Author: Chen Wenjian
A few days ago, Riot Games officially released an article "Riot Games Build the Future of Sports: Commercialization", written by John Needham, president of Riot Games' esports business. Although the article is titled "Riot Games Build the Future of Sports", there is a section in the main text that "the esports business is closer to the game business than to traditional sports". The two may seem contradictory, but in fact, this represents Riot Games' attitude towards the esports business, and even reveals the future development path of esports, after all, these views are held by Riot Games, which has created a huge esports empire.
01
In the section "Esports is closer to gaming than traditional sports," John Needham puts it bluntly: "One important lesson we've learned from the first decade of Riot Games' esports business is that you can't treat the esports business as a traditional sport. ”
How to understand this sentence? On the one hand, this indicates the adjustment of the future business direction of Riot Esports - eSports will be more rooted in the development of games; On the other hand, it is also a summary of the past development of its own e-sports - in the past ten years, e-sports have been too much of a trend for traditional sports.
In the past development of e-sports, a large extent relied on traditional sports, the "pearl jade". This is not only because Esports has a sports imprint from the moment it was born, but also because traditional sports events have been proven successful in the market. Take the LPL, the most mature e-sports league in China today, we can find many NBA shadows, such as league and regionalization. At the 2022 Global Esports Leadership Summit, NBA China Vice President Feng Yichi participated in the "teaching" of the esports industry and showed the esports industry how to build a commercialization system. For the seedling of e-sports, why not be able to back against the big tree of sports.
At the same time, the imprint of sports is constantly being applied to esports. The reason for this is that we have to mention the origin of esports - games. In the era when e-sports was just emerging, games were still regarded as beasts by mainstream public opinion, and e-sports rooted in games would naturally not be recognized by the general public. At this time, sportsmanization became one of the few possible labels for esports to break its own biases, and it is still a great tool for esports to expand its influence to this day. That said, active or passive, esports is trying to equate itself with traditional sports.
If the big tree of sports is easy to shade, why does Fist say that e-sports cannot be regarded as traditional sports? The bottlenecks encountered in the development of esports in the past two years may answer this question.
Since the pandemic era, the development of the esports industry seems to have fallen into a quagmire. Prior to this, sportsification has indeed promoted the development of e-sports, laid the cornerstone for the standardization and commercialization of the e-sports industry, and the mature methodology of the traditional sports industry has shaped the ecological environment on which e-sports can develop. Today, with the global environment waning, esports players and fans are approaching saturation, but esports have not yet picked a fruit from the big tree of sports that can be transplanted into itself, called "autonomous hematopoiesis". On the contrary, the nutrients drawn from sports bear a certain "poisonous fruit".
In 2016, Overwatch was released, and in the same year the Overwatch League OWL was founded, which was the first major league in the esports industry to adopt a franchise; Riot also officially introduced this format in 2017. Since then, investment has poured into the esports industry, player salaries have skyrocketed, seat fees have doubled in the following years, and the esports industry has been booming.
But as the so-called gifts of fate are secretly marked with a price.
The tide of capital is both nourishing and fueling, and when the tide fades, what is exposed is the immature profit model of esports that cannot match investment. From Denmark's first e-sports stock Astralis to the young culture brand FaZe Clan, they have all been beaten by the stock market. In the league, skyrocketing player salaries make the management strangle, high seat fees make newcomers uncertain, and direct broadcast rights with empty traffic are difficult to monetize, these problems that are not a problem in traditional sports show that simple imitation sports cannot make esports go further.
02
Riot mentioned in the article that how to monetize direct broadcast rights has always plagued Riot's esports business, and this is also a common problem of almost all esports events. The carrier of e-sports is the Internet, and the spirit of the Internet is openness and sharing, and free viewing is a common thing in the hearts of all e-sports audiences. Compared with traditional sports events born in the era of television broadcasting, esports audiences do not have the habit of paying to watch the games, although esports events reach more young people, but this is not necessarily an advantage for sponsors and leagues.
To this, Riot has its own answer - the esports business rooted in gaming, that is, virtualization.
The biggest difference between esports and sports competition is the difference between the two competitive media, and this is also the entrance to the fist. "The virtual nature of esports means that the game does not need a huge stadium, and most of the audience is purely online." Since viewers rarely pay for live streaming and live viewing, direct the payment point to the virtual game itself. In the article, Fist focuses on the upcoming virtual pass in the future, from which fans will get:
1. Rich online finals viewing experience;
2. Value-added products and service packages;
3. More ways to express your fan identity and passion.
Analogous to traditional sports, we may understand it as "online tickets", the first and third points are the necessary attributes of tickets, and the second point is the embodiment of esports business rooted in games. For a particular fan, the third point is already a reason enough to pay. For ordinary players, the attraction of the second point is undoubtedly stronger, after all, the game props are the same wherever they are consumed, but the virtual pass is more value-for-money.
Obviously, virtual passes can not only deepen the emotional connection between fans, players and teams, strengthen brand marketing of teams and players, tap the fan economy, but also cultivate the consumption habits of ordinary gamers and improve user stickiness, thereby filling the dilemma of monetizing direct broadcast copyrights of events.
In addition, the establishment of a sponsor system and the sale of shirts, sneakers and other peripheral goods to fans have always been a stable profit channel for traditional sports events.
Take the NBA, for example, where James, Curry and Durant make more than $20 million a year in shoe trades alone. But in e-sports, this road is extremely difficult: sportswear brands rarely sponsor an esports player alone (Nike's sponsorship of UZI is an example), and esports team uniforms are not as practical as traditional sports team uniforms - playing games and wearing uniforms will not make you more comfortable and stronger, and physical uniforms cannot be displayed in games, which also makes its social value not comparable to jerseys and shoes that can "show in front of people" on the court.
How to break this dilemma? Again, the answer is virtualization. Since no one buys the actual uniform, what about the props that embed team and player elements into the game? In the Honor of Kings event KPL, a similar product "Clan Star Skin" has been implemented, and after fan voting, KPL will produce Star Meta Skin with Clan elements, and the team will receive a share of the skin revenue.
In League of Legends, this treatment is a "privilege" that only teams and players who enter the world tournament can enjoy, and the ultimate version is undoubtedly the champion skin of the global finals. Admittedly, this is a symbol of honor and strength of the team and players, but on the other hand, the "pitch" of gaming limits the possibilities for most clubs to profit from it.
This time, Fist said in the article that when designing the virtual pass, there was a space for the exclusive version of the team, and the virtual and physical goods of the team's brand could be added. Although the virtual pass is currently only used in international competitions, after tasting the sweetness, Riot may give more club access or even normalize this model.
03
Going back to the title of the article "Riot Games Build the Future of Sports: Commercialization", although Riot makes some kind of cut between esports and traditional sports in the article, both in the title and at the end of the article, Riot firmly believes that they are building the future of sports, or in other words - the esports they are building is the future of sports.
Standing in the present to describe the future, we will think of words such as metaverse, artificial intelligence, AI, etc., and virtualization is their inescapable commonality. E-sports, which was born out of games, naturally has this characteristic, and e-sports has absorbed many nutrients from traditional competitive sports in the process of development, and it is conceivable that e-sports is a certain form and branch of sports in the future.
At a time when the e-sports industry is mired in development, how to tap the internal driving force of the original game of e-sports and borrow the external driving force of the big plate of sports is the key to whether e-sports can become the future of sports.