 Welcome to the wide world of eSports, the show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Catherine Norr. Today, our topic is eSports on the ninth island, Las Vegas, Casinos, Bedding, and Event. My guest is Seth Schor, the CEO of BetterView. Welcome, Seth. Thank you for having me today. It's good to be here. Okay, you know, I know that all the viewers are excited to watch this today because we always want to know what's going on in Vegas. Yeah, Vegas and Hawaii, very, very synergistic, popular destinations. We love our Hawaiian tourists. And of course, as Las Vegas, we love visiting Hawaii. Right. And you know, the first time that I was aware of eSports in Vegas, I was staying at the Luxor Hotel and, you know, when I saw their arena there. And so, you know, it's really exciting. So what is going on in eSports in Vegas right now? Yeah, sure. Well, you know, there's no doubt that the eSports arena at Luxor is one of the preeminent eSports facilities, something that I think the eSports community is very proud of and MGM Resorts and HyperX that did a great job, or Allied eSports rather, did a great job creating the HyperX arena. But the history of eSports in Las Vegas, of course, goes back much further from a local community perspective. There's been a growing eSports community that goes back 10 or 15 years from an industry perspective. You know, what I mean by that is the Las Vegas casino and tourist industry embracing eSports as a part of our strategy and offering, it goes back about six or seven years now. I'm very proud to say it originated in downtown Las Vegas, which is technically the ninth island. We were furtose the ninth island at the downtown Grand. We were the first casino to introduce eSports to the casino environment. All right. So tell us what your role is in Vegas. Sure. So my main background is in casino and hospitality. So I am the CEO of Fit Street Gaming. We own and operate casinos and restaurants and hotels in Las Vegas. That's something that I've done for quite a long time, but in the industry for 25 plus years. About seven years ago, actually by being introduced to eSports, we started to also look at innovative technologies around the gaming space, which will help us introduce Las Vegas to a new generation of gamer and really enhance the brick and mortar facility. So that's what we were really attracted to when it came to eSports. And that's been a big focus of our company ever since. So the target market for Vegas, I mean, let's talk about the market. Who is actually going there and who are you trying to attract? Well, I think that's the, from a general perspective, Las Vegas attracts all different types of people, of course, for an international destination. I think the idea around eSports attracting the millennial generation, Gen X, Gen Z rather, that is what's attractive to Las Vegas casino operators. There's a school of thought that casino customers are getting older, that a lot of young patrons are not necessarily attracted to slot machines. And at least they want to have an element of skill during their gambling and incorporating eSports gaming culture into our Las Vegas experience is intended to just tap into another demographic. That's the general idea. We've been successful in some ways. Others that we've had a lot of learnings over the years. I actually, probably the best example of a significant eSports experience that we were working on that didn't quite come to fruition, but I still think is a great example of a Las Vegas only eSports experience was a festival called Metorama. This goes back to about 2018, 2019, when we partnered with some of the biggest festival producers in the world and one of the largest casino operators MGM to create a first of its kind gaming eSports music festival. And it was, you know, I look looking back, we created an amazing talent of musicians and gamers, all of your a list eSports celebrities, we had a Blizzard and Riot involved. Unfortunately, combination of marketing and ultimately COVID didn't allow us to execute on that festival. But I know it's something we'll be looking at doing again. And just the type of experience that I think one would expect only in Las Vegas. Or the publisher or the game publishers anxious to get in to casinos. I'm kind of curious about that. I think it's a great question. I would be hesitant to lump all publishers together. I think different publishers have different perspectives when it comes to Las Vegas and what Las Vegas means to different people. Let's just say, I think, you know, Valve might be on one spectrum and Nintendo on the other spectrum. And, you know, certainly many in between. I do think that I can speak to most of the publishers that are heavily focused on eSports. Let's just say the publishers that organize and operate their own leagues. And, you know, I need anybody familiar with eSports that knows who they are. I know that they see Las Vegas as a great destination because the Las Vegas franchise for some of the biggest eSport leagues are being held back for the right time and the right opportunity. Not because they think Las Vegas isn't a great destination, but because they think it's such a good destination. It needs to be done right. Which, quite frankly, is very similar to the way that traditional stick-in-ball sports see Las Vegas. Once people got past the stigma of Las Vegas being a gambling town, an adults-only town, which I think is safe to say we're now past that. And once sports betting became more or less accepted across the country, you can now bet on sports in at least 50% of the United States, well, then all of a sudden Las Vegas becomes the ideal place for professional sports. Las Vegas is a growing community over 2 million people, though we're one of the largest cities, you know, without an NBA team. We now have an NFL team, of course, and an NHL team, all brand new, right? Didn't have either one just, you know, three years ago. The idea is not only to tap into a growing local community of 2 million people, but our tourists, right? So theoretically the best place to watch a professional sports match if you're from another city is your hometown and then doing the Las Vegas game. So I think that's why sports are becoming so popular in Las Vegas and has no difference for esports. And what games have you actually seen in casinos that are classified as esports games? Sure. So I, from about 2016 to 2018, in one of my casinos, the Downtown Grand, we operated approximately 300 esport tournaments on the casino floor, all different levels. These were, you know, not professional tournaments, tournaments that people could enter some and qualifiers that sometimes didn't. And they went across the spectrum of game genre. What was pretty interesting from my perspective as a hospitality operator is we saw the data in terms of what games and what game genre brought different types of people, different age groups and saw a different spend, you know, at the bar, right? And we are a casino, so we did focus on a 21 and over crowd, but we saw a dramatic difference. Let's just say the FIFA audience was, you know, an exciting, rowdy audience that had a big European presence. They all were their jerseys, they came in and it was a completely social, fun environment. We had other, you know, and played on the console. We had other games that were, you know, PC games where you had people on their headsets playing in a land center, you know, much like the one that it looks like you're in today. And it was a little less social, right? It was different. Still exciting, right? And so we learned a lot in terms of the game genre, whether it's played on a console or a PC, whether it's a single individual game or, you know, a five-person team game, those were all very different and they created different experiences, which is important because at the end of the day, that was my goal, was to create an experience. If you're just looking to play esports, go online. You can do that all day long. You can play a million ways to play competitive video games online, whether it's for fun, whether it's for money, whether it's for prizes. But when I talk about the Las Vegas experience, it's an in-person, fun experience, something that you can't do at home. And that's what, you know, Las Vegas is all about. If we're just providing the same experience you can have at home, you might as well stay at home. So it's on us to create something that's more exciting and more fun. Sure. Well, that really makes me want to go back to Vegas. So tell us about Better View. Yeah, sure. So Better View was born out of esports. Approximately three and a half years ago, after being in the esports space for a number of years, I had many venue operators approach me and asked them to help them with their esports strategy. How do they bring gamers into their venue? Should they run tournaments or buy teams or sponsor teams? And all those are good tactics. But my suggestion and advice was start by showing esports on your TV screen, right? So whether you're a bar, a hotel, an airport, a mall, whatever venue, generally there are dozens, if not hundreds of televisions that quite frankly aren't programmed very well. If you ever noticed, most of the time it's talking heads on mute. We don't do a great job, you know, except for Monday Night Football, you know, using and programming our TVs very well. So we created a commercial streaming platform that was integrated with Twitch that brought esports content into venues. We invented certain features that quite frankly, Twitch to this day, I still don't think they have and they're pretty obvious. For example, creating playlists or having an algorithm that says, you know, show constantly the top Fortnite streamer, right? So these were features that were very important for a venue that doesn't have somebody sitting there programming constantly switching to the best streamer, right? So even if you put on Ninja and he stopped streaming, you know, the screen would go blank or you wouldn't know what's on next. So we created a software platform that was more or less plug and play and allowed people to show esports on their TVs. Over time, the platform evolved and, you know, with the repeal of PASPA, which is the Federal Restriction on Sports Bedding, the platform is now heavily focused on bringing sports betting content of which esports ultimately will be some of the sports betting that we focus on as esports betting becomes more and more popular every day. Now, before we get more into betting, let me just ask you when you're talking about developing programming to stream, can you actually make that stream in guest rooms as well? Or would that be something you would do? It's a great question. So theoretically and technically, yes, we can do that. We haven't done that yet, but I think that's only a matter of time. Esports content, just like esports in general, it's tricky in the sense that for many years, hotel and casino operators certainly were intrigued, right? They definitely started to hear about this thing, esports, competitive gaming, that's becoming popular. They're seeing their kids and nephews and friends play, so they knew they had to understand what it is and potentially incorporate in their strategy, but it never quite became the priority that I believe it should and will be. So even providing a channel in a hotel room, I think only certain hotels even today would understand the value. So a lot of this is about education and quite frankly, a lot of my early involvement in esports was being an operator, investing in teams and leagues, building arenas. Stuff that I still do, but what I realized after a couple of years was the most important role I could play and the one that no one seemed to be willing to play was being an advocate of the industry in general. And the best way to advocate something is to educate, right? Not tell people that this is important and you're missing something if you don't incorporate esports, but helping them understand why that is true in my opinion. About five years ago, we created the Nevada Esports Alliance, which is made up of all the stakeholders in Las Vegas, major casino operators and owners, regulators, the LBCVA, the organization responsible for tourism, and we've spent years educating the market on esports. What is it? How do we integrate it into our strategies? And I think that's been very successful. I'll pause before I get into how that then transitioned into the betting piece, but that's been a big piece of our big part of our journey so far. Sure. And educating people is very important and that's what I try to do with this show. We've had this show since July 2020 and my intent is to educate and to allow people in the industry to present and promote what they're doing so that people who are not familiar with it can become familiar and embrace it. So now let's go to the betting piece. Is it legal to place bets on esports matches in Las Vegas? Yeah, great question. And I will try to give the shortest and most concise answer, unfortunately not a yes or no answer, but there is a path for sportsbook operators to take wagers on a professional esports match. That is something that I personally educated in Nevada Gaming Control Board on roughly five years ago. The process to get a wager approved is a pretty cumbersome process where the operator has to go to the regulator and explain to them their applications and otherwise why they believe we should be able to take wagers on the finals of the LCS or where the IEM, Intellectual Chain Masters happened to be the first tournament we did get wagers approved on. So a pretty bit of a cumbersome process, but one that we were willing to go through. Fast forward to today or literally a few weeks ago and we actually got the Nevada Gaming Control Board to create a subdivision of the Department of Gaming Enforcement, which is the Esports Technical Advisory Committee. So now that gives the regulators an in-house group of experts that can proactively say, hey operators we've looked at Call of Duty League, we've looked at the Overwatch League and we're good with it. It meets the criteria we believe in the integrity of the tournament and the League operators. We believe all the governing principles meets our standards. It's good, you can take wagers and that of course makes it much easier for the operator. So it took us nearly five years from the first wager to get here and so now yes it will be legal to bet on certain esports but also you can't just bet on sports in Nevada. You can bet on the NFL, you can bet on the NBA, you can bet on certain professional leagues that the regulators have approved. It's the same thing with esports. I don't believe that we should allow us to bet on my son playing Fortnite against some other 12-year-old, right? I mean that's not a good idea but the finals of Fortnite overseen by Epic and done in a way that we believe is fair and regulated, that should be a match that people should be safely placed wagers on. That makes sense. Now let me ask you. My son might make the World, you know, for an A World Final so you know if he does then of course that, but just for the record I know there is possibility. Well that would be fantastic I'm sure. So did the violent nature of any of the games, did that impact how this moved along? Because when you're looking at professional football, professional baseball, you're looking at horse racing, those things you don't have you know the the killing that you see in a lot of esports games. So how did that? It's a great question. So the quick answer is from a betting perspective, none of the regulators took that into consideration. Where that did become a factor was also, gosh, I think it's been four years. I'm embarrassed to tell you October 1st, I think it'll be four years since the tragic October 1st shooting in Las Vegas, which still today is the country's worst mass shooting. I know terrible for our city and our country, I believe it's the fourth anniversary. And when that happened, within days or within a week, all sorts of members of the community wanted to do something to help you know the families. And these esports community was no different. So we quickly put together a group of esports team owners, streamers, players that were all willing to donate their time, money to do a fundraiser, right? So to do a streaming fundraiser. Now that's a very popular thing at the time that was still a little bit nascent, you know, streamathon. And we were working with MGM. And the biggest problem was picking the game. Because that it couldn't definitely couldn't have shooting and it really couldn't even have punching and it couldn't have blood. And so it was just so sensitive. The game we landed on was Rocket League. Yeah. So you know, it was popular. That was fun. That was easy to understand. So, you know, I hate to bring up, you know, something so sad. But in that case, violence was a factor. Oh, from betting, I don't think that's been a deciding factor. Sure. And the history of boxing in Las Vegas would indicate that there's some reasonable expectation that there might be some violence involved in entertainment there. Yeah, look, we have we have a healthy appetite. For anything that's done in a responsible way. And I mean, that's seriously like we're a city that is built on gambling. Gambling is a form of entertainment when done responsibly. It could be a terrible thing for somebody who has a problem. No different than drinking can be a, you know, bad thing for an alcoholic. But thankfully, you know, 90% of people on bars drink responsibly for fun. So anything done responsibly by adults, you know, is fine. Boxing MMA, quite frankly, it was Nevada. And the Nevada Athletic Association that took a little bit of the violence out of UFC and the MMA to make it done in a responsible way that was better for the athletes. So I think that's an example of there was something was violent. We're okay that it was violent. But let's make sure it's not too violent. Let's make sure that it's a healthy environment, you know, for the athletes. So we're a we're a city that, you know, unlike maybe other cities that just says no to something, we look at saying, well, you know, how can we do this in the right way? Which is why, you know, when it comes to esports betting, I'm very comfortable that our state and our regulators want to work with the operators to figure out, how can we incorporate this new type of sport? Let's not just say no, because optically, someone might draw the conclusion that more young people watch esports will, you know, 12 year olds watch the NBA. That doesn't stop us from betting on it. It just we need to trust that people who are taking wagers know their customer, know the age of their customer, make sure everyone's following the law. We're really good at that here in Las Vegas. So that's why I'm so confident in our ability to incorporate video games into our experience. So what are some of the biggest esports events that you've had? And what is it, what events are you looking forward to in the future? Yeah, great. I mean, Las Vegas has had the major events. At my casino, we had the finals, World of Tanks finals a couple of years ago. That was that was a really big deal. At Mandalay Bay, we've had an LCS seasonal finals. You know, we have EVO every year, which is by far the largest fighting game tournament by far. So there's been a lot of great in-person events. Sadly, all of that stopped last year. And even this year, it's been slow to ramp up. We've had very strict social distancing measures up until July 1 of this year. So sadly, for esports, which was so nascent and unauthorized, we're starting to see traction in 2018-19. 2021 has been, there's been nothing. The Nevada Esports Alliance that I mentioned earlier is working with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority to look at the 2022 schedule and see how we can bring major tournaments to Las Vegas. So, you know, stay tuned on that one. So is it safe for us to go to Las Vegas right now? What are your thoughts? You bet. Look, unless you're, you know, planning on never leaving your house, which is probably the safest thing, Las Vegas is the safest place to visit and has been since the pandemic started. We, as I mentioned earlier, we are an industry, the casino industry that is built on regulations and providing safe, clean and secure environments for our guests. It was not a challenge for us to make sure people were social distancing or masks. We're used to dealing with making sure people don't drink too much or gamble in their age or launder money. So, you know, making sure you wear a mask, that was easy. And we are very proud of the fact that we have provided a safe environment for people since COVID and we will continue as we get out of this thing. All right. And what do you think the future of esports is going to be in your state? Yeah. So I think it's a combination of what's in our state. The other thing that did change, this really accelerated last year was mobile sports betting has become very, very popular. So we are starting to incorporate mobile betting opportunities within sports betting apps. So I do see, you know, a lot more esports betting. I do see casinos incorporating video game culture into their experience. That's the other thing when it comes to education. Well, esports is, you know, certainly defined and mostly specific to the games that you and I know. You know, video game culture is a much wider net. And having, you know, a Candy Crush tournament, there are ways of incorporating social mobile games and casting a net to the wider gaming audience and maybe not just focusing on, you know, the fan of League of Legends. So I think casinos are starting to understand that and starting to get a better understanding of what that gamer culture is looking for and why Las Vegas is a great place to provide a really unique and fun experience for them. If someone wants to learn more about Better View or Fifth Street gaming, where do they go? I'll make it easy. Go to SethShore.com. That is my name, SethSethShore.com. And we talk about all of our businesses. And there's a way to message me directly, whether through email or LinkedIn. And love talking to people who are interested in Las Vegas, gambling, esports, technology, innovation, whatever it is. So, you know, always open to having a chat. So look forward to hearing to hearing from any of your viewers. All right. Thank you, Seth. We appreciate you being on the show and look forward to seeing you in Vegas. I hope so. Thanks for having me. All right. So thank you to our viewers for joining us today. Next week, my guest will be Heather Blair of the Cinema Esports Alliance. See you then.