Thece works with forward thinking esports organizations to help support their roster of diverse creators by moving beyond traditional forms of monetization into new revenue generators. We love getting to work with these teams. They are agile and fearless and ready to disrupt an industry that is already blowing up.
Recently, we sat down with Rebecca Dixon, CEO and founder of the *gameHERS to hear what she’s been up to and the value she sees in being a part of the Livestream Media Network. The *gameHERs is core to Thece’s mission to partner with diverse and under-represented communities.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Thece: Thanks so much for chatting with me today! I want to start by asking you to tell me what the*gameHERs is and why you decided to start it.
Rebecca: Of course! It’s great to talk with you. The *gameHERs is a community platform for women and femme-identifying gamers. Our tagline is: “The go-to place for women in gaming.” And we basically provide a space for women, femme-identifying individuals, and anybody else who supports the concept that there is room for improvement in terms of inclusivity and opportunity in gaming for women in all marginalized communities.
We connect them with each other, with resources on how to go from gamer girl to girl boss, and provide a platform for brands to connect with women in gaming. We’re three years in now and we have 700,000 people in our extended network across all the places. We have an app, a Metaverse platform, Twitch, Discord and all the socials.
When I first started looking into the gaming space, I was blown away to find that about half of gamers are women. But we also saw there was a disproportionate number of women gamers who were going on to actually make money through gaming, get invited to tournaments, and build brand partnerships. That’s really been our goal. To give more and better opportunities to women and femme-identifying gamers.
Thece: What an incredible community and mission! Now one of the other unique things that might seem to push against outsider assumptions is how many women also watch gaming and esports on a daily basis. Can you tell us what you’ve observed about the female esports and gaming audience?
Rebecca: To be fair, it’s complex. Mainly because we are still working to define what constitutes esports and gaming. I mean, do more men than women watch Call of Duty? Yeah. That being said, there are a lot of women who do watch Call of Duty, and defining the space so narrowly misses out on the bigger opportunity for understanding the overall game viewing audience.
When you broaden the scope beyond top level tournaments and first player shooter games like Call of Duty, you see a much higher percentage of women watching gamers livestream than many assume.
The other thing that we see that I think makes that percentage even more interesting is that the rate of conversion on advertising for women is much higher than men. Women make over 80% of the purchasing decisions in a household. This means that you have a really big audience that converts better than their male counterparts, especially when you keep a broad view of what esports and gaming actually includes.
Thece: I think you hit on something that is particularly important for us at Thece. We want to connect brands to a young, highly attentive, diverse audience and we really believe that esports and gaming is the place for brands, both endemic and non-endemic, to do that. As part of our Livestream Media Network, what do you see as the main benefit of the Thece ad unit for the *gameHERs?
Rebecca: We love working with Thece. When we learned about the Thece model, it made a lot of sense to us and we believed in the model. So when we ran our first campaign with you last year, we were so happy with the results.
Given the percentage of women in gaming and the high convertibility, brands should be running women focused campaigns all the time in the gaming and esports space. What Thece does is provide a simple way to implement those ads in a trackable and segmented way. We can’t wait to work with you guys again.
Thece: We can’t wait to work with you again as well! Thanks for taking the time to talk. We’re excited to see what the *gameHERS does this year.
Rebecca: Same here! Thanks!
Rebecca Dixon is the CEO and Co-Founder of the *gameHERs.