We became the first North American team to acquire an esports franchise in September of 2016. The numbers behind esports are staggering. More people watch the League of Legends World Championships than the BCS National Championship, the NBA Finals, the World Series, the Stanley Cup Finals, et cetera.
The numbers are staggering. The demographics are staggering. And enough fans have yet to be monetized in any way and have yet to really receive some of the professional treatment that sports entities, whether it’s teams or leagues or broadcasters, have currently reserved for traditional sports teams, as it were.
For us, in sports management, this was an incredible opportunity to meet this entirely new demographic, to understand the trends behind the success of esports over the last many years, and what we believe to be the continued explosive growth in the industry. Then, we were able to utilize the fact that we are part of an ownership group that is willing to invest behind somewhat risky, but at the same time, innovative, unique, and new ideas.
We spent a lot of time thinking about, one, do we want to invest in esports? The answer was, “Absolutely yes,” because of some of the demographics that I’ve talked about in the numbers. Number two, which was probably the hardest question to answer was, once we know we want to invest in esports, what is the vehicle that we’re going to choose?
For us, it just made logical sense, given that we are a sales and marketing organization, given that we understand how to run a team, and given that we are blessed to have some of the best sponsorship sales, ticket sales, marketing, fan engagement folks in the entire industry, if not the world.
We figured we could utilize those resources to help really grow Team Dignitas, which is the esports franchise that we acquired, and really help professionalize what is an incredibly exciting but an incredibly nascent industry.
The next six months, year, or three years will really show how successful we, as well as other franchises that follow our path, will be in professionalizing esports and really creating the next sporting behemoth in global sports.
But for us, it is very much about getting a seat at the table to an exciting industry with young fans, passionate fans, and really turning Team Dignitas, which is our investment in this space, into the marquee franchise in all of esports.
These are the kinds of subjects our sports management education course tackles.
