 This episode of the podcast is supported by Audible. You can download and listen to the world's best storytelling. I use it all the time to and from work. You can listen to audiobooks, original series and more on their free app. To get your free 30 day subscription, which includes a free book, click on the link in our show notes and enjoy. Hey folks, welcome to the podcast. Today I had a very old friend of mine come in called Robbie Dewitt and he is in to eSports which is online gaming and stuff. And he's a CEO of BLAST Pro Series, which is an awesome media company, event company that organize live events where you can go and watch teams play computer games. So Supercool, it is a massively growing industry and entertainment kind of segment. So you're gonna, you could choose to watch Netflix, Premier League Football or BLAST Pro Series. So it's really interesting and we hear about how that industry's developed the money that's involved, how it's becoming more professional and the age range of people that are taking part and stuff, so really interesting and I hope you enjoy it. Hey, it's Lewis, welcome to the podcast. Enjoy our conversations anytime, anywhere. Boom, we're live. Fantastic. Thanks for coming in, Robbie. So what is eGaming exactly? Electronic gaming, so eSports and eGaming, the ability for a generation of young gamers to be able to go out there and play competitively. Around the world, in arenas or online against each other. Simply put, it's electronic gaming played by millions and millions of kids and people around the world. Crazy. You played when you were younger. I have never been an incredibly big gamer. Back when we grew up, I was on Game Boy Supernairs, FIFA and stuff like that. And then much more moved to sort of the spectator angle of watching sports and entertainment. That's what I think this is now, it's sports and entertainment and you're a viewer of essentially sports and entertainment spectacle at any moment in time. So you can kind of like either watch Netflix, watch the news, watch football, watch eSports, UFC. Yeah, that's it. You've got so much. You come in and I think the generations for today that are interested in gaming, they essentially have two choices. Either they are actually gaming themselves or they watch gaming. In the same way that when we were younger, we'd go around and kick a football or we'd go to a match, right? It's exactly the same thing for the younger generations today. They just basically go home and either they'll play a game or they'll go and watch something on Twitch or one of the streaming platforms that's out there today and digest content. What's Twitch for this date now? So Twitch is a live streaming platform that's owned and operated by Amazon. Global platform producing oodles and oodles of content on a daily basis. And they're very, very strong in eSports. So what's the people who play in games and I can just log in and watch you play a game? Essentially, yeah. Crazy. So yeah, you're watching essentially live tournaments, live gaming, people playing games at any point in time. You could do that on YouTube as well. The live element is like you're less specific to YouTube. You're probably watching more VOD based stuff but essentially Twitch would be the destination although now Mixer's in the game so that's owned by Microsoft. All right. There's been some big news recently that Ninja who's very well known influencer in the world of eSports and gaming has moved from Twitch to Mixer. Oh wow. And that's caused the big stir in the ecosystem. Why is he moved? Or she? We don't know the ins and outs of the deal. We presume that Mixer have made it very interesting for Ninja to be there. And then this week's news which you might have picked up on is there's another one that's moved in that direction called Shroud. So we'll see what happens. And so they're both like top gamers. Top gamers, yeah. And so they get millions of views. Millions of views, millions of concurrent viewers watching their content when they stream. So they go live and then tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people are watching them stream at any point in time. So if you think about it in sort of really pure form, it's a bit like back in the day we'd switch the TV on and watch a live show, right? You're now no longer doing that necessarily or just watching a live stream of someone else streaming content. A bit like if someone was sitting here today in the room with us watching us two old farts sit around and have a chat. This is exactly the same scenario. And how long are they playing for per day? Some of them can stream for hours. So from our perspective as a tournament organizer and a producer and an operator of IP, we'll be live in the year for hundreds of hours a year and we'll have audiences watching our content. And they'll watch it on non-linear platforms. So the likes of Twitch and other platforms like that. But they'll also watch them on linear platforms. This is what's really interesting about the space. And this is where it sort of bridges between sports and entertainment. So you'll find that the broadcasters of this world. So if you take someone like Pro Zeban in Germany or big channels like even the BBC in the UK or Sky Sports they're licensing this content from producers and they're putting it on their channels. Interesting. People to watch. Oh wow. So very exciting. Interesting. So like eight to nine you can watch Pro Blast series in Copenhagen. Yeah. So you would basically tune in and you'd be able to watch an eSports tournament whether that's Counter Strike or League of Legends or Dota and you'd watch on ATV. Or you'd be watching on the TV providers, you know, OTT platform. And that's the way the world works nowadays which has completely changed in the last sort of five years. Massively changed. And what's yours? The Pro Blast series. Yeah. So Blast Pro series is. Blast Pro series. Don't worry. That's fine. Blast Pro series is a global Counter Strike tournament. So Counter Strike is an eSports and it's a global tournament series that we take around the world. And this year we've been in, we started the year in Sao Paulo with a proper sort of. Nice. Big party in Sao Paulo, packed venue. How many people come? 8,000 people in that venue. We sold out within six hours. Crazy. And the game was? Counter Strike. Yeah, Counter Strike. Which is a game, funnily enough, has been around for 20 years. Really? Yeah. So Fortnite much younger. Yeah, yeah. But Counter Strike has been around for a long time and there's a big player base and there's a big fan base. Right, okay. And then you have professional teams playing Counter Strike. So in the same way that we've watched the Premier League and watched Liverpool, Tottenham Arsenal, wherever, you'll find teams are watching the American teams, the Brazilian teams, the Danish teams, the French teams. And these are all professional players playing. Are these national teams or people from the country put together their own team? It's a mix. Some of them are, there's a Finnish team with just Finnish players. But actually, more often than not now you're finding a mix of players and then they're switching from playing together in their native language to playing in English. All right. And what's interesting about... Why are they switching? Well, because if there were five Finnish players, they'd be playing in Finnish. Five, yeah. If then Britain and Sweden, whatever else. But what's interesting about that is that you're seeing a massive change in the ecosystem and you're seeing that these players are becoming far more professional and they're working a lot harder on their physical fitness and working harder on their mental coaching. Yeah. So these teams have all gone. So some of these teams are multimillion-euro enterprises, right? Multimillion-euro. Oh, for sure. Well, let's go into finances in a bit. Yeah, for sure. That's a really interesting topic. But the teams, in order to succeed at the pinnacle of their career, right? So players are between, say, 18. And it's difficult to say when a player is kind of peaked out. We don't really know that. Can you peek out on that? I mean, one of the, there was a player that just announced his retirement who I think is about 30-odd. All right. Then they'll go into, a bit like how, you know, Lineca renounces retirement and then went into broadcast. And they'll go into what we call casting and producing and being, you know, a face for the game, which is fantastic. And some of them are really good at that. But they'll, inside of their clubs, because they're owned by clubs. And by the way, many of these teams are owned by traditional sports organizations. Really? So you'll find like, you know, the 76ers own a club. And you know, Houston Rockets own a club. And FC Copenhagen owns a club. And Paris Saint-Germain are in the game. Like, there's, you know, it's incredible what's going on. So they put this infrastructure behind them. They give them sports coaches, physical fitness. They look at mental fitness. They train them super hard. And there's notion of a, you know, an e-sports player being someone who, you know, doesn't eat healthy and goes to bed at three in the morning. Have a nice, a fizzy drink, sitting there, yeah. Gone. Really? Gotta go. And that I think is this misnomer where parents think that potentially kids are not using their time intelligently. Because actually, if you take lots of these games, they're very tactical. They're very strategic. There's a lot of brainpower that's being used. There's a lot of skill. And I think that's misunderstood. I think it's massively misunderstood. There's a big dialogue about don't let kids watch TV. Don't let kids play too many games. You know, get them reading books, all of these things. But I think when we grew up, it was, you know, you don't really wanna stay in the house and play games. Or the ones that did, they weren't regarded as like the high achievers, let's say. Whereas now, you can have a genuine career in e-gaming, right? Yeah. If your parents allow you to go down that path. Yeah, and I think that's, you know, that's, I think that in the UK, you know, there's something called the British East Wars Association, for example. And so we were talking middle of last week. And, you know, I think there's more work that needs to be done at a sort of grassroots level. And there is a lot of work happening in schools to give kids a framework and a structure to be able to compete in sort of structured manner, right? And that, in Scandinavia, it's sort of part and parcel of daily life, right? So I say, I talk a lot about Scandinavia because our business is based in Copenhagen and in London. Okay. And so we spent a lot of time in it. But there is just an incredible player base in Scandinavia and it's part of their culture. Interesting. You switched on the TV and you'll watch Hamble and you'll watch, you know, e-sports. And that's just normal. Whereas here in the UK, it's not often, No, no, no. But going back to the original point, you know, the kids today, yeah, we need to, you know, we need to provide them those boundaries and that sort of structure around them to be able to work in the way that they need to. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, interesting. I think it might be a long way. Could be a long way. I mean, even my kids, like my oldest one starting to play a little games on the phone and stuff like that. But I would say most of the people in her school, there's even a thing about, do you want to let them watch TV? How much TV? Can you detox them from TV? And then you're like, they're playing games. I think we've got a bit of a way to go here. Yeah, I mean, listen, it's a constant battle. It's a constant challenge. You know, we live in, you know, everyone knows we live in a world where social media, you know, is hugely important and technology is crucial to everything we do. So I think we have to embrace it. And I think when we embrace it, we have to put the boundaries, we have to put the structure around these. So, you know, so if you're, you know, if you've got a 12 year old, just say, all right, well, you can come home. You can do your homework. And then you can game for an hour. And then you have dinner with your family. And then, you know, and if you want to game professionally, then you put some structure in and around that individual where he goes to, you know, an area where he can game with others. And he's given the right tools to make that happen. We don't want kids sitting in bedrooms doing stuff at, you know, three o'clock in the morning. Yeah, online, et cetera. Yeah. Going back to how your series works. Yeah. So you started in Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo, yeah. And then we went to Miami. Cool. Then we went from Miami to Madrid. Then we ended back, we went back to the U.S. to L.A. Then we had the summer off for two months. Is it the most popular in the U.S. or? Yeah, one of the most popular stations for this particular sport is in the U.S. Russia's big, Germany's big, France, Turkey. And we went from L.A. to Moscow, which was mental. Love to go there. Yeah, Moscow is fantastic. And then this weekend, we were in Copenhagen. Amazing. And that's kind of our home, home tour. Yeah. And it's 12 and a half thousand people in the arena. Wow. We're fully sold out and they're just going to be buzzing. And always the same game. This is Counter-Strike, yeah. Always the same. At the moment we're in Counter-Strike, we could move into other esports as well. We're thinking about that. And we've just launched our rework format for 2020. And so we're moving away from Blast Pro Series and we're calling it Blast Premier. And it's a more structured tournament series throughout the year. It's kind of league. So how does it actually work then? Yeah, so this one we had, it was a bit like Formula One, so you had sort of seven stops, six stops. And we finished the year, by the way, in the Middle East in December. And the winning teams, the top four teams would compete in the Middle East. That was the structure for this year. Next year, we have a much more sort of structured, organized process. So we've got 12 teams that are competing at start and then some more teams that come in, you know, sort of from qualification through local leagues and local, you know, local play-ins. And then there's a spring final and a fall final, so an autumn final. And then there's a global, global final at the end of the year with a prize tag on that one of a million and a half dollars. Wow. With the winning team taking a million dollars. Yeah. It's no Jake anymore. No, you know, these players are earning a lot of cash. Crazy. So how did you get in then? So you alluded to it a little bit. So there's local, let's say, series or competitions, which are affiliated to you guys? Yeah, so in, so, you know, grassroots level, there's a lot of activity in and around players going and bringing their gaming laptop and playing against each other at hacks or, you know, these things where they're hackathons or whatever. And then off the back of that, you know, there's, depending on the country you live in, there are multiple ways to sort of get recognized, but most of these players will start playing online against each other and suddenly they'll have results that will sort of start moving in the right direction and then they'll be, you know, they'll be thought of, okay, hold on, there's a guy to watch there or a girl to watch there. And suddenly they'll get discovered and they sort of make their way up. Okay, and then so the team will say, like, come and try out. Come on board. Come on board, yeah. And then they get paid the salary. So is that at that point, if a professional team recognizes you, at that point, you can start monetizing. Some of those younger players will earn prize money at some of the more grassroots level tournaments, but nothing in the scheme of what you're talking about at a larger level. Now that said, some of the players that entered into the Fortnite World Cup or World Championship, whatever it was called, you know, they'd come through a massive qualifying. And so that really was sort of a rags to riches story because- They have to fund themselves and- Totally, yeah. And then, you know, the kid that won, and I think he took him $3 million or something, right? $3 million. He, you know, he doesn't have an agent. He hasn't got an infrastructure around him. How old is it? I think he's 16. 16, great. You know, he hasn't got, hasn't got all those things at a football club or a e-sports club puts around you. Yeah, yeah. And yet he's suddenly earning, you know, all that money. Some of these guys, though, of course, they've got agents, they've got, you know, players unions and- But I guess at 16, you're not doing it to make $3 million. You just really love gaming. You love gaming. I guess you just- You love gaming, it's your passion. It's everything that you think about. And these guys are generally very good. I mean, if you, the series that we produced with some of the players in and around sort of hand and eye coordination, and there was this piece of, there was an ex-army official that was training some of these guys and working on this psychology of things. And he was like, guys could be, you know, LN pilots. They could be fighter pilots. They are that good and they are that quick because the sort of hand to eye coordination has to be at that level. That it's incredibly impressive. Amazing. And then you start to lose it then at 30-ish or something. You know, I don't know. I mean, I'd assume that you're- I'd like to feel I can still do it now. I think you could. I think you could do it with all that training you do. 38, like more than half their age, more than double their age. I say it's never too late, but then when I pick up a mouse and a keyboard in the office and try and play, they all laugh at me. I'm like one of the worst. I literally, I'm like literally terrible. And some of the more younger members of staff, they're like incredible at this game. The 16, I mean, like, he wouldn't have been playing for very long. No, no, but I just think, you know, some of these kids have just, they just take to it. But you know, even if, I sometimes do this and sound like an old fart, but I watch like younger kids on the tube playing with their mobile phones. And the way that they hold it and the way that they actually use it, it's completely different to you or I. Oh yeah. Or even like, you know, our parents who are sort of texting with one finger. Fat fingers, pressing every button. So fast. I think that actually says a lot about the way- They're the natives, right? I mean, they're just all natives. They're born like this. Yeah. My kids are like iPads and stuff. There's a lot of passion on that already. Oh yeah, yeah, like all over it. All over it. It's crazy. So you're really seeing this now become a career of choice. For some of us, the professionals, yeah, absolutely. I mean, they aspire to be athletes. They are athletes. I mean, last year in the Copenhagen Arena in our tournament, the Danish Prime Minister opened the show. Really? And he came on to our stage, which is this triangle stage with six teams housed underneath it. Okay, so if you sort of think about a house. Yeah. And there's six teams sitting underneath it all playing at the same time. Anyway, Danish Prime Minister, who don't ask me to pronounce his name because I won't do a very good job of it, he comes on the stage and he gives a speech which is broadcasted around the world because we broadcast to millions, right? So when we go live, non-linear and linear broadcast. Right. And he says, you guys are truly athletes. And that statement then gets played out again and again and again. And I think it really is true because I think that if you're gonna be at the pinnacle of your, if you're sporting career, you've got to train, you've got to work hard. No one gets anywhere without working hard, right? For sure. And so these guys think of themselves if very much in that frame of mind and they're encouraged to think healthy and work for it and work hard. And I reckon, yeah, they've all aspired to be that. And funnily enough, to the extent that, you know, you try and get some of these players to sort of media sessions or a podcast like this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They don't want to know. They just want to game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's crazy. And it's amazing how much of a spectator sport it's become because gaming's always been around but watching people game, certainly for like our age group, it takes a bit of time to get your head around. When I joined and I came to my sort of first tournament and I was like, really? Are we going to sit in this arena for 10 hours? 10 hours. It's 10 hours. 10 hours. Wow. So for example, on Saturday, doors will open at 11, right? The first match will start at sort of one, two, whenever it is, right? But they'll be there at night. Queuing up. Queuing. And they've already got seats. They've got seats and they've got tickets. They'll all run in and they'll be there and then they'll be there for 10 hours because the tournament will finish at, say, 10 in the evening or whatever that is. And they'll run to the toilet so they don't miss anything. Really? And then when you produce... And there's one game on at a time, right? So actually we do three. Three at a time? Yeah. And that's an interesting format as we have three simultaneous matches going on and three simultaneous broadcasts across the world. So it means that the Germans can watch the German teams. The French can watch the French and whoever wants to watch the other one. Which also adds a heap of complexity and cost to our production. I bet, yeah. But it makes for an incredible spectacle. But you're watching a spectator support and these guys are engaged. They're chatting. They're cheering and, you know, then there's a whole element of sort of food and beverage going on in the same way that you would have at the NFL. Alcohol? There is in certain arenas around the world. There are various laws around age groups in terms of what you can allow into arena depending on the country of question. Yeah, yeah. So Germany has some quite stringent laws around that whereas other markets don't. And they're there for hours watching, consuming, going crazy, tweeting, desperate to get player signatures, desperate to get as close to the action as possible to be able to see their hero. It's crazy. What's the age range? Depending on the country, you'll see between, you know, 14 year olds to 45 year olds. And they go with their parents, presumably. Some of them go with their parents. Some of them have to be accompanied in the given country. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's regulations around that. But for example, this weekend in Denmark, it would not surprise me to see push chairs with babies in that arena because parents will come with their kids who are, you know, 10 and they may have a couple of other kids and then suddenly there'll be a little baby there. Like last year, I was like, crazy. It's mad. And they'll all be there and everyone's watching together. And it's a family day out. So it's very exciting. And they're buying merch. You know, so they're buying teen jerseys. They're buying stuff associated with the sport. And so when you're producing shows like this for 12 hours, you're having to keep people entertained, right? And so you're having to do stuff on your, on your broadcasts and in your show that makes sure that they're excited. So we've got things like kiss cams and hug cams and, you know, all these giveaways and just a bunch of activations that are happening in the arena. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mostly by the sponsors that have come in and sponsored. Yeah. So this is, I mean, if you think about it. And who's sponsoring? Like main consumer brands and, yeah. Yeah, so more and more. I said, you know, the original sponsors in and around eSports were sort of endemic tech brands. Hardware developers that want to sell their, their wear. Now you're finding that, you know, many of those brands are, you know, real mainstream brands. You know, you're talking about FMCG brands, auto, luxuries coming into the space now. We've had, you know, we've had, you know, trainers and we've had fast food outlets and we've had, we've had everything. You know, it's, you know, even finance and transportation and they're all into it. Crazy. Because those audiences for them are really hard to reach. Yeah, yeah. And eSports gives them that opportunity. Amazing. How did it, how did your, your start? Frostbast series? So we started in Copenhagen. Yeah. And back in a 2017. Okay. So not too long ago. Not too long ago. And then we've really scaled in the last 12 months. Yeah. So private equity backed. Yeah, backed by VCs. But yeah, cool. And, you know, very supportive, you know, prominent Scandinavian and investors actually. Yeah. Very supportive. And I've got a really amazing team around me of individuals that come from the media and the entertainment business, sports business, producing live events. I've got guys from Live Nation, from the Olympics, from the Formula E, from football clubs. And they just, everyone brings something to this game. And then we've got a lot of core eSports, you know, employees. Hardcore. Yeah, yeah. One of our younger ones. And I said, well, what's the deal with this? What does that actually mean? And he'll translate it into sort of Robbie language. So I can get it. Nice. How did you get involved? Well, I was actually brought in because I knew someone who was working in the business. Right. Who'd been involved since the inception. So I'd worked with that person at Disney. And I thought, well, this is a really big opportunity. And, you know, I'd been in the world of influencers before that and mobile advertising. And I think that eSports is going to be huge. I think it is already huge. And if you look at the statistics, consumption is, you know, through the roof. Monetization is not quite there yet. But there's every chance that this is the next big thing. So for me, it was like, all right, I'm going to go back and do a startup again and build it. So when did you start with them? About a year and a half ago, as you expected. I'm working ridiculously hard. Much harder than I've ever probably worked in my life. But it's incredibly exciting. Like no one day is the same. Yeah, yeah. And it gives you that variety that you wouldn't have. You know, I never know what the next day is going to be. I meet so many interesting people. Yeah, I bet. And, you know, I'll go from here to another meeting where someone's going to talk about us doing a collaboration with their product and their format and their series and that's actually nothing to do with eSports. It's something much more associated with health and fitness. So you'd love that, right? I love that. And then I'll go from there to another meeting and it was just, it varied. Someone came in the other week was talking about us doing something in the music industry. You just got to choose your opportunities though because, you know, like you can get completely distracted. So I guess you guys produce these great events and it happens to be eGaming. Is that how you kind of think? Yeah, we think of ourselves as a media business, right? You know, we have these viewers. We think of ourselves as viewers and users. So viewers watching our content, whether that's in an arena or online. Yeah. And users, essentially purchasing merchandise, purchasing ticketing, buying content in some capacity, whether that's, you know, in arena or online. And that's how we kind of frame our business and we think about our business in that way. Nice. Experiences, whether that's, and it's all in and around eSports. So what do you do in the future? So is it growing the events, live events bigger, more online? What's the... I mean, you know, so live events cost a lot to produce. So I think we've increased our output year on year. So we did, we had about 120 hours of live this year. We'll be at 300 next year. 300 hours of live broadcast of events. Wow. And at 10 hours in event. Yeah. Actually the format slightly changes, but yeah. We'll have a strategy where we're always on. So we're always producing content. So if you've got your own studio team, your content team, and then we'll go to your website and I can always watch stuff on your website. That's the, at the moment, there's not enough content on that website. So most of our content lives on social, right? It's on certain party platforms. We want to make sure that you come to our destination and you're entertained, right? You know, one of the things we stand by is excitement and entertainment. And I think that we need to do more of that. When you're tuning in and watching a live broadcast, we want you to feel totally engrossed in it. And actually, we want you to be able to interact with it even more, right? So we're constantly trying to sort of push the boundaries and make things different. Yeah. And we want a lot more of that to come in the next sort of 24 months. It's awesome. I've watched a lot of UFC. Right. And I mentioned it because it seems like you guys aren't too dissimilar to where they were, like back in the day, where a really unknown sport that's, I mean, now I think done amazingly. Yeah, absolutely. On ESPN. It'd be quite cool if you turn into, tune into Sky Sports at one point and then they're commenting on your teams. I think it would be amazing. And I think there's that, by the way, I don't think that's too far away. The UFC is a great example to aspire towards. You know, we look at our business, we look at what UFC have done. You know, who would have thought sort of 10 years ago that you'd be tuning in and watching people essentially fighting, right? Yeah, yeah. But boxing's always been the main thing. Yeah. And then UFC, it seems. I mean, it's called so popular now. Huge. And they've done such an amazing job. But they've done an amazing job of creating a media business. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that I think is the difference. You know, you'll find that they've got people who are subscribing to their content all the time because it's just, and then there's this sort of fandom in around the players. And so I think all the fighters rather. So I think they've done a great job and we look a lot what they do. What's that mean? We look a lot around Formula E. I mean, you know, Formula E, when it first came out, people were like, well, what is all this about, right? You know, electric cars, bang on the money. It's like, so what it needs to be at the right time. They've got this incredible circuit in the most incredible destinations in the world. And that's very exciting. So when we look at what we produce, we do really want to be in premium destinations. We want to be like front and center. We want to be talk of the town. Now that's hard if you're in Miami. Yeah. There's a lot of noise in Miami or LA, right? There's a lot for someone to do on a weekend in LA. But I can guarantee you this weekend in Copenhagen, like not one person won't know that this is happening in the Royal Arena and everything will be around it. Amazing. How can we find out what's coming up in the Canada for next year? Yeah, so blastpremier.com is one place to start. And then the season is finishing on blastproseries.com. So yeah, those are the places to go on Instagram and on Twitter and everywhere else. Cool. And you're going to do one in London? We might have some of our season next season in London. Spoiler alert there. Let me know. You'll be the first to get an invite, Lewis. 82 Cent, I'll be there. Filling that O2. Let's have a think about it. Yeah, that'll be challenging. But you never know the future. Couple years. You'll be there. Cool. Thank you very much for coming in. Appreciate your time. Really loved it. And look forward to come and watching the event. Thanks, man. Cool. Hey, folks, thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe in all the usual places.