Right About Now with Ryan Alford - 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. 

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 condensed version, maybe i say that because we keep these to 30 to 40 minutes uh i know anyone uh anyone's life story or business life story might could be longer but would love to just dig first in kind of your background in esports and just kind of the the general career path for you absolutely uh so i'll make it as condensed as possible

16 years of my life but uh yeah and in 1999 as a player playing counter-strike uh you know found this game online uh with some buddies and we found out that there were live events to participate for cash in this in this thing so put a little team together my friends we drove down to dallas texas uh 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 from 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. 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 US. 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 uh and at that point i was putting my full force behind it i was quite young at the time i started the company when i was 16 wow so when i was 18 is when i you know 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. That's certainly a high point of my life. And they... Every 19-year-old's dream. old stream literally yeah i was like it's crazy and uh they're like what are you here for i'm like i'm part of the video game team you know um this is before it was cool do you have your fake id i didn't need it i didn't need it guardian

you know yeah all right uh so that was pretty, 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 LA, plus your per diem and your car. And these guys went from making 500 bucks a month as players to 30,000 a year for an eight-week season. So we're living in LA for eight weeks, filming this TV show.

My team didn't do so well season one we we killed it season two came back and we're the strongest competitors in the league um but it's just a real experience so this was on tv around the world um they then expanded internationally they built the league a little too fast too soon uh and burned through about 45 million dollars in two years wow i don't have a season three yeah it was it was really over the top they took esports from all right we're gonna pay you guys 500 bucks a month and it's a very niche thing to let's go as hard as we can let's get nfl producers let's get nascar guys involved uh and it was awesome it was just a little too early yeah no wait uh so that shut down really

abruptly and it was sort of a dark time for USC sports because people felt News Corp and DirecTV 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. 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 is sort of an iconic figure in esports 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 wanted to do this full-time. We're 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 I 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 golfrag.com, which was the ESPN.com of esports. We got together and we started this team. I literally walked CES with a pitch book, like a pitch 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 the organization,

relaunch it, I should say, and we were off to the races. Once we were back as really the only North American independent esports 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. 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. All of our partners would work with us

to have our players test products and optimize them for gaming. And then 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 turned complexity into a real business. We're all doing it full time. And then after a lot of success in the space,

Twitch came out and the viewership numbers for eSports really became apparent to brands out there. And a ton of money, once Twitch came out, a ton of outside money from sports teams started coming into esports. And it happened fast, man. We're talking nine months. All these teams went from ideas to 15, 20 million dollars in funding. 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. And they needed to shift at that point because we were operating on like a $3 million a year budget versus teams that had a $12 million a year budget.

And they were getting cash after being around for two months. You know, we've been around since 03. 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, you know, Complexity being the oldest brand in North America appealed to a lot of brands. We ended up selling the company to the Dallas Cowboys, which was an insane process. You know, there's a lot of parts of that process that are 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 then 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 it was crazy their vision for the team overall won out because they fully integrated the team in the Cowboys system. There's eat with the Cowboys for breakfast and lunch. They have the same mental health 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. Once the Cowboys purchased the team, I was out and my partner Jason Bass was out and then Lake who you know 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 Complex is absolutely killing it they've arguably the best counter-strike team in the world right now and they won the Madden Championship last year and so they're

doing great things for the Cowboys there yeah which brings us to today hopefully this wasn't too long that was perfect um and i was i left gaming for about a year because i've been in since i was 16 i was now 30 at the time uh and i just need a little break ended up opening a restaurant in new york doing something completely different. Had a blast, but really missed the industry I frankly was one of the forefathers of. So I had a few offers to come back and a buddy of mine at the Switch talked to me about what they do. And what the Switch does is we're the world's largest transmission broadcaster. 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 a covet america obviously well covet, really, not producing on-site has become very popular. So we've been doing a ton of remote production for the PGA, for Conference USA, in the traditional world. And we're the world leader in esports now in infrastructure and transmission. So almost every live esports event is using us in some way. So it's been really exciting.

I've been there for a year, building 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. You 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 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, having been somewhat of a gamer when I was younger and following it peripherally, being in an agency world where we had some sponsorship deals and 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? Weren't just football. The Giants also had Giants baseball. The Giants also had Giants soccer. And that's how gaming works for the most part. There's 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 it ball and hoop game that 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

mobas which are the games you see with the up top view and the little guys running around yeah 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 Counter-Strike. 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 call it. And how does complexity make money?

So there's a lot of different ways to make money for an esports team. The most traditional way is just 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 example Mountain Dew knows that this is an affluent group that 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. young people everything's all young males it's actually a lot of females that watch gaming uh you're looking at 14 to 45 uh higher disposable income than an nba fan higher disposable income than actually most sports fans um and they don't watch tv they don't you know read traditional like papers so how do you get these guys you You get them on their eyeballs. Their eyeballs are on Twitch. Their eyeballs are on, 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 the space um 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 in the team colors and they had the guys doing driving tricks and talking about why they like bmw um 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 what's the starting bmw like 40 grand 50 grand like yeah that's not out of the reach for this market that's actually very much in line with

with these guys that uh you know are 22 23 actually probably work in a tech space or, you know, make more cash than, you know, your, your average citizen. And, you know, they have a little bit more money to spend and they're willing to spend it. They're willing to put it into premium products. Uh, if you, if you target them the right way. Is the words IT, uh, in the title for 80% of this demographic? No, I mean, a lot of people would think that, right. But, uh, e-sports fans are just like any other sports fan. Like they, they enjoy what they like to enjoy. They do, you know, everything under the sun. Um,

and I think there's a very common misconception to all live in their mom's basement and are. I teed that up. Cause I think that's what people think, know and i it's so far from the truth it's like totally and it's it's just like an nfl fan right come in all shapes and sizes um 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 look to the gym a little bit more than you. Let's go to the gym. You ship a little bit more than I do. Hey, I got to make up for all my other deficiencies 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 of sponsorship. So it's less about putting teams together. Now, obviously winning, you know, the fun 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, uh, interesting point. So there's, 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 on media rights for these tournaments. Uh, and when three or 4 million people are concurrently watching, that can be real money. And I think the future of esports income for these teams are in media 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.

Fnatic just did a deal with Gucci to do a limited edition watch. And stuff like that sells because it's limited. And again, 100 Thieves, FaceClam, 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 fan base is rabid for new stuff. So there's a lot of ways to make money outside of just winning.

And I'll use FaZe 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 um what team was that again phase clan they're called okay so they have like i think probably i could look right now but like eight million instagram

um 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 esports. 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. You know, there's a lot of teams I could name right now that are not winning, that are huge brands. Hey, I'm a Knicks fan. It's tough, man. It is tough. If you want to go to the garden, it's still 250 for a ticket. And you're like, man, they're the worst team in the league. What's the matter?

Yeah. Yeah. It's tough. Yeah. Then the brand's huge regardless of if they haven't won in 20-something years, right? Yeah. It's tough. But I know.

I tried to – I became a quasi-New York fan living there for all the teams. And it was not the best of time periods for the baseball was good but you know Yankees will always be interesting right yeah yeah exactly is um the media rights that's fascinating you know Twitch kind of set this fuse of fire I guess in many ways correct you know, 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.

Are they? So Mixer rolled into Facebook. Mixer, is that what's shut down and 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 Overwatch and Call of Duty leagues,

which are Blizzard's 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, et cetera. But their media rights 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, etc. So they, as part of that, get a piece of that deal, right? Twitch did not renew that deal and uh they went out to get the league went out to get a reported 160 million for uh a two-year deal two or three-year deal depending on who you talk to uh with youtube so you 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. 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, 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 uses the example of Ninja because 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 bull can he's one of the faces of samsung um i mean he's getting paid five hundred thousand dollars in appearance so for him to show up in an event and put it 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, and again, my counter strike is going to be 20 grand a month. So that's 240, 250 plus prize money. So your player is making 500 grand a year, 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 my esports buddies my um so in other words i had the same discussion on a previous guest i should keep encouraging my kids to play them sounds like the the opportunity is there you know i get that question a lot probably every delta flood i'm on when i sit next to someone 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'm not gaming not ever they play they they're still kind of in the fortnight 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 yeah you know i mean 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 coming out with a ton of uh 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 in and like, you know, I mean, I don't coddle my kids. I mean, daddy's not always had the perfect mouth, but at the same time, but there's been some bad players in the gaming space. I think as far as just the, from language to like you said, some, 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 like 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 e-sports 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. It's 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, is willing to spend it and is energized excited and will help your brand out in digital space retweeting you following your facebook page etc etc and help your 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 to medium business to have an NBA, you know, sponsorship, you know, like, or in a 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, how do you bite off organic, real,

but small chunks for small to medium businesses? Are those opportunities out there? Cause I think a lot of brands in that medium size, small is all in their 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 evangelizing brand or a couple streamers and then activating them in really cool ways. If a brand's creative and they're smart and 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 a COVID world, we kind of have to. And gamers are smart. They appreciate like 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 if you activate that talent in the right way um 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 uh talk about that platform um i'm gonna 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 of

the va2k 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 uh espn2 so just go to the end showing the growth of this watching virtual basketball um but i'd love to know like is is what the Switch's role, in watching something like that broadcast, like ESPN2, 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. Go 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 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, that's where you have the other one, but hopefully it doesn't go down. It's not going to get hacked. A big thing in esports, because it's a very technologically literate group,

is, you know, DDoS attacks and things of that nature. You can really mess with an event. Since this never hits the public internet, you can't do that. That's not a challenge to anyone out there. I'm just saying, you can't do that. Yeah, we don't enable any hackers out there. Exactly.

So once you have that private internet, they can use that for their event. We can then put it on our network, which you can distribute to an ESPN or to one of our 800 US partners or partners around the world. we can then put it on our network which is you know you can distribute to an espn or or to one of our 800 us partners or partners around the world um so once on our network you can put 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 um 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 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 pool feed, 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, anywhere in the world 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 next to bolts we can allow you entire event next to Bolts. We can allow you to use our cloud-based production product or one of our remote control rooms. You know, people traditionally bring 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 your T&E budget but just getting sick and wearing out your people and so these guys are waking up they go into the control room in Burbank they're cutting the show and they're going back to their own vets and that's going to be I think a very 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 esports, we're obviously utilizing those. The cloud-based product has been super popular. 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 eSports space. Is that self-serve? Yeah. So you basically would book a time slot. Um, and it, not it could be any time slot. We can have as many instances running at one time. Um, 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. Uh, and you're cutting a show 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 call like 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 um yeah i think the price point is 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 answer is 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 control 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. 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 um what's your day-to-day role um as far as growing esports within switch you know like what's no you 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 esports for the brand yeah so so my job is to it's a business development role um it's to attain uh you know so leagues out there have transmission options and have production options and we're obviously the best one so uh my job to just talk to people about the switch and what makes us different um 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's learned about 160 days last year. It was like 20 cities, 12 countries. It was, it was a lot. It was awesome. It was fun. But it was, yeah,

it's a, it's a lot of time, you know, dedicated to just getting out there and getting the brand out there and explaining why we're different. And, you know, we've gotten great results. We signed ESL, Call of Duty League, Overwatch League, Plus Pro Series and WePlay. So out of, like, the top six leagues, that's five of them. So 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. And the results are speaking for themselves. People are very happy. And as esports grows and becomes, you know, more sophisticated in 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 Counter-Strike 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 airtime on ESPN because it's only about terrorists planting a bomb and then people defusing said bomb. Yeah.

Tough sell sometimes. Yeah. A great story I have. It's a marketing story. You'll love this. All right. Back in the early days of esports, like 2009, it might have been early.

It might have been 2006 might have been early it might have been 2006 it was this was early on 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 ragtag team of really good players that were very rough around the edges from southern california um they were really good but like you know you guys were known as i don't say the bad boys of esports that's a bad like but um you know they were sort of the outsiders but they're they're really good they never really had a corporate sponsorship because of just the way that they interacted and talent all came in and said hey

we want this we want to get into esports and start this thing called ouch gaming and so they sponsored these guys for i believe it was 10 grand a month plus computers which at the time was like a lot yeah it was a massive deal so they came to the first event and they watched where counter-strike was and it was literally about guys shooting each other in the head planning bombs using bombs this was in a 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 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 bomb defuse, like he just said bomb defuse. It was a, it was an interesting thing to watch. I wonder if that marketing guy lasted much longer. I don't know. I mean, I don't know i i guess 120 grand for them is not really anything uh dropping the bucket yeah but just the way that went down was was funny so again the other complete opposite example would be bmw coming in and really thoughtfully taking a year and a half to put together a deal with the right teams and the right games um 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 uh you know violence and and shooting and that stuff is is a no-no for some of these brands exactly where's it all going i mean what's the what's the uh i don't want to say end point but like where's the I don't want to say 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 them up games will simplify it I'm sure some gamer would not appreciate that oversimplification of you know third player first player all that stuff But where is all this headed? Just about to explode even further with the broadcasting and those kinds of things. And 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, 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 throwing that out there. Cause parents don't want their kids to play football. They're consuming content much differently. It's, it's not like, you know, even when I was a kid coming home and you had sports starting at 7 PM or 8 PM, the 24 seven access to, to all this stuff is a tournament going on every night in multiple time zones 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 screen options. So I think the market is speaking really loudly as to what they like. And I tell people all the time, you don't have to get it. It's not a debate to me whether esports is popular or not.

There's numbers. You can say, I don't understand it. And that's totally fine. There's a ton of live sports that I'm watching. I got in a, not even a debate, but a huge conversation with my buddy yesterday about cricket. He thinks it's the most interesting thing in the world. I don't get it. I, you know, but I don't have to get it. He's from India. He's in India. And I don't need to get it to understand that it's a massive value where

you're from. And e-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 esports 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 brand than good if you're lazy about this. Yeah. 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. Yeah. You know, the majority of them don't have cable. You know, 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 of 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 an internet connection.

It's greatly easier. Yeah, exactly. Well, Charles, man, really fascinating. I mean, I really appreciate your insights your background um i uh you know it makes me want to play like a game or something while we're talking i did this we we talked to another guy like like wanting to uh threw out the old uh contra cheat code um yeah if you remember it it's's like up, up, down, down. It is.

Man. Love, right. Love, right. B-A-S-T-R-E. 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 Madden, you know.

I mean, there's still people ask me like when i play all the time and if i'm gonna sit down and play a game i like the you know 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 it's well i don't want to use a jordan example but i'm going to go ahead and do it uh jordan doesn't play a pickup game and play a casual pickup game that's not how jordan operates and so i was a really really really bad esports version of jordan

never had any success as a player but i'm going to go ahead and say I can't in the Jordan scenario and pick up again. Yeah, well, I'm sure your bad is 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 everyone 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.rad.cast on Instagram or at radical.results. And we'll see you next time. To learn more about Radical, visit radical.compults. 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.