 Welcome to the wide world of eSports, a show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Catherine Norr. Today our topic is eSports, more than just competition from education to entrepreneurship. My guest is Martin Olson, the owner of Magic eSports Consulting. Welcome, Martin. Thank you, Catherine. Pleasure to be here. Perfect. So, Martin, OK, so I understand that you are in a small town between Quebec City and Montreal, Canada. And but you're from Denmark. So what are eSports like in Canada and Denmark? And can you compare that to the US? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I am from Denmark and I moved here in 2018 and so far Canada has been great. The main differences I would say from Denmark to Canada and then to the US is that I think Europe and Denmark can particularly jumped on eSports a lot earlier. So they're a bit further ahead education-wise and competition-wise and getting more acceptance in the society. But Canada and the US, they're catching up very, very quickly because not like in Denmark where funding is hard to find, it's easier to find funding in Canada than the US. So they're catching up very quickly. Oh, OK, that's really interesting and I understand that you will be doing some work in Denmark eventually. Yeah, I'll be moving back to Denmark in probably 10, 12 months and then I'll be starting up more stuff in Denmark. That's exciting for Denmark. And so tell us about your consulting company. What does Magic eSports Consulting do? Well, I built the company basically on a note from a friend that told me I'm doing a lot of volunteer stuff. I'm helping as many people as I can, understanding eSports, getting into eSports. And that's all without having a job to support my wife and I here in Canada. So a friend of me said, why aren't you getting paid? I said, that's a good idea. I love doing eSports. I love helping people in eSports. So why not offer up my 10 plus years of experience as a service to help them properly get into eSports? So that's what I do mainly as no matter if it's a company, a school or a club, I will help them find their way into the space. If it's to create just a community, get into competition or educational, then I offer up all my full network and all my experience as help. And I understand that you're very good at connecting people in eSports. And how did that come about? That's, I think that's just me. I've always been this idea guy. I see people who I think should meet each other and have a connection because they have a great mind or a great idea or just a personality that I feel comfortable with. And I make these introductions and for some reason, they just end up making good products or good projects that could really help forward eSports. So it's being, be it educational, like coaching courses, stuff like that. I've made a project between that and then just finding colleges and finding businesses that make sense rather than just saying, you want to make money. So you've got to talk to this guy. For me, it's got to be meaningful rather than just being a big payout. Sure, sure. And I think that that's really important in this space because a lot of it is making the right connections in order to achieve your goals. So who are your ideal clients? Yeah, I've actually thought quite a bit about that. I don't know that I actually have an ideal client. For me, anyone with interest in eSports and a genuine interest in getting into that space and understanding is familial and ideal person to work with, be it a client or a partner. As long as that it's genuine interest, I think that's the ideal for me. So a lot of my guests, I have noticed that there are so many people that don't really understand what eSports is, but they have an opportunity to enter the space. Like if they have a product and they're looking to be a sponsor. Would you agree that we're in a time where a lot of it is educating people of what the value of this is and what it is, even defining it? Yeah, I would definitely agree on that. It's not that difficult to get into eSports, but it's difficult to get in and succeed, as a lot of people are looking to get in. And it's not that hard to find a competition, be a sponsor of something, have a business idea and then pitch it to some people. But getting funding to get in and be successful is where it's going to be the hardest. So what is your biggest success story and what you've been doing? My biggest success story is I don't even feel like it's my success story. I worked at a school in Denmark with troubled kids. So this was autism, ADD, addicts, maturity issues. And I had a student there called Jacob. He was 17 when he was diagnosed with Asperger's. So it was very late to discover it. And when I started working the school with him, if he got overwhelmed, he would leave the school. He would go home and you wouldn't see him for the rest of the day because it was just too much for him. And I implemented kind of my own idea of a curriculum where it was based on creating a community feeling in that class of I had 20 students and using the games that they were passionate about. So in this case, it was League of Legends. So I put him in a team with people and he was very good at the game. And that they started to bond within the game and then that game became they went from the game and then out of the game, they were friends in this very weird transition. There was it was completely fluid. You couldn't see that they didn't talk at all before I started doing it. He was kind of the odd one out. They wouldn't really talk to him because he would get overwhelmed with too many people and they really didn't understand it. So using the games and creating that community helped him build confidence. And after a six month period, he was he was taking his fellow students to arenas to watch major tournaments. He was doing sleepovers at the school. He would be doing grocery runs with the kitchen at the school to get him more into real real work in real life because he didn't want to go into eSports. He wanted to just get a job and and be a normal person as he would. He would say it and just seeing his journey from being overwhelmed and leaving to showing up at a huge event in an arena and then sticking to it and doing a sleepover. It was it was so huge and and I was a part of that. But it was really his journey and his success from from wanting to get out of that space of being. Oh, I have I have autism. It's it's a sentence and he got to well, it's it's my strength now. He really turned it on his head. Well, that's that's a fantastic story. Do you think that eSports and gaming is something that can be used as a tool for other special needs children in order to kind of come out of their shell, communicate and work with others? Oh, yeah, for sure. The the the biggest strength in in eSports for especially for for kids and youth is that you have that anonymity online, which is a huge, huge strength within it because you won't be you won't be judged by race, religion, how you your appearance, because they can't see you. You're a name on the screen and they can judge you for your skills in the game. Although that that same anonymity also opens you up for, you know, bullying, toxic behavior, because they can hide behind an avatar or stuff like that. But having that anonymity and if you introduce it correctly into a classroom or a community, it can it can build bridges that will that will just never fall down. I would think that that would also help people who are introverts as well. Would you what do you think about that? Oh, yeah, for sure. Well, yeah, I have so many gaming friends online who are introverts and don't like coming out, but they do enjoy sitting at home playing games all night. So if we wanted to play for 10 hours the same game, that wouldn't be a problem being five, 10 people doing the same thing. And does that allow them to communicate with people in a way that might be uncomfortable? Otherwise? Yeah, I would say that it's having that online communication, especially if you're an introvert and you have a having difficulties expressing yourself when there's another person in front of you, having it be just a screen or an avatar or being on discord where you can't see anyone, it makes it a lot easier. And I have had a lot of very, very deep conversation with my online friends who I've never met in my life. It's people from people from North America, from the US, from from France and from Denmark, and I've never met them. But we've talked about life's odd ends and having difficulties with loss or in the game, bullying, education. We talk about everything online because it's just such an easy setting. So I understand that you've been in the sports business since 2011. And first, you provide us some kind of background about what you've done in this space. Yeah, I've I started out as a player. I played Counter-Strike Source at a fairly high level in Denmark and started volunteering at events because it seemed like fun at first. But it also I saw an opportunity to learn about this very early on. If I followed the people doing the events and learned how that all works, that gave me more knowledge about eSports and eSports and gaming has been a passion of mine my whole life. So just following them, doing volunteer work, security, brainstorming, cleaning up whatever they needed at events. That was that was my way in. And then I got lucky in 2016. I was hired as a coach and then got to travel all over Denmark and teaching kids about eSports in different settings, which is where my my first real idea of my own kind of philosophy where we could take eSports that came up with teaching students and seeing how they interacted with my my curriculums. You know, it's interesting because Danny Martin, my guest a couple of weeks ago, he advised people if they want to get into eSports that they just go to events and volunteer and it sounds like that's kind of what you've done. That's exactly what I did. And I say the same thing to to students who wants to get deeper into the spaces and just take take a chance and go volunteer or look at stuff up. If you want to be a graphics designer online, you can find minor tournaments and they might need some graphics done and they would you can do it as a volunteer thing and do it for free and they will use it and you can start build a portfolio in that way. Sure. So how since you started in eSports in 2011, how has it evolved? I think the biggest thing it has evolved back is it was all back then it was we had tournaments online. We had tournaments live like land events and stuff. But from then till now, we've seen a lot of acceptance in eSports and gaming. We're not no longer just these basement dwellers hiding with our pizza boxes and our energy drinks. And it's really been accepted as in Denmark. It's almost accepted as a proper sport at this time. Because the athleticism needed to compete at the highest level is very, very real. And the acceptance is probably the biggest. The thing that's moved the most over the past 10 years is we're accepting that if this is a thing and it's not going away. So do you think that the pandemic has increased the acceleration of this? Or how is it affected eSports? eSports has thrived in many ways due to the pandemic because people were forced to stay home. Sports stopped so we wouldn't be able to watch basketball, handball, soccer, football on TV because they couldn't play. So eSports really took that space and do a lot of online tournaments and people got more into it. They would get their own consoles and play the games because they saw the interest. So the pandemic has been very good for eSports, I think. Yeah, it certainly seems that way and people seem to have more time to devote to it. And with traditional sports not being available, then it seems that something had to take its place and eSports seemed to do that. They do have a question from a viewer. How do you teach children the basics of eSports? And what's the youngest age you can teach a child the basics of eSports? Well, that's a good question, but I would probably want to know basic of eSports, the basics of gaming, because I have this, my own idea of implementing eSports and gaming is that I see three levels in this. I see a core level, which is when we will introduce basic counting, basic geometry and teamwork in a game like Minecraft that everybody knows by now. And the kids know the kids, they play it already and we can use that to teach them how to count to high numbers because they can see the amount of blocks they're picking up or whatever they wanna pick up in the game. We can do geometry by building different geometric figures inside of the game and they can see it in a space that has their interest already. The next level for me is to break down more complex game into skills like communication, resource management, leadership and that's actually what I did at the School for Trouble Kids. I gave them written assignments where they would have to analyze what leadership is within the game, what does an in-game leader do? And I would use real-world models and then fit them to the game so that their interest would still be in it. And the third level is what, like you talked about Danny Martin, the third level is using jobs really closely related to the game or the games in general or eSports in general and teach them the skills needed to succeed on kind of like an internship level. So being a live production, tournament organizing and such. So those are my three levels of teaching eSports and gaming. I hope that answered the question. I didn't veer too far away from it. I think that young children are introduced to gaming very early because sometimes we don't even know we don't even think of what we're doing as a game and for a computer game. And I'll give a couple of examples. These are mobile examples. Like let's say that you are playing Solitaire on your phone, that's a card game, but you're gaming. If you are doing Duolingo, which is learning languages, you're essentially gaming because you can compete with other people on Duolingo. So there is a lot of gaming that people do that they don't even really, it's kind of disguised in a way. What do you think about that? Yeah, I'm a huge fan of gamification in general where you can teach skills using a game specifically. But I see eSports and gaming having kind of a, also like a hidden feature where if instead of developing a game to fit a curriculum, we fit the curriculum to make it more generalized so it can fit into any game. So be it a shooting game or a mobile like League of Legends, the same principles would apply to communication within a team or leadership within a team. So no matter what game is the interest, the curriculum would fit. So when the new game comes out and say five years, the big hit in eSports, that same curriculum would fit to that new game. And we would have the students interest and they could move on like that. But gamification, I am a huge fan of that concept. You know, I think that that allows kids to transition easier in school, like if they're used to playing games for fun and they get to do that to learn, I think that that allows the ability to kind of make education fun. What do you think about that? Yeah, that's like the baseline of what education can be. And that's why I really love this space of educational eSports and gaming because it's gonna be fun no matter what because they love the game. And then we can teach them anything. If you have their interest, it's so easy to teach them anything without them even realizing they're being taught. Like playing on Duolingo where you're learning something extra from playing against another person. Sure. So, you know, and I think that there, you know, when I think about education and gaming, I think of just STEM and how so many elements of creating games or, you know, all aspects of it would, you know, be in a STEM program or even there's eSports law, there's, you know, eSports business, there's so much, it's so broad because almost every class that you would offer in an educational program, there would be an application that would be in gaming. Yeah, you are 100% correct. And yeah, any job that people can think of in traditional sports, that exists in eSports. It's not really that new of a thing because traditional sports go back a long time and the same jobs are applicable to eSports. We just added an E in front of the sports, but it's gonna be the same jobs revolving that space. Sure. So, you know, and what other career opportunities that we not mentioned that would be available in eSports, I know it's kind of like virtually anything would be applicable but can you name some that maybe people haven't thought of? Well, I think a lot of people are talking about this, especially online what jobs is there's opportunities for within eSports, but they would have to also define, is it a primary or a secondary influence to eSports? Is it someone who wants to do live production? Is it a cast or a streamer or a player or a manager? Or are we looking that I just have an interest in that but I also love accounting? Well, the eSports firm need accountants as well. They need lawyers, they need technicians for different things so you can touch the eSports sphere and still have that primary focus, which is not eSports, but it's your regular day job. All right. So, you know, like primary would be more endemic in eSports, but like if you look at your regular job, I think you could ask, is eSports a potential target market? Like you talked about counting and law and there's many other things. Marketing has been huge, of course lately, but you know, what's interesting is if I attend an eSports trade association meeting, within like a networking event, you will see an accountant and then we as a lawyer or you will see other people that just identify eSports as a potential target market where they can help people in the industry. Yeah, I fully agree with that. That is how the space should be viewed. It's a new market, but it's not that different of a market. It's just like any other organization that needs help with law, with marketing, with accounting. It's just called eSports. It's just the scary, because it's a new word for a lot of the, I don't want to be rude here, the old timers, the conservative crowd is scared of a new industry booming up like this, but it's not that different from what already exists. And you know, there's a lot of talk about endemic versus non-endemic and authenticity because you know, I think there's a fear that if you're not authentic in this space that you won't be accepted. Any thoughts on that? I would agree. I've seen it to some degree, seeing some people trying to get into eSports where their heart is not in it. They're not passionate about it. They see a paycheck and they're going for that paycheck. And for a lot of the people early on that got into eSports, it's a passion project. A lot of the big movers that we see now they're having success. They started off not spending a lot of cash on it. They've done a lot of volunteer work. Like I've been volunteering for six years before I got my first paycheck from working in eSports and doing stuff. So that might also be why they're not accepting anyone who's not authentic, because they've all done this. They've all taken that hard stride of I'm passionate. And I've proven it and I have success. You're coming in with no passion, just you see a paycheck. And that's not, that's gonna be frowned upon. All right, I think a lot of people pay their dues for years in terms of volunteering. And then one day after having paid their dues they're sort of almost discovered. And then like for example, a cashier would be an example. After a certain amount of time they could be become quite popular and hired by all sorts of tournaments. Yeah, definitely. So what do you think the barriers are to people who are interested in entering this space? The main barriers is like anything else is gonna be funding and finding the right product because everybody's competing right now especially in educational work. Everybody's fighting to make their own curriculum and make the best curriculum possible. And they're all sitting with the cards held very tightly to their body, not knowing that everyone else has the same hand. They don't wanna communicate. So they're all doing their own thing but they're all doing the same thing. Sir, and do you think that that's a huge problem for esports and getting curriculum moving it forward? I think it's been the same way in the traditional education. Everybody who does curriculum development wants their own to be the best. So I think that it's not that new. The only new things we're seeing is with like I'm doing a project in the fall. I'm volunteering with the Emerald eSports to do a project about autism and the effect it has on how esports can affect autism and their daily life in youth. And those are the things that that's gonna be a game changer once we get proper research on that. You know what's interesting is that it's amazing how much research is going into esports and gaming right now. And it seems like every day I get an email of a new article or research findings on esports and gaming. So it sounds like you're adding to that important research. I'm definitely trying to whatever I can touch esports and help promote it in a healthy way. I'm doing it. So there is another question from a viewer and that is will esports become a subject at school for children? For children? I'm not sure if it will be a subject for children. It might be like traditional sports. You could introduce it in that way and then have that have a class where you would play different games. But when it comes to education we are seeing people doing master's degree in esports and PhD at the moment. So it's already well-rooted inside of the educational system to be something really, really, really big. Sure. And so what do you think the future of esports is? The future of esports is definitely for me education is the competition. Whenever there's competition it's gonna be big and it's already now showing with like the international and the majors in Counter Strike that the price pools are there so it's not going away. So education is where I think that's gonna be the future of esports getting it properly into a educational setting and doing that in the right way and not just doing it in a quick way. Sure, I think that that's true. I think that's what a lot of people are doing. So are you playing a particular game these days? I am a bit all over the place both Valorant and World of Warcraft but I always fall back to Minecraft. And so that's your core game then. Yeah. Okay, fantastic. And it seems like a lot of people are getting into Valorant in the past year or so. So anyway, Will Barton, thank you so much for being a guest on the White World of Esports. Well, thank you for having me, it was a pleasure. And thank you to the viewers who send in their questions and thank you for joining us today. Make sure to tune in in two weeks and my guest will be Dr. Laila Mentes, the CEO of PlayUp and the leading expert on the legislation and regulation of sports betting globally. We'll talk about esports betting. See you then.