that up or they're actually going to use third party tournament organizations to run that as a CSGO.

Maybe they haven't, maybe they have decided, maybe they haven't. I haven't seen that, but I think it's interesting. But I would say that Valorant campaign has been one of the best thing done for launching a new game. Of course, it's one of the biggest players in the industry. And they have that power to do that. but as I said, people were going crazy about getting those beta codes, hanging, watching people play that game.

I mean, looking at the numbers, they racked up for their first week there to get in there. They were crushing Twitch numbers. So it was crazy. But I think that was a really good campaign and smart move, not have to spend that much. I mean, of course, they got to spend some money on influence playing games. I said, right guys, but it's been worth a lot of four-dammed. So great launch campaign for Valerant.

And I'm looking forward. I'm looking forward to see what they can do within e-sport. And I know there's a lot of teams that have started to pick up building their own teams to be there. So it's coming there. We're going to see how it's going to compete with CSCO. I mean, because I think that's the volunteers competitor for now. So we'll see. Yeah.

What, um, where's it all going? I mean, you know, like I, it's like in some ways it's, it's, like I said, I've known about it for a long time. I have friends in the business, but in some ways it still feels so nascent, you know, as a industry. You know, what's the crystal ball say? Isn't that the good thing with this industry? It goes so fast and you don't know where it's going. Even if you go, when I started in 2013 and Dream Mac, I mean, PubG, Fortnite, that wasn't even a genre there. Nobody heard about battle real games.

It came a couple of years later. Now it's huge. Now we actually look at Fortnite. Biggest game, I would say, one of the biggest games. It runs concerts. It's more a game and a social platform. I think that's the cool thing with this industry. You don't know where it's going.

The only thing you know it's going to be growing, it's going to be bigger. And it's going to become new ideas, new things to test. And that's what I like to be in this. Because the difference between. in 2013 and 2020 is huge. I mean, so many things happening and looking at that. When entering into e-sports

and I think Riot did their first, a League of Legends find that remack summer. I don't know if it was 2009, 29 or something like that. It was like a hundred square meter boots. And like a year ago, they sold out the whole Beijing Olympic Stadium Burst Nest there. I mean, that's huge.

That's 40, I don't know, 40, 50,000 people come in a van compared to the Dream Act that have maybe 40, 50 people. And it's only, it's maybe just 10 years between point A and point B there, so it's saying. So that's what I think. It's hard to say what we are in Christobal. I think we'll see more games. We see more formats. Not just PC console. We actually see mobile.

I think that's going to be something that really grows and coming big here. I'll leave you. with a secret code. 007-37359663. I think that's right. That's coming straight off memory. This wasn't planned. That is the code to go straight to Mike Tyson

and Mike Tyson's punchout on Nintendo. I remember it since my childhood, kind of like up, up, down, down, left right, left right, VA, Star for what game? Contra. Yeah. But if you want to go straight to Mike Tyson's punchout on Mike Tyson, anyone listening, go to that code.

You probably could Google it and find it anyway. But that's straight from memory from when I was a 10-year-old and got my first Nintendo and literally beat Mike Tyson the first night because I played for like 12 hours straight. And, you know, that was me. Between that and Legend and Zelda, it was dangerous. Isn't crazy all the memories you have playing great games and what it gives you and all the fun enjoy you had?

Because I was also mentioned when I was at a company. but called Panvision. When Xbox 360 came out, we started playing Rainbow Sixth, Siege. I mean, we spent so many hours that people just went home, you know, had been with a family,

and at 8 o'clock to midnight, everybody was, yeah, family, goodbye, see you, you're sitting there with your first online playing that game and people shouting at a child. You can throw a flashbang in my face and coming back, you need to do that. Had so much fun.

I would play that crazy, and then more than, Warfare came out with, even more on that one, but it's great. As I said, it creates memories and it creates friends, you can hang with them. And now you're having friends with all over the world with two games or using Discord services or playing games. It's crazy, as I said. And the next generation is looking at Fortnite, looking at that Travis Scott, you're going to concert in the game, as I said.

And then you have the number code there. It's not that many years between those. I mean, maybe, what is it? Maybe 20. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Well, Magnus, man, really appreciate you coming on, the Radcast. And let's do it again maybe in another six to 12 months.

Love to get you back on, talk more about where things are going with the gambling side. And just really appreciate your perspective. Yeah, let's do that. I think if you talk six to 12 months, I think we're going to be with the Eastport and the team of group. It's going to be a lot of progress, a lot of things happening there. I mean, we have a lot of things in the pipeline. So really looking forward to come back with it in 6012 months to talk to you again. And thanks for having me.

It was an awesome time. Great. Thanks so much, Magnus. Hey, guys, this is Ryan Alford. Really enjoyed today's episode with Magnus talking at e-sports, the growth of gambling, the growth of tournaments, gaming, sponsorships. We unpacked a lot today. Follow along at radical.company or radical underscore results on Instagram.

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.