Recently we spoke to a team (who will remain anonymous) that is one of the leading professional gaming teams in the world. They have been operating for 22 years and are consistently ranked in the top 10 teams worldwide. This team has a roster of streamers/influencers ranging from some of the largest to a variety of challengers. They also have occasional professional athletes who they engage to act as streamers.
Their existing revenue model is revenue sharing with their creator community, sharing multi-year sponsorship partner revenue, as well as shorter term, campaign specific campaigns. They currently have 13 shorter term campaign brands running. Usually they have 5 to 10 running at any time with a goal of having 50 brands in their campaign roster.
During our first discussion, they initially indicated they were not interested and saw no need for 3rd party vendors representing their inventory, because the “we do just fine securing brand partnerships” phrase unlocks the key difference between a media opportunity and a sponsorship opportunity.
Once we clarified the options we were presenting, including the opportunity to have complete control over individual campaigns, they described the opportunity as very interesting, unique and that no one had brought this model to their attention before.
AND they had never thought of their own ability to operate this way before.
This started the wheels to crank, which triggered a very important question. What range and type of creator was best to run a media campaign? Because in the Partnership (sponsorship) model it is very celebrity oriented with allure, sizzle and personality being the highest importance… thereby focusing on the top 2-3 creators as the key differentiator. Whereas in the media landscape it is about reach and frequency…which is achieved by ALL creators and in particular mid-tier streamers.
This conversation is not one held in isolation. In fact, this conversation is the representation of WHY Thece has entered into the Esports and gaming industry. The game viewing audience is one of the fastest growing audience segments in the 18-34 year old category in all forms of broadcast media. This phenomenon is not relegated to the teams either. Thece just finished our first Media Value Assessment with a leading Collegiate Esports organization and they were shocked by how many impressions a typical broadcast reaches.
Esports organizations by and large do not know their total media value because they have not had the opportunity to do so. So as a value add to the entire esports business and every esports property out there, Thece has decided to provide every esports organization with a free Media Value Assessment.