ELEAGUE has established itself as an elite brand in esports. So what comes next, and who makes it happen? Meet the people who are raising the game.
Turner and IMG’s ELEAGUE has taken esports to the next level, and the brand is continuing to raise the game. After the recent CSGO Premier, ELEAGUE will be hosting the next Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major in Boston this January.
And starting this week, the brand expanded its portfolio of games. Following successful tourneys in CSGO, Street Fighter V, and Overwatch, ELEAGUE aired its first Injustice 2 broadcast Friday on TBS.
What has made the brand so successful? How will it continue to push the envelope and develop a new approach for esports? FanSided spoke to two key members of the Turner Sports team to find out what they have in store and introduce you to the people who make it all happen.
First, we spoke with Turner Sports EVP and Chief Content Officer Craig Barry about bringing his company into the esports space and how the brand was originally developed.
FanSided: Turner Sports has a great reputation for its coverage of traditional sports, so what was the thought process in adding esports to the portfolio?
Craig Barry (CB): When we started to see esports, we started to look at it like this is a content creation opportunity. Does it fit in our business model? I went out and I started to do the due diligence in this space — I went to different conferences, I went to different tournaments — and when I came back, I said look, I think that if we wanted to do this, we can do this by differentiating ourselves by being a high quality brand that leads with rich narratives.
And then most importantly if we can stay authentic in this space, if we can be about building a community and serving that community more than it being a revenue drive right off the bat, if we work and focus on authenticity, then I think we can create a brand that people care about. If we can create a brand that people care about through content, through being emotionally connected to the content, then we can be successful in this space.
It spoke to our capabilities in resources as sort of a boutique sports division. We were able to be nimble enough because we’re not tethered to a mainstream 24/7 sports brand. We’re not an externally facing sports brand. We’re here to enhance the brand, whether that’s the NBA on TNT, or MLB on TBS, or March Madness. So it put us in a really unique position to kind of put our arms around this, and then be authentic and let the community decide if we’re good at this, and then build it from there.
FanSided: With esports being online, and thus so much of ELEAGUE being about social media and online platforms like Twitch and YouTube rather than traditional broadcast metrics, how do you measure the progress of the brand?
CB: When you look at a brand like ELEAGUE, you have to look at the collective. You have to look at engagement, views, uniques. You have to look at all of it as the ecosystem of the community, because ultimately you have a certain amount of engaged fans, whether it’s watching or sharing or commenting with your brand on a daily basis. That engagement becomes such a important part of creating a emotional connection with that community.
Not only for us but for our advertisers, too. For the advertisers who are progressive and forward thinking, they understand the value. For those advertisers, we’re getting on the ground floor. Not to mention it’s the most coveted demographic in the ad space. I think it’s still a niche, and people still have to get comfortable with this kind of buying by brand and buying by engagement, and that’s going to take time. But I think the value proposition from it will serve itself eventually.
FanSided: In less than two years, ELEAGUE has already been recognized by the Sports Emmys and earned two Majors from Counter-Strike publisher Valve. How do you continue to develop the brand at this high level?
CB: As a content creation company, we’re like, there’s a lot more dynamic opportunities, so let’s try Street Fighter, and let’s try different formats of Counter-Strike. We did the Clash for Cash, which was a prize-fight format where we took the two teams from the Major and did a rematch. And then The International, where we didn’t broadcast one frame of live [DOTA 2] competition. We created a story arc around two teams and followed them through the experience of being in The International.
[We went] back to our roots in Counter-Strike [with the CSGO Premier], then onto Injustice 2 which is interesting, not just [because] the DC Universe is awesome and it happens to be our sister company in WB Games, but there’s also Justice League the movie coming out two weeks later. We’re in the middle of NBA on TNT and MLB postseason, and all the planets are aligning for us to leverage all our resources to be able to use these platforms to cross-promote each other and really create an opportunity around a title, which is just another dynamic approach to being in that space that hasn’t necessarily been done before.
When I got into it, I was like I’m going to cherry-pick what I think is applicable from a resource and capability standpoint from our stick and ball space. I’m going to move it to the esports space or share it with the esports space. But conversely, what’s important is that we learned just as much from the esports space about engagement, communities, selling by brand and the collective of metrics, and that in a lot of ways is being reapplied to the traditional space. I think we have to do that just because the consumption habits of people are changing.
FanSided: What would you say is most important for the future of ELEAGUE?
CB: I think it’s super important to stay dynamic, to continue to try different titles. I always say if you want to speak to a diverse audience, you have to create diverse content.
We’ve got to continue to engage this kind of casual and amateur opportunity. For example, we don’t expect the hardcore esports gamers to go to TBS unless they’re supporting the cause. What we really feel is it’s a portal for the casual fan to walk through and engage with esports on a familiar platform.
They’re maybe a little bit more expository and editorial on how to play the game or how to watch the game. We don’t expect [TV viewers] to jump up and go over to Twitch. We take a little bit more of a narrative-driven content approach, and this ability to teach them a little bit about esports as they’re watching is an opportunity for us on TBS.
It’s a native digital property, it will probably always be a native digital property, and we accept that and agree with that. Not all platforms are created equal, and you have to use the strength of the platform to help support the community and the audience.
Something I’m passionate about is this: there’s a lot of talk about these massive events. Live events are fantastic. What I realized going to some of them, it’s about the experience. I feel like this experiential opportunity is massive — not just from events, but even as they play or engage from home.
I’m not sure how that translates yet, but we need to be as experiential and sensory for the people who check in via their computer, whether that’s through VR or ELEAGUE Game Command or whatever, and be able to differentiate ourselves that way. The experience is so important to this community and ecosystem, whether you’re there live in person or experiencing it from a different platform.
Then FanSided sat down with Turner Sports VP of Production Matt Mosteller, who’s the man that is responsible for all the great video content that esports fans see on TV and online, to discuss the production of ELEAGUE’s original content.
FanSided: How did you decide what direction to take in starting to make content for ELEAGUE?
Matt Mosteller (MM): We wanted to build a brand, but we wanted to build one that was authentic. Esports was something we hadn’t done before, but we were excited about the opportunity, as we continue to see this space grow, and the passion that’s in this space from the fans and the players and the public.
We saw it as something we felt we really needed to be a part of, and so we looked at it as, let’s take our level of expertise that we have and let’s work with some smart people who are in this space already, and let’s figure out how we can create this entity that the fans like, that is creating compelling content that maybe the fans aren’t getting already. That was our mindset coming into it.
Our first year we really held strong to let’s be authentic to the space. We didn’t want to come in and do things because this is how we think it should be done, because it’s TV. This gaming community has been with these games, and they’ve seen how these games are produced and how they kind of have an expectation for how things are to some extent.
We didn’t want to come in and do things that were off base. We wanted to just take these games that are already good and had this great fanbase, and just kind of see if we could elevate the production a little bit and tell some more stories about these players and these teams to draw in more people.
FanSided: With some of these games, like Counter-Strike and Street Fighter, the players and teams are international. They’re based all over the world. How do you handle the logistics of worldwide gaming?
MM: We are having to send crews out and we’re having to make relationships with crews that are based overseas, from an infrastructure standpoint. We want to build and tell those stories, so we need to go to those places. We’ve earned a lot of extra miles for our crew, but they’ve enjoyed the experience, to get to travel and get to know these players and get to know these teams. That’s been fun. Having to work with translators and things has been kind of new to us, because with some of these teams, the language barrier can be an issue we have to work through from time to time. But it’s just all part of the process.
FanSided: With the ELEAGUE CSGO Premier, you introduced Eye Tracking to the brand. Where’s the balance between maintaining what’s made you a Sports Emmy-nominated property and the new technology?
MM: You’re always looking for what’s going to enhance the user experience. That’s first and foremost. Just to do something and be innovative isn’t right. It has to be an enhancement for the game itself and for the viewer at home. There is that fine line; we’ve tried things before and people are a little set in their ways sometimes, as far as viewing traditional stick and ball sports. It’s kind of like that in the ELEAGUE forum as well. They’re focused on playing a game a certain way, and if you start deviating from that, people don’t like it because they’re accustomed to it.
But if you can deliver something new that doesn’t affect the actual gameplay itself, it’s just adding to the space. There’s a lot of augmentative reality stuff that we’re starting to play with a little bit that could bring these characters and the game to life a little bit. That’s just kind of a cool thing for the fans that have followed these games. But you don’t want to start messing too much with the integrity of the game itself. It’s just kind of peripheral stuff that you can explore and enhance a little more.
FanSided: How has the ELEAGUE experience been for you, as a traditional sports producer who’s now also working in the esports space?
MM: I’ve been doing production content for 18-plus years and it’s been basketball, baseball, golf. All the normal stick and ball sports. So I’m not a big gamer, but I went to a couple events when we first got into this and saw the passion and the energy of this fanbase. These people are wearing jerseys for their favorite teams, they’re holding up posters and signs, they’re excited like any other sport we’d be covering and so you realize it equates over.
It’s all about the competition and these players are athletes and take their craft seriously and they train hard so they can be the best at their craft, just like a basketball player. So from a storytelling standpoint we saw a lot of simliarities. It’s been fun bringing these people that have more sports production [experience] and bringing them over to this gaming space, working with people that know the games in and out, and meshing the groups together and seeing how they bring up these new ideas.
The passion of everybody — these people who weren’t even into esports are following it, and they live and breathe it. I love it too, and it’s just seeing how more people get into it that way. They’ll see esports is just like all these others.
Next: New York Yankees make major esports investment
Tune into the ELEAGUE Injustice 2 World Championships Fridays through Nov. 10 at 10 p.m. ET on TBS and Twitch. For more Gaming news, follow the Gaming category at FanSided here.