It's become a daily part of popular culture and
also we've seen traditional sports buying in as well, and
feel like this is now the moment that I've been waiting for my entire esports life.
One of the major changes in the early esports days was going from only
playing with people that were in your local region to being able to play with
anyone across the country online.
Way back in 2004, we were running Halo 1 tournaments.
If you wanted to compete, you had to be in the same room, playing at the same time,
on the same Xbox or two Xboxes.
And it was hometown heroes who thought they were the best in the world because
they've never seen better competition showing up and playing each other.
In 2006, so we saw Xbox Live coming out and this is really where we saw players
not winning tournaments based off just natural talent and raw skill, it was where
you could see practice paying off. >> Final bought $100,000 richer,
they did not drop a game this whole tournament.
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When we saw eSports really pivot, it was when the sponsors started coming in and
supporting not only the events themselves, but also the eSports athletes.
So Tsquared,
I remember he was printed on something like 17 million Dr Pepper bottles.
And he went from a guy who was kind of known within the small eSports
scene to everyone seeing him holding his controller up wearing the MLG jersey.
I feel like when the sponsors started to coming in we went from ballrooms and
kind of low budget event venues to being able to run out convention centers.
And that's where we were able to take it from something that was just a hobby.
And we did all out of passion to right now we're finally able to make a little bit
of money, make a little bit of profit off of these events,
let's take it to the next level.
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Throughout eSports, we've always been just working with what was built for
the normal consumers.
eSports though are the hard core players so they're always finding work arounds of
how to set up games on a competitive situation and competitive environment.
And the people that made the games found out that these tournaments were going on.
So we saw developers starting to build tools for the people running the events.
As we saw the developers getting more involved, we could do better broadcasts,
better productions.
They even build in tools that would make big tournaments run smoother.
That really helped us be able to share what we're doing with more people.
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Historically, players only made money off of prize money.
So if you went to a tournament, you didn't win,
we'll you probably are going to be eating robin noodles for a while.
Live streaming, game players a steady income.
So if you didn't have a sponsorship,
if you weren't making prize money on the regular,
you could still support yourself through live streaming you're content.
And with that, the fans kind a give back the audience are willing to donate.
It is coming, they say I want to support you,
I want to make this something that you can do as a full time carrier.
The ability to create content, post it somewhere and
be able to monetize all the viewership that's going to come off of it.
Created a semi-career path for a lot of the professional gamers.
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One of the coolest moments is when we got involved in television and
television production.
MLG ran two years of tournaments purely online and online broadcast.
It wasn't great Internet throughout the country, so
it wasn't the best viewing experience for people.
So in 2006, we partnered with USA.
We'd take a three-day event, and package it in a 45-minute episode.
It ran right after, it was like Saturday morning,
WWE and then the MLG pro circuit, which has come up next, and
that's where a lot of people were finding out about eSports for the first time.
People that somehow still don't know about competitive video gaming are learning
about it, being able to watch it on TVs.
It's not where the majority of the content consumed today, but
it still is a very important tool for
finding new people who may not have heard about what we've been doing.
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And the last turning point,
this one I can't put a timestamp of when it actually happened, but
it was the acceptance of pop culture and video games just becoming mainstream.
I was always unashamed of gaming but not everyone was that case.
You would have people that would come do MLG events.
And so I would fly from across the country and
no one at home knew what they were doing.
They wouldn't tell their friends that they're pro gamer, or
that their playing games full time.
But as the prize pools grew as people just became more comfortable with
talking about it and as video games popularity just soared around the world.
I think it's now a part of everyone's daily life.
You look at the majority of households across the country everyone has a console,
they're also playing games on the PC.
I feel like it's become a daily part of popular culture.
And also we've seen traditional sports buying in as well.
You gotta get their investments in now, as we call it early.
It's still 12 years a little bit later than I started but
I'd love to see it actually happening.
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I remember when I first got my license,
I was able to get a customized license plate which was XBOXFRK at the time.
Xbox F-R-K.
I went back to Ohio and Mama Puckett kept it, she's had it all these days.