Right About Now with Ryan Alford - eSports Series ft Shaon Berry
Episode Date: August 4, 2020In this episode, Ryan and Shaon talk about the various opportunities in professional gaming, the expansion for minority gamers, and different ways to engage brands.Follow along in the series. Visit ou...r website theradcast.com | @the.rad.cast or @ryanalford on Instagram 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.
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You're listening to The Radcast.
If it's radical, we cover it.
Here's your host, Ryan Alford.
Hey guys, it's Ryan Alford with the latest episode of The Radcast.
The third part in a series on eSports.
Up and coming, the innovations that are happening, all the growth.
We're really excited for all the interest that we've been getting around this series
and really excited to be joined today by Sean Berry.
What's up, man?
Hey, what's good, man? How are you?
Doing well. Appreciate you coming on.
Sean is the CEO and owner of Metro Sports in Philadelphia.
an owner of Metro Sports in Philadelphia, has a good long lineage in sports and events,
sponsorships and sports in general.
I know Sean, but I really appreciate you coming on to talk a little eSports and what you've been up to.
Always glad to do it, man.
It's a pandemic. What else is there to do, right?
Exactly. We've caught people at a good time uh you know with with our podcast series it's gotten we'll say not easier but uh a little more attainable to get
some normally super busy folks uh online so we appreciate your time sean and sean i'd love to
just start like we talked you know pre pre-episode you know just give people kind of that background you know on you
your sports background i know at pit um and you know just kind of we're leading up to where metro
sports is today yeah for sure um yeah like i you know i shared with you earlier man i i don't come
from the esports world at all you know i am very much an alien um i i grew up in the philadelphia
south jersey area played football in college,
played at the University of Pittsburgh, and worked in corporate America about 25 years
before I launched a sports media company called Junior Rank Sports. And I launched that
in large part with the idea in mind that I could create some events to help kids get
recruited and maybe deliver some good messages around maybe character and discipline and academic excellence,
things like that. And that company grew a lot bigger and a lot faster than I was really even
prepared for. We grew over 400% over the next three years. I ended up in a title sponsorship
partnership with the United States Marine Corps, and I created their Semper Fidelis All-American Bowl, which ran on ESPN for about six years.
And so I, you know, I spent most of my time deeply engaged in football.
You know, in fact, the first running back that played in my All-American game was Todd Gurley.
And Jared Goff was one of our quarterbacks.
So, you know, it really been heavily entrenched on the traditional sports side
and saw that very much as, you know, a way to help communities
and help young athletes, you know, interested in matriculating.
And I got a call about two and a half years ago from the president of AAU Sports
who said hey
Sean are you still doing esports and I said I don't know what the hell you're talking about
I said I don't even know what esports is and she said well you know we understand you know at your
events you do esports tournaments and what they were referring to is you know sometimes we're at
our camps and combines we'd buy xboxes and playstations and we'd send it to the hotels
with the coaches and tell the kids to keep the kids busy. You know, I didn't consider that e-sports
event management. Right. And lo and behold, I get a completely undeserved reputation. But,
you know, it caused me to look at e-sports more seriously and do some due diligence.
And I was just absolutely blown away by the business model and the growth opportunities
and more importantly, the ways that, you know,
you can really impact a larger group of young people effectively. So that's how I got into it.
That's great. And so it's funny that having looking back in my career, some of the sponsorship
activations, I worked on like Verizon business and the NFL. We set up like, you know, within those, like the NFL stadiums, we'd have like, you know, a Sony or something playing, you know, so thinking back the roots of e-sports, you know, a lot of, like your business now today, you know, so what is, what's, what's happening within that environment? I know let's pretend at least for a
moment, the pandemic wasn't happening, but the core business model there and what you're doing.
Yeah. So, you know, I built, uh, you know, Metro e-sports for, you know, a couple of different
reasons, but, you know, primarily I wanted to create some really unique content
opportunities for brands, some that were outside the box a little bit in terms of attracting
casual gamers or gamers that were a little bit unfamiliar with esports in the industry.
And then the other thing for me was social outcomes. Could I impact the community with
certification or STEM
programs that, you know, related back to the esports industry or create internship opportunities
with some of our brand partners and things like that. And so, you know, for me, it was really
about, you know, how could I make or become a conduit to good things for brands or good things for people yeah i love it so you've got a 7 000 foot
facility um for tournaments i presume uh and then i you know like you mentioned some of the stem
stuff how does that stuff kind of naturally happen and you know how long have you had the facility
yeah so we you know believe it or not we just done the wiring and paint job right before COVID hit.
So we have we have yet to to announce our grand opening until, you know, things are safe.
And, you know, we're able to kind of, you know, allow kids to, you know, to kind of work together and play together.
But the facility is interesting. You know, I build it almost as a digital version of the YMCA.
So you can come here and recreate and compete,
whether it's gaming PC or console.
You know,
for those that are a lot more serious,
we have one-on-one coaching.
You know,
those that are interested in playing tournaments,
you know,
we do and we'll do everything from,
you know,
smash brothers to fighting games,
to sports games,
first person shooters,
et cetera.
We'll have military Mondays where we just, you know,
try to honor our veterans and create some opportunities for them to engage
and compete.
But the thing that I enjoy the most is, you know,
we looked at the esports industry and we partnered with some of the local
colleges and universities and said, okay, well,
if I want to become a game designer or a game developer or a coder or a
programmer, what do I need to know?
And maybe I can't afford to go to college.
What does that look like?
And so a lot of the programs that we'll announce over the next three to six months are designed
around how to become a member of the esports industry if you're not a gamer or if you're
not a streamer, but you still love and have a passion for either technology or just the
space.
And we've got some new partnerships with Capcom and Warner brothers and Ubisoft.
And, you know,
that allows us to be kind of a conduit between kind of community and
corporate.
That's interesting. And it's funny because on the surface,
parents and maybe uninformed see e-sports or video game playing,
you know, as an, an you know as not necessarily the
negative side of it but um you know a lot of time spent by the kids playing just the games themselves
when in reality there's so many other legs to it and some other opportunities because you're still
talking about highly technically advanced gaming and everything that goes into making the games,
making the consoles, and even just the expertise to play now, you know, is like,
it's just fascinating, the layers that are there.
Yeah. No, I mean, there's so many opportunities. You know, I look at it like this. If I, you know,
had an event and a thousand football players were on the field, the reality was of those thousand, maybe I could find five, maybe 10 guys that could play in college.
Right. And of those five or 10, you know who had the grades to play in college.
And so maybe it gets down to three or four. Yeah, I think it's so different in esports. If I had a thousand people in an esports tournament, I can find 300 coders and 200 programmers and 50 streamers and 60 game designers.
And so the ability to provide an opportunity or platform to engage or educate or enhance or all those things that just multiply.
And that's kind of why I love the space the way I do.
That's kind of why I love the space the way I do.
So, you know, I saw your most recent, I presume, one of your more recent partnerships, like with NFL Flag and what they did bringing their players together.
They're in the NFL Flag Football League for youth.
And I know you can tell me more about it than I can. But, you know, talk to me about like what your involvement is in that type of tournament.
And what are you enabling? What is what is Metro Esports enablement in that kind of online tournament?
You know, what is what's your role in that? Yeah. So, you know, creator, producer, you know, I for the NFL, just like other organizations said, hey, listen, you know, let's recreate to the best of our ability the digital sports experience.
Right. So the competition of being on the field and being competitive and enjoying that, whether it's, you know, NBA 2K or Madden 20 or whatever it is, let's recreate that and give young people, particularly during this pandemic,
an opportunity, you know, to just compete and receive some of the benefits from, you know,
what I think is an awesome kind of industry. I think, you know, when you look at this pandemic,
organizations like the NFL or anybody else have a real interest in understanding that young people
need to socialize,
right. They need to recreate. And, you know, many need to compete.
And I think it offers all of those aspects. And so, you know, yeah, we,
you know, we, we did the first ever NFL online tournament, but you know,
we have,
we have cities that are clients that engage us in league play.
In fact, the mayor of Atlantic City said,
hey, listen, I want all the kids in our school district to be able to play in a league for the next couple of months
because I don't know what they can do.
What's the facilitation of that like?
I mean, I kind of want to get into the nuts and bolts of that a little bit.
So when they come to you to do that,
you've got players, you've got youth within the city that are going to play and they're trying to enable that tournament.
Are you, you know, I know enough about the, the, you know, the games themselves to be dangerous, I guess, having played them.
I have kids, you know, four boys under the age of 10.
So other than playing Rocket League or Madden, I'm not too fond on every game specific.
other than playing Rocket League or Madden, I'm not too fond on every game specific, but like, how does, what does, what do you enable specifically,
other than maybe like promotion of the event or something like that?
Like help walk me through what exactly your role is.
I mean, it's just that, right? So there is a registration process.
There is a communication process. There's advertising and promotion. There's player matching. There's, you know, kind of rules and oversight. There's, you know, bracketing and playoff management and kind of all those things.
You know, it is certainly more complicated than a traditional sports, you know, kind of engagement. But, you know the the being able to do all of those things and
all of those things well uh is what creates an awesome experience do you create like literally
within madden can you set up these kind of tournaments like again not no i have a partnership
with madden that allows me the licensure you know to be able to play and and and leverage that as a
an opportunity to compete but as far as the development
on the development side i have what shows up on the screen is purely uh you know the developers
expertise not never mind yeah no but i just didn't know if like you know if two two youth are playing
in new jersey you know what facilitates the knowing who won
and the bracket and all of those things, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah, so we have a team that oversees the play and scoring and bracketology
and rules and competition and the whole thing.
Okay.
So it keeps up and tracks all of that.
What's been the response to some of the more virtual offerings,
you know, kind of with COVID and everything going on, has there been an uptick like in
everything else?
It's been huge, man.
You know, I, um, I haven't been able to get much sleep, man, because there's so many things
that are happening right now where groups are looking for opportunities to, you know,
educate or engage or entertain or, you know,
one of those things. And, and, um, yeah, so it's an exciting time from the perspective of, um,
you know, what we already knew, which was, if you're not, you don't have some level of technology
involved in what you're doing, um, you're, you're, you're going to stagnate. And so we're,
we're finding growth. Yeah. What is, um, what is partnership for you look like, you know,
with some of like the games and some of the larger names that I see that,
you know, you guys are partnering with today,
is it kind of a you approaching them with ideas or vice versa?
Well, you know, like I said,
I have a long history of really successful activations, umations on the sports and the television side, the top profile.
And so there are a lot of relationships that literally just made the transition with me from sports to esports.
Others have been more challenging from the fact that, you know, we're non-endemic and we're building a brand and a name.
and we're building a brand and a name.
And so those can be anywhere from kind of a big toe in the water,
let's see how this goes, to others that are saying, hey, listen, we believe in your mission and your vision
and we want to get behind it.
One of my strongest relationships is, from from a company perspective is Logitech.
Their team is so committed to all of the things that I believe in. And that's really,
you know, diversity and inclusion in the space, educating and empowering communities,
you know, exciting and entertaining, you know, competition and, you know, those kinds of things that, um,
are very, very natural for me in terms of, um, you know, what I want to do and what I want this
brand to be is already an extension of, you know, what Logitech does on a daily basis. And so,
you know, that's one of the partnerships I'm most proud of because there's such an alignment of, of goals and, and, and agenda.
Yeah. And since you brought up a keyword there and I'm definitely one,
I know it's been important.
I've read some of the recent articles and that being diversity. I mean,
is what's the general state of the state, if you say,
of diversity in e-sports, I mean, improving,
but a lot of room to go?
You know, I think that's an understatement.
E-sports as a whole is non-diverse.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, just to keep it real with you,
it is, you know, when you look at, you know,
500 million streamers on Twitch
and less than 3% are African-American or Hispanic.
You know, when you turn on the sport and you see, you know, professional teams or you watch, you know, events on ESPN or TNT, whether it's League of Legends or Legends or Overwatch.
It's just not reflective of our community as a whole.
Right. And so what I'd like to see is e-sports really more for everybody.
You know, that, you know,
where there is a balanced level of representation and participation,
not for the sake of doing it, but because everybody loves it, you know?
And so, you know,
it, but because everybody loves it, you know? And so, you know,
I think that there's a huge opportunity for, for brands that have an interest in reaching a, you know,
kind of more broad and diverse consumer segment of leveraging e-sports and kind
of the digital presence and eyeballs, you know,
across the nation that are on it and looking for creative ways to do that.
Yeah. Let's, let's be honest like every what 10 to
12 year old boy or girl uh of all nationalities and backgrounds are playing esports you know of
some sort i mean well it's not only that i mean i think it's i think that number is like 97 but
what most people don't know is um the majority of the u.s video game consumer market is is black
and latino yeah so it's over indexed this is like at 40 54 percent yeah um and then pew research did
a study i guess it was two years ago and found that african-american teens play more uh on average
per week than any other ethnicity by over an hour. And so, you know, what you,
what that says to me is there's a untapped market out there and there's a
great opportunity to be more engaging and more inclusive that, you know,
that does nothing but create better competition and make it more exciting and
fun.
Do you think the problem has been just like you said,
numbers speak for themselves that, that, you know,
the African-ican markets playing
these games at a higher rate the the hispanic market's playing a higher rate do you think it's
they're they've just lack of opportunity to get in the larger tournaments or games and or maybe just
not feeling included or you know what's what's the gap there no no no i don't think it's intentional at all
and i think everybody has the same opportunity i think it's exposure yeah right awareness yeah um
you know the other thing is that um you know different cultures you know compete or be or
entertained differently and so just a a focus on, you know, one particular group or another could, you know, mean a world of difference in terms of attracting, you know, people into a market.
You know, I think that they're just nobody's been very intentional about bringing in the other cultures that just haven't participated.
So I don't think it's about opportunity. I think it's just, you know, intention.
So I don't think it's about opportunity. I think it's just, you know, intention.
Yeah. Is changing tune just a little bit.
You know,
what's been fascinating for me and kind of digging into this more starting to
work and talk to more clients in this space and different things,
just the streaming aspect, the, the, the,
the just sheer enormity of of of content being watched you know
like that's been a fascinating with twitch and youtube and you've got you know facebook spin
off and all those things but just sheer amount of content being watched in this space uh any
perspective kind of on you know where that's at where it's going and just your volume of that
yeah i mean listen man it is amazing to me you know the conditioning of how we receive
digital data you know the shorter attention spans um you know kids now all the way up through, you know, kind of Gen Z and millennial, you know,
they want clips of entertainment, you know, excitement in a bundle on a package. And,
you know, e-sports provides that in a way that's so accessible from a mobile phone or,
you know, and so when I think about streaming and content and, you know, personalities,
you know, that are making millions of dollars, you know, because they happen to catch an
eye, I mean, damn, you look at TikTok and you're like, damn, why didn't I think of that?
And so, you know, esports is no different.
But I think therein lies also the opportunity.
The thing that's so exciting about this space is the reach.
Right. And so a streaming audience, whether it's YouTube or Twitch or caffeine or anybody else, it's, you know, being able to reach millions in an instant.
You just have to have some good content and be creative about it.
And so that's another thing that I think makes this industry so great is that if you can be creative um you really have a chance to be successful
yeah i read i was one of the top players or not even a top player i literally i forget the name
um it was like a mediocre player something was making fifteen thousand dollars an hour
for exclusive streaming rights on twitch yeah Yeah. It's crazy.
But I mean, I guess it's the same
thing as a TV station. You know, you get
ratings and you have the eyeballs
and, you know, it drives...
Listen, the word talent
is subjective, man. You know, when I was doing
some research just to learn about esports,
I remember talking to one
pro gamer and I said, oh, I guess
Ninja's the best, right?
He said, you can throw a baseball and hit 15 people that can beat Ninja. And I said, well,
wait a minute, what is it? And it was personality. It's, you know, it's what engages an audience.
And so, you know, I think that's so exciting, man, because it levels the playing field in such a
crazy way. Yeah. Almost like professional wrestling of sorts right yeah exactly the best
athlete and isn't always the best uh highest paid wrestler necessarily you know listen i'm super
convinced that the guys that i love the most in wwe weren't the best athletes it was all about
personality for sure yeah uh i don't know if rick Flair was ever the best athlete on, you know,
he might've been in his early years, you know, maybe, but you know,
even when he started making his big bankroll,
I don't think he was the best athlete,
but he knew how to talk and he knew how to play it up.
Ric Flair was never dunking a basketball. That's for damn sure.
No, no, not, not, not at all.
Where do you see, you know, as far as, you know, Metro e-sports and what's,
obviously you're just getting things off the ground as far as the facility and
stuff, once things reopen and God willing, that will be sooner than later. Um,
you know,
but what's kind of like the three to five year plan for you? Like, where is it all going?
Yeah, man, I am so excited because, you know, again, it's what I love about this industry.
For us, it's about creating original content that is attractive and engaging and so some of what you'll see from
metro esports over the next to be honest with you over the next three to six months um you know we
think is industry changing um and there's some pretty powerful brands that think so too so um
you know i would say be on the lookout for content that you've never seen before. Yeah, that's cool. Is is the NFL portion, you know, with what you did with, you know, NFL pass and all that.
Like, is that going to be kind of an ongoing partnership potentially with them?
Yeah, you know, I think so. You know, I think the great thing for the NFL is they're the NFL. Right.
So they can do whatever the hell they want whenever they want to yeah I mean I think right now it's really about for them understanding
well you know how much football are people playing right now whether it's at the youth level or the
high school level or the college level and then you know when they're not playing how do we want
to engage them you know esports or anybody else but you know you know, my hope is, you know, for us from a partnership perspective,
you know, we're looking at NASCAR and MLB and others that have an understanding that,
you know, there's an opportunity when organized well to satisfy, you know, both the on-field
and the on-screen appetites of young people. I'm asking this of all of the people that are coming on our series.
Having four boys under the age of 10 that all play,
is this a true career path?
Yeah.
I have to tell you, I was speaking.
I did a Zoom call with a group in Florida over the weekend.
So they had about 100 young people on the call.
And we were talking about just esports as an industry.
And one of the parents said to me, hey, listen, is this thing real?
You know, should I be letting my kid play five and six hours a day?
And my answer to her has become kind of a standard answer for me.
And that's really more with a story.
You know, I did an event with Microsoft last year at one of their Pennsylvania locations.
And they had a young person, young kid that was coming into their store to play
because he didn't have the resources at home, but he was coming in every day. Like as soon as school was open and he was closing out the shop every night. And, um, and he
was doing this for months on end, you know, to the dismay of his parents until he won, I don't know,
like $6 million in that corner, uh, up in, up in New York. And so is it a real career? You know,
I would say the, the percentages are higher if
you have some type of technical aptitude. You know, as a parent, I would say to my kid, listen,
if you want a game, do it all day. But you've got to spend an equal amount of time learning how to
code or program or design. And so if you have a passion for the space, you know, let's up the
percentages of your success by being more well-rounded yeah
i love that i'm gonna uh i'm gonna use that uh exact phrase there
well sean man i really appreciate your time and coming on today and um you know looking forward
to following everything that metro esports is doing your involvement with diversity your
involvement with a lot of these brands.
So really appreciate the insights and your time today.
Hey, thank you guys for the time and for having me on.
Great, man.
Hey, guys, this is Ryan Alford.
Follow along at the.rad.cast on Instagram, and we'll see you next time.
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