It's a little surreal,
I'm a little proud I guess.
- We kept hearing eSports is gonna be $1
billion in another year from now.
- In just like, five years, I'm an owner
of a team that's playing in all these
venues with millions of people watching.
And I- and in a meeting with this company,
this is insane.
- We think the universe of possibilities
is the universe of possibilities that is
video gaming, that is all online content.
That business is larger than sports,
music and movies combined.
It's $100 billion and growing.
- It's an investment that,
if I were a sports owner, it
made sense just to balance my portfolio.
You know I already like sports.
My sports are getting a little bit older,
bit by bit, and
here's this new thing where who knows
where it's going to be in 10 years and
I think that's very appealing.
(Music)
- I think everybody was motivated by
a desire to do something different.
My name is Bruce Stein,
I'm the CEO Axiomatic Gaming.
Besides being a complex word,
Axiomatic is an eSports platform from
which we will invest, partner,
acquire companies in the gaming space.
(Music)
The idea came from a conversation that I
was having with Peter Guber and
during that time we talked about what
was happening with these sports teams.
We were already looking at a number of
teams prior to this cascading of
pro-athletes coming into it.
(Music)
- And there's interest from soccer teams,
there's interest from NFL teams but
I think a lot of NBA owners were kind of
like the first to be interested.
- You saw these Wild West
gung-ho spending levels that were
somewhat unsustainable at the time.
Which makes sense because they were coming
in and that was their
competitive advantage, we've got cash.
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In order to kind of compete at the same
level, from a capital standpoint,
we needed to make investments into
the business and so
we needed to seek some capital.
- When we started to look at the space,
we weren't really as focused on financial
capital as we were intellectual capital.
(Music)
We started to talk about,
what would make this really effective,
and that was when we started talking
about the investor group and
what would we need by way of skills,
disciplines, reach that would set us
apart, where we could be a good complement
to an eSports team not just in the choir.
- A large portion of it is owned by
Ted Leonsis and Peter Guber and then it's
also shared with a list of other investors
into Axiomatic, Steve Case, Magic Johnson.
- Tony Robbins on the coaching side,
Dick Clark Productions,
Mandalay Sports Media, Next VR and
executives from the Warriors and
the Dodgers.
- Each of those respective
investors brings more than just cash to
the table and that was important to us.
We have Kurt Leko who is the assistant
GM to the Golden State Warriors.
He came down, sat down with the team for
about three hours and
just started talking nuances.
This is what you do with a player in this
situation and this is how you handle
the off season trade and it was like wow,
you have been through this like you know
what you are doing.
Those are the things that kind of get us
further without us having to learn
the hard way.
- We really started looking at
the eSports space and looking for
an entry point from which to begin.
And we considered a number
of teams at that point,
one of the teams was Team Liquid.
(Music)
- We had several different opportunities
and this is the one that we just felt
the most comfortable about.
- We met with Peter and
we met with Ted separately.
Both Victor and
I fell in love with them just as people.
- It's all for me based on finding
the right people a group of investors that
you trust and you feel like you're on
the same page, philosophically.
- I can't say that we weren't interested
in making sure we had
a worldwide brand like 'Team Liquid'.
That we had a winning record as 'Team
Liquid' does.
But management is really
the key to understanding and
being able to feel comfortable that your
growth pattern up until then can continue.
- We're still large shareholders in
the company and
we're here for the long run as co-CEOs and
that's what we wanted to do.
In our case, our investment group was like
that sounds perfect.
- It's almost like you get married and
you know you laugh together you cry
together and
you just create a really great business.
- Steve and
Victor from the beginning said,
if you're going to try to make legends,
Dodus, CSGO, Harthsone, you're going to
try to make that baseball or basketball or
anything that is in our inauthentic.
You're going to be disappointed in
the result.
The goal here is to have the collaboration
from traditional sports into
this new audience.
- It just started to make so
much sense when you have so
much experience brought to the table.
There is just a lot of good
things that are set in motion with all of
these partners and that is why we did it.
- We've looked at the gaming audience as
a universe that is probably 300 to 400
million strong worldwide.
And one that is over-developed
in terms of how many people participate.
But under-developed in terms of all
the commercial applications.
I think in ten years it will
be far more developed than we see today.
- The concept is, will it go mainstream?
Is it gonna be as big as football?
Is it gonna be as big as basketball.
And I think if you look at the world wide
level, it's already bigger than the NBA.
It's already bigger than the NFL,
so we're already there.
I'm really excited about what it is to
come of the space, and
I hope that I have a positive effect
on the direction of that.
(Music)