43 GENIUS INTERVIEW James Dean
BUILDING ON THE ESL NAME Opening an o ice in the UK and hosting structured events helped to develop the eSports industry in the region
FEED When did you get the call from ESL?
FEED And how did you venture into eSports?
FEED What was the big challenge for getting UK eSports up to speed? JD The UK had been considered a bit behind the curve in eSports, because there wasn’t a huge amount of PC gaming activity happening in the region. UK gaming is more console- rather than PC-based, but the PC market is growing and continues to grow. The UK is now the second-largest market in Europe after Germany. I think it was mostly because there weren’t enough structured events on oer for UK PC gamers to get involved in. There were local cybercafés, but they couldn’t compare to what Germany and the ESL were doing at that same time – at CeBit in Hannover, they were hosting large tournaments that would have 5000 people attending for four or five days. In the UK, there was nothing even close to that. People were trying, but it wasn’t taking o. In the UK, we needed to develop stability and consistency, which helps communities grow. We started to build on the name ESL had established in Germany.
JD eSports started to take o, and we started to do some European events too. In 2012, SteelSeries introduced me to ESL, which is headquartered in Germany. At that time ESL was almost unheard of. Even its own events were fairly modest. It was subscription-based and online back then, rather than driving ticket sales or advertising around viewership. It was too early on for that. There was some growth there, but it wasn’t the size we needed it to be. In 2013, we made an agreement with ESL in Germany to open the UK oice. They gave us full control over the return of investment for any partners that were getting involved. We started o modestly, but grew rapidly. In the beginning, it was diicult to reinvigorate the UK gaming community, it had diminished, because there wasn’t much PC-oriented eSports activity. We had to rebuild a community and engage them again.
JD Around 2004, I struck out on my own and started an agency that looked after consumer computer hardware brands. Our clients included graphics cards companies, such as Zotac, and companies in that PC gaming sector. We started thinking about what we could do around eSports on a competitive level, and through our clients we sponsored some of the gaming tournaments, both online and at oline physical events. They never really gave the return that we were looking for from the commercial perspective though, despite the engagement being good. We started working with a company called SteelSeries, which is still one of the largest gaming peripheral companies in the world – it’s been sponsoring eSports teams since day one. We were operating their entire operations in the UK.
ESPORTS IS A GLOBAL ACTIVITY. IF YOU’RE A PLAYER ONLINE , YOU’RE ALREADY A GLOBAL PLAYER
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