I was eating what was described as ‘the best burger ever’ in Austria recently. Esports talk begun. I think this was the prequel to hours of DOTA. Tusk/SF safe lane. Tusk is broken. In this instance I played Tusk so won’t complain. Another story for another day.
Generally I feel that a good conversation is one that compels one of the parties to action. I wanted to preserve it because I sense it’ll help shed some light on the competitive ecosystem from the perspective of someone who witnessed how things are handled from inside one of esports biggest pro-teams, someone who’s played CS since an amazing beta 6.5 hit Lan Cafes in Dubai but also as someone who never had the balls to consider playing competitively. OK, the final point is heavily influenced by the fact that I didn’t have the skill to go-pro but is said with an aim to express my admiration for those that do go all the way.
What was the problem the discussion was trying to solve?
The belief that players aren’t treated fairly, exercise very little if any of their power and don’t have fair representation.
The Esports Landscape
For those that are new to the space or just aren’t sure how the pieces fit together, here’s a breakdown of the key players:
Professional Organizations: These places house teams of talented gamers competing in various esport titles. Imagine Manchester United with a football, basketball and tennis team all under the one banner.
The Pro-Gamers: The often young, highly-skilled influencers that compete in the key esport titles. These are your Messi’s, Kobe’s, Niedermayer’s and Federer’s.
The Game Publishers/Developers: A lot of people mix these up but in layman terms, developers are the guys who come up with the idea to make a game, design and code it all while publishers are more the business side of things. They get the game to the public, market it and generally pay the developers per month until they earn $ from when the game makes solid dough. Arguably the biggest titles in esports right now are League of Legends, DOTA2 & CS:GO. Valve who pumps out two of these games are both a developer and publisher. RIOT developed League of Legends and publish it in most places across the world. For those they don’t publish to they partner with Tencent and Garena.
The Tournament Organizers: These guys could either be an in-house department of a game publisher or a third-party co that plans, hosts and produces live esport shows. The in-house guys could be compared to ATP Media for Tennis but the third-party folks are more like IMG for sports.
Agencies: Place where agents work to secure pro-players with the best possible deals and receive a % cut on each deal they negotiate. Hotly contested one but the only sign of what looks like an authorized talent agent in esports right now would be WME IMG. Other players exist in the market like the famed GoodGameAgency and little shops set up by friends of friends but they can’t be likened to anything in conventional sporting terms.
Unions: Nada. There aren’t player unions but there have been talks of pro-team organization unions for some time now. Could all be speculation.
Now back to the problem..
There’s a wide-spread belief that pro-players aren’t treated fairly in the esports space. In fact, there’s an excellent podcast that just went up hosted by Thooorin that addresses this very topic. Now when I’m talking ‘fairly’ here I want to stress that I’m referring to compensation = money only. An argument can be made that some pro’s are treated like ‘royalty’ but the esports compensation model that awards them a living isn’t.
Are Pro-gamers compensated fairly?
At this point in time, no. I think it’d take a couple more pages to list out the many reasons but there is a fundamentally simple one that causes this to be the case. The industry landscape is broken. Look back at the key players in the space and you’ll quickly notice that there are more corporate bodies than player bodies present.
I’m going to attempt to draw the pro-player compensation model now in paint. This is a real warning: shield your eyes:
In the above scenario, the player (smiles all around) provides his skill, popularity and image rights to the organization. The organization (picture Monty Python’s ‘the very big organization of America’) in turns deems a compensation figure fitting for this service and pays him and his team cash money. There is very little if any negotiation involved and the relationship continues.
What’s missing here?
Well, there’s an absence of balance in this relationship. The business is negotiating with a pro-player, who often isn’t a savvy commercial negotiator and finds it challenging to assess his/her worth. The organization understands the pro-gaming scene as it’s laid out bare but the pro-player has no visibility of the business mechanics of the organization. Bit lopsided and by no means am I blaming organizations for relying on this model for the last 10 years. It’s commercially advantageous in a space where fighting for sponsorship dollars has determined a brand’s longevity.
The Solution?
Briefly put, a balance must be struck for the relationship to benefit both parties. This means the space needs agents, unions who will fight for players to be paid well and negotiate their contracts so that their commercial opportunities aren’t limited. In turn, the organizations may move away from being influencer marketing vehicles and instead focus efforts on building long-lasting brands.
When Fabregas and RVP left Arsenal, I still supported Arsenal. When the handsome xPeke left Fnatic, a great deal of the fan following left with him. I’d rather a world where both identities and organizations have to work hard to earn life-long fans. Don’t rely on being an agency that deals in players rights, rely on building an amazing brand so that players can open up other earning channels and come to play for you because you’re making them a great deal and can facilitate victory.
Sponsors/Investors should see value in the organization and for that to happen organizations need to give players the right to seek out commercial deals of their own while leveraging their association with said players while they are contracted.
More to come.
I’ve only really touched on one facet of the relationship between pro-player and organization. I’ll dive into where the other pieces fit and present what I think would be an ideal scenario (and an all new paint masterpiece) for what the industry needs to push for, how long this will take and catalysts that would really jump-start the process.
Oh and gotta throw some numbers out there to make the visualization a little more real-esports.
Let’s call that Part 2.