 Welcome to the wide world of eSports, a show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Katharine Norr. Today, my guest is Andre Foster, Tournament Host for EACL. Our topic is Gaming to Give Back, Raising Money for Charity. Welcome, Andre. Hello. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I'm being here. All right, so tell me about EACL and what that stands for. Yeah, so EACL is a fundraising platform for nonprofits and for-profits alike. We're able to connect to the multi-billion-dollar eSports gaming platform and fundraise through donations. The gamers, like gamers on this platform every day, they pay a subscription membership to get on our platform. In game, we have leagues all the way from eight years old, all the way to 55 and up. So this could be for your toddlers, grandma and grandpa, giggling on the Xbox and play. And they game for over $25 million in prizes that we currently offer right now, everything from vacation trips to $10,000 scholarships for school. And the great thing about our platform, even if you're a rookie, you're not the greatest gamer. You know, you want us to do it for fun. You don't want to be in that crazy competition. Even when you lose, you still have the opportunity to win $1,000 in cash prizes. So it's a pretty great system and a lot of nonprofits and churches and for-profit businesses, and especially gamers that like it. We're actually launching our first micro tournament coming up in February, and then we'll be doing the big one and coming up in August, and we're going to be playing the top games like Fortnite and, you know, Latest Madden's and NBA 2021 or 2022. And we also have a mobile gaming platform that you can play on, and it's based off of like a point system, kind of like you go to like a Costco or a Sam's Club or your credit card. When you spend money, you get rewards. Those rewards points are actually redeemable for the prizes and scholarships and, you know, dinners and vacation cruises and things like that make that nature. Let's show the video. Even in the darkest of times, there are bright lights that shine, but it can be easy to lose sight of guiding lights during these challenging times. With hospitals overflowing, entertainment venues operating at a portion of capacity, and unemployment at an all-time high, Americans are yearning for human interaction at a new avenue of financial growth, and they have to look no further than the gaming industry. Introducing the EACL and the UFL, the next generation of giving and engaging. The U.S. gaming market is comprised of over 244 million individuals. The Esports Amateur Competitors League is an organized platform to support non-elite gamers. Our proprietary software will manage 12 million 16-bracket qualifying events per month with a chance to win cash and prizes for all players and age groups. All of this will culminate in the EACL-UFL world games held once a year in Las Vegas, where thousands of players will come together to compete for millions in cash and prizes. But how can you be a part of the EACL? This is where the United Fundraising League comes in. By participating in the UFL, you can tap into your entrepreneurial spirit to help financially support your community. Through fundraising events, you will not only help to grow the player base of the EACL, but you will help create a new revenue stream for nonprofits with dynamic growth potential. Together with these two platforms, you will be able to reach millions across the country to help better your community and assist those in need. The UFL is a place to give back and have fun doing it. The EACL is your new vehicle, with the UFL being the fuel it needs to help take your community to where it's always deserved to be. For more information, contact us at info at eaclglobal.com Okay, so I know we have way too many acronyms in our heads right now, so it's really hard to keep track of all of them, and so I totally get it, Andre, so could you tell us what EACL stands for, please? Yep, it says we're E-Sports Amateurs Competitors League. I said it's going to be a big league we're looking to actually push into the Olympics, because as many of you may or may not know, E-Sports is actually going to be a new platform that is going to the Olympics, so we're definitely going to be doing a lot of traveling in the upcoming months and in toward returnments and competitions and getting the word out there for EACL and what we can do for the community, not only our non-profits, but our for-profits, and the opportunity our gamers can have by joining this platform and helping out a local non-profit in their community. You're a busy guy, so thank you so much for being here, so tell us what you do with the company. Yeah, so when I do the company, I'm a tournament host. I help onboard non-profits and for-profits on this platform, as well as other potential people that want to offer this platform to other non-profits and for-profits, as well as share this opportunity with gamers and as well as platforms like this as well, so that's pretty much my main spot is just getting the word out there and helping others on this platform. All right, so what is your background that led you to this company? I am actually a Sierra entrepreneur. I own, co-own, and run over 11 different companies. Right now, I come from a family of entrepreneurs over 40-plus years, if I'm not mistaken, in the city of Detroit. I've been doing business, so it's just in my bloodline at this point, so when I was introduced to this platform through my colleague Deborah, she got me on Facebook as a mutual connection and, you know, we've been killing it ever since. All right, are you a gamer? Is that what led you, Harley? I am, actually. Very avid gamer. I'm actually just getting back into the gaming space because I was raised with siblings. I'm noticed of five siblings and very competitive siblings to the point where they destroy games and systems. I've lost a lot of game controllers to the children that want to destroy them and bash them and spill drinks on them. I just recently got back in the gaming space and I'm going to go crazy with it this year, so definitely going to be doing big things with it, especially with this EACL platform. Now, what is your game of choice? Oh, jeez, that's a tough one. I am a gearhead, so I do play a lot of Horizon 5. I do play a lot of GTA. I try to get back into the new Halo. I'm still kind of warming up to it because I'm very old school with the games and I like the older ones better because the classics to me, jeez, I mean, I can really take people back. With the N64 games, I used to play a lot as a kid and the GameCubes and PlayStation games. I didn't get back into the field of things. I just downloaded MK11 a few months ago and then just dived into that again. I'm definitely going to hit it hard and be doing some gaming and looking to maybe possibly doing streaming as well with my game. With my game. Yeah. All right. Okay. If I'm a charity or a nonprofit and I'm interested in partnering with you, what do I do? You can simply go on our website, the one I sent you, the Wulu website. You can post it up here. I can post it as a matter. We'll show it. We'll show it. They can go on the website on the right-hand side of the little menu where you can click sign up as both a for-profit and a nonprofit or if you're a gamer that wants to offer this platform with your other competition leagues, you're more than welcome. This league is going to be huge. You can make tens of thousands of dollars a month with this platform, helping out your community, helping out nonprofits and small businesses strive in this situation we're doing right now called COVID. And then you're also gaming for a purpose. You're gaming to help your local nonprofit and you can get paid for it. You can make money with it. So why not? You know, this is the only platform that I know of where a gamer can pay for college or grandma or grandpa can get on the platform and send their granddaughter to their vacation trip for their honeymoon. So it isn't just for charities and nonprofits. So if you want to fund something yourself, like you said, college or whatever, so who actually puts the money into the platform? With the platform, our gamers pay a yearly $240 membership to support the nonprofits and for-profit organizations and that gives them access into our platform game, rack up their points and then win the course of the $25 million prize that we have between different vacation trips, cruises, cash prizes, and of course, college scholarships as well. Do you have sponsors as well? We don't, but we are looking into some of those sponsors for our team. We definitely want to do some sponsors because I've been looking into places like Target and Fyre. We do a lot of sponsorships and gift matching. We're also looking at a corporation that allows us to give people vacation trips just for helping support the nonprofits. So looking into other incentives to help our nonprofits push and thrive and sell their gamer cards to all them or donation cards if you will to help the organization grow because this is a platform that St. Jude Hospital is utilizing about 40 times a year and they make about $40 million every year off this platform. It's going to a great cause, a similar platform can do great for organizations that are on this platform watching us right now. So how long has St. Jude been on it? So St. Jude, I think it's just recent. It's something new that they launched recently. If you go on their website, I think it's called St. Jude Gaming. I can send you to the link. It's pretty interesting. I never knew that they were actually into esports gaming. To find out that they have esports tournaments at their hospitals to benefit the kids there at hospitals that either can't afford their bills or whatever the case may be. It's going to a great cause and I'm like, wow, hospital having esports gaming. Where was that? When I was visiting family members, they're sick in the hospital. They had an esports tournament downstairs. It's something to do. They're similar to what we do. They pay a membership. They come in, they game and their membership fees go towards the hospital as a donation. As many of us know, it's a charitable write-off. How long has EACL been in business? My knowledge, I believe it's been over four years actually. It's been around for a while. You go on YouTube, you can look up EACL. They've been at a few large events. You'll be able to see them all over YouTube. They have all our presentations and our commercials and everything. It's all on YouTube. We're definitely out there. Right. Why do you think that this platform is attractive to amateur gamers? What is it that makes them participate? It's one of many things. You have the ability to give back to a pause, but also get a financial benefit as well. And unlike many other gaming platforms, not pushing down, they're all great in their own perspective. But with our platform, which makes us unique, not only do we support nonprofits, but we give our gamers the opportunity to win $25 million in prizes every year. Just a 240-dollar donation to look for charity organizations they support every year. It seems like it makes a lot of sense, because if you're going to game, you might as well game for good. Otherwise, you might feel like you could be wasting time. And if you're doing something to either raise money for a nonprofit or raise money for something that you want to do, I could see that would be a benefit for people. It's only amateurs and pros aren't involved at all. We have everything. We have leagues from eight years old all at a 55 and up. So you're toddler, you're a teenager, you're adults, grandma and grandpa, great-grandma and great-grandpa. Everybody can play in this platform. That's what's great about it, because, you know, you have the grandkids over, what are they going to do? They're going to go to grandma and grandpa's TV, big TV, plug up the Xbox, plug up the PlayStation, and be on the game for hours. But this platform allows the families to finally engage, but the grandparents to engage in the platform, be a part of the conversation and connect with their grandkids on a level that they would never even thought. It was like the game I'm pretty sure everybody's familiar with, Pokemon Go. It was solely designed to get kids out the house and get more into fitness. It's an app designed for fitness, not gameplay for fitness. But what did it do? It blew up. It had millions of downloads. We had an office in the Renaissance Center post-COVID, and I would walk downstairs to get lunch. And we had people of all different ages, grandma, grandpa's, you know, all with their grandkids around playing Pokemon Go clack, catching their Pikachu's, you know. And they're like, what the heck is that? And the kid would go, this is what that is. It's a Charizard, whatever the case may be. But it finished out to be able to connect grandkids to grandparents and build that bridge that they probably didn't have before. You have something to connect about, because if you're going to want to go over grandma and grandpa's house, you're going to play Pokemon Go now. But now with this platform, you're going over grandma and grandpa's house, you're going to go play Fortnite with grandpa. You know, are you going to go play Call of Duty with grandma, or are you not going to get out of the game and play Forza Horizon 5 with grandma and grandpa? And the whole time, grandma and grandpa are racking up points. They win. The grandpa could go take grandma on the night's cruise yard, as promised, or go to Jamaica, go to the Bahamas, or, you know, go on a nice vacation that they deserve, you know, or, hey, you want to win cash prizes to, you know, pay our grandsons, pay part of his college tuition. You know that connection piece is really important. And I do think that whenever you can connect generations in gaming, it's really positive. I know that I recently taught a course on intro to eSports to people over 50 at the OSHA program at University of Hawaii. And I found that most people didn't even know what eSports is. I probably should have called it intro to gaming or something, because they, you know, people have to Google eSports because they don't know what it is. And they don't know how big it is either. But I think, but they do see that their kids and their grandchildren's are, children are playing games and want to know more about it. So that's really wonderful that this does that as well. So has there been an impact as a result of the pandemic to the platform? Not really. A platform like this would actually strive through a pandemic because, you know, with people being stuck at home, what else do you have to do? The gaming industry saw a surge as many as you know in sales. You can't buy an Xbox. You can't buy a PlayStation. You go to your Walmart or your Myers or GameStop or District Player or whatever you buy your games at. Everything's sold out, everything. The second they drop, they're sold out. It's just so bad that you go on Twitter and Instagram and follow these eSports gaming platforms with their posting. But, you know, Walmart, it's going to be have a restock in Xbox. But three years ago, you can go to Walmart any day and buy an Xbox. No, you can't. You know, the PlayStation and Xboxes, they're like the charges and challenges of the gaming world. They're so hot right now because one, because of the pandemic and two, because, well, demand, you know, the chip shortage so they can't produce as many. The point where Sony is literally remastering and remaking the PS4 again. Like, the PS4 was due to be stopped production this year, but now they're going to kick a kick back into it and produce more because they cannot keep up with the demand right now. One, because of the chip shortage and they got to keep the gamers engaged. So a platform like this is going to strive them better in the pandemic because people are at home. You're stuck at home with your family with grandma and grandpa. You can't really go anywhere, especially when you're quarantined for like, we have been in the past six months to a year. What else is there to do besides stream, watch TV, a game, except for this platform, you can make money while you're gaming. Yeah. And, you know, we've seen people quit their jobs or they lose their jobs or have less to do. So, you know, people are looking for other ways to make income. Are there any, does your company have any special projects scheduled for 2022? Or is, you know, I know the pandemic is kind of causing challenges. Yeah. We have a lot of things on the books right now. I'm not like in the executive level of start the company. But I do know we're going to have several tournaments coming on throughout the year and promotional events. I know with our team, we're looking to support our nonprofits and help them get these tournaments going for their nonprofit, helping them make it work for them so they can help grow and expand their community. We have a church on our team, but he actually sold out all of his required tickets and was able to have $38,000 for his church organization. And all he did was they had a little vending event, as most churches do. He had his vendors buy that $240 ticket to vent for the year, the church, he just made $38,000. Anyone sitting? Wow, that's fantastic. You know, it's one of the questions related to that. And, you know, it's kind of related to the Olympics and to nonprofits. Because, as you know, first person shooter games are pretty violent. And one of the issues with regard to the Olympics having esports is, you know, there's many issues. But one of the issues is what game do they play? Do they just play Rocket League? Or, you know, I mean, I've seen lists of different games. But, you know, do you find that any nonprofits have any challenges or conflict with more violent games? Not often. They said the platform is up to them. They don't have to play a certain game, like, you know, for our churches. If they want to have an esports tournament, they can play 2K or Madden. You know, they can play Zelda if they wanted to. You know, it's up to them. I feel old just saying the word Zelda, but yeah. You know, they can play whatever they want. They don't have to play, you know, Call of Duty Black Ops. They don't have to play Zombies, you know, for 14 hours a day. They don't have to do that. That's not what they want to do. There's several games on the platform they can play. They have mobile games. We have the e-games. I mean, opportunities are endless. They can play any of the top games you can think of. They can select. If they want to just do NBA 2K, they can do that. That's up to them. It's 100% up to them. We're not here to sit there and tell them that you can only play this game in the tournament. That would walk people away from this platform because we're forcing them that you only can play first-person shooters. Like, we're having, we're being sponsored by Microsoft. You have to play Black Ops four days straight. That's not going to happen, especially with churches, because they're right now. We're not going to get a church organization to have a Call of Duty Festival at church. I wish, but it ain't going to happen. It's not going to happen. Sure. So what do you think the future of gaming for good is? I believe the future gaming of good is we're going after these 50,000 nonprofits to help them raise their fundraising goals and help them get to that $38,000 or more with our platform. So that's the future I see in this company. It's hitting 50,000 or more nonprofits, but helping them out with a new way for them to fundraise. That typical selling baked goods and selling clothing and having vending events. It gets kind of dated. You need something new. You need something fresh. And EACL is that newness that they need, because it's very flexible. You can have eSports tournaments at your churches. You can have eSports tournaments at your schools and colleges because they have them every day at schools and colleges, not only because they're the grant money and the funding and companies that fund stuff like that, but because they have scholarships for it. There's scholarships for kids to do eSports. Yeah. When I think of traditional sports, say you have your basketball team who wants to go to a particular tournament on another state or if you live in Hawaii going to the main course of the challenge, you know, it might be very consistent to have a fundraising event using, you know, NBA UK, you know, because I mean it would be consistent and it would make sense. But, you know, it just seems like a good way for like nonprofit associations also to raise money. Yeah, for sure. It's consistent because with our platform, our game is going to come back because every year they're going to have $25 million in prizes they can be for. You're not just going on another eSports platform, you're competing more or less for a status. Well, like, hey, I'm on this team, you know, we're national, we're, you know, national champs. It's that in the third was great. You know, knock them down, but we're giving you a competition league where you can also have the same status, but you have the shot at winning $25 million of different prizes. Yeah. And helping up a local charity organization in your community. Absolutely. You know, so I'm going to give you the last word to tell us how to find you. And I really appreciate you being on the show. Sure. I'm glad you could have me because we love the exposure. We want to get the word out there for EACL to help these nonprofits because our goal is 50,000 nonprofits. Organizations to help the community, help you guys, community of the people that are here watching. We want to help your community. We want to help your community strive and grow. We want to give off these scholarships for these kids to go to school because financially it sucks. I'm a victim of it. I'm sure many of us here have seen that both financially and it is not fun. And if I could be at my college dorm room gaming, which I was doing anyway, and be winning a scholarship, I would have done that all day long. That's all college kids do is game when they're bored. We do that every day when I'm bored. But the best way to find this is on our website. I know it was posted earlier. You can sign up today. It's free. It doesn't cost the nonprofits for profits. Anyone, anything for the nonprofits. You click, you just get to sign up. I click nonprofit. You get your information. You sign up. And you can start fundraising today. And you can literally have that $38,000 in no time. You know, you can raise this until about that. And that's the platform. If you go to this is up to you. How big or small you want this fundraising to be. And if you want to office platform, the nonprofits and businesses. You go in that same sign up link instead of picking on nonprofit. You're going to select what's called ETS. That's the platform where you would be start off as a tournament host like myself. And then you can be promoted into a what's known as a celebrity host. When you start arm-wring a silver nonprofit. All right. That's great. Thank you so much. And, you know, unfortunate that our visuals aren't so good today, but you know, that's the way it is during COVID times. We just have to deal with these challenges with, you know, sometimes with phones and technology. But I, I thank you very much for being here today. And thank you to our viewers for joining us. Make sure to tune in next week. And I'll see you next week. Thank you. And I'll see you next week. Thank you. And the next host will be. And Williams, the development director of amateur eSports Association. See you then.