 Welcome to the wide world of eSports, a show devoted to all things eSports. I'm your host, Catherine Noor. Today, my guest is Agra Gatti Siegel, the founder and CEO of the GameSync family of companies. Our topic is GameSync eSports Consulting. Welcome, Agra Gatti. Hi. Thank you so much for having me. Been a big fan of yours, watching your shows for many years, and thank you so much for your service to the tech and eSports communities. We appreciate it. All right. Thank you so much. You have really interesting companies. Tell us, let's start with GameSync. What is GameSync? GameSync was born out of a technical support company that I started in San Diego, California back in 1999. I pivoted to gaming and eSports from that business in 2012. I had traveled around Asia and I saw the rise of eSports and competitive gaming, and it hadn't really hit here in the US. I was able to open a purpose-built first-to-market facility in 2012. Sure enough, in 2013, the word eSports became the big buzzword, and of course, we started to see that grow, and it's been growing ever since. That's how GameSync started as a brand. But then, over time, I started to see how other centers were operating. They would open and then they would close. I was wondering, well, why is that? I started to figure out from my own experience running my center and then looking at other businesses that there really needed to be more of a framework and a better vision and understanding about how communities work. Building off of that experience, I launched a consulting company called GameSync Consulting some years later, and then now I've been doing that full-time since 2017, helping businesses open new centers and then also helping existing centers kind of grow their revenue and income streams and look for different opportunities. Because I think gaming centers and physical locations have really changed over time, especially coming out of COVID, and so there's a lot of interesting dynamics to it now, and so I'm trying to serve people in their journey in the gaming world, again, as it relates to these physical locations, these kind of digital hubs. So let's go back to the dark ages of 2012 or 2011 when this all came to fruition. Was it even called eSports then? I had never heard the term. It actually was not used at all. And I think when I opened in 2012, I was trying to figure out, well, what are people looking for? Like what's going to bring people to these venues? And one thing I saw at that time was that there was definitely a need for access to fiber, access to high quality internet, access to quality equipment. But then beyond that, of course, I started to realize that the social gaming aspect and community was really an important draw because it's like eating at home versus going to a restaurant. You can only eat so many meals at home before you realize I gotta go out. And I think it's actually the very same thing with gaming is that people really wanna connect and socialize and meet other people and share in their hobby. And then in 2013, we saw the rise of League of Legends, which I see as sort of the banner title that really brought eSports into the fold, both here on a collegiate level as well as just on a casual amateur level. So League was really one of those titles that exploded in popularity. And the next thing I knew there were people coming in that just wanted to play League of Legends all the time. And so I started to realize, okay, well with League, you have a team of five because now you have a dynamic of a team. It's not an individual playing against a computer or even just playing other players online. You have physical interaction and you have that body language and chemistry and team building. And so that's sort of to me what really started the catapult. I mean, of course, you had competitive gaming going back to the early 2000s. And one of our friends here in San Diego was a fellow by the name of Jordan Nothing Gilbert who was a famous Counter-Strike player back in the day. He played for Cloud9 among other teams. And he would come into our center and we would have people sort of flock in if they heard that he was coming to play Counter-Strike at one of our tournaments. And we were just running casual tournaments when he would come in and appear. And so word got around. There was kind of like this buzz online. So I also started to realize sort of the net effect and the power of the influencers. Of course, we live in an influencer economy now. So this was another interesting facet to it. And in subsequent years, we've had events here in San Diego like TwitchCon and we've also had just recently other really well-known gaming events that have brought all these people together. And I think the connective tissue of people coming together to play games, to do the things they love has really been the impetus that has taken us out of sort of a non-E-sports, non-competitive world here in the US specifically into the thing that you've seen in Asia for many, many years now. We've all heard of South Korea and their giant tournaments for StarCraft with 100,000 people. So yeah, we're starting to see some of that here. But I'm a big small business passionate owner type of personality. And I really like the small business owner coming into their community and offering up these kind of digital tech hubs, which I said before are more now like flex spaces to me where you can bring in education, you can bring in other pieces and sort of create a well-rounded experience for kids and adults. So, in the past, and I think now even in Asia, they'll call them LAN centers. And then, so now it's more like gaming centers or esports venues. So, have you, as you mentioned that entrepreneurs in gaming, that they failed initially, what were the primary reasons for failure and what are your tips for success? That's a great question. I feel like a lot of it actually has to do with the technology, the infrastructure. So, again, I have a really big tech background and what I found over time was that these centers were not actually deploying efficient IT and information systems and models to sort of streamline their deployment. So, we're talking about, for example, the gaming PCs. Well, what does that look like? Do you buy from a retail provider? Do you build your own? And what are the pros and cons of those? Then you've got things like servers. I mean, quite a few center owners, even today. I just recently was in Houston, Texas, working on a center there. And the video I put out kind of went a little bit viral of the deployment that I did, which was PCs booting onto a server. I use a software called CC Boot and iCafe Cloud, really powerful purpose-built softwares for our industry, for gaming centers. And even just in the last week, I've been getting calls and messages from all over the country. Center owners, these are people that already have businesses. And if I, one year in California, just called me, is how did you get the computers to boot onto a server and manage it all centrally? I said, well, how many computers do you have right now and how are you running? I said, well, we have 30 computers and they're all booting individually, each machine locally. So local content, everything on a local drive. And there's no integrated sort of umbrella system for centralized management. And as you know, when you update these games and new releases come out, there's a constant software influx. You have to continually sort of download and upgrade the software. And if you don't do that, when customers come in and they want to play, they got to wait for updates. And that's the whole thing with gaming centers. People just want to walk in, sit down and just start doing their thing. So I would say that the lack of having the correct IT deployment is a huge thing that has caused centers to crash and burn. You have to think of these businesses as IT projects through and through. And so that also has to do with the network piece. I used a company called Zyxel and they have incredible single pane of glass interfaces for managing the entire network. So in one view, you can kind of see everything what's going on and you can manage it from your phone. Same with the iCafe about CC Boot Software. It's all web-based. It's all cloud managed. And so center owners, they're trying to market their business. They're trying to run events. They're probably getting into education and STEM and STEAM. And so you're dealing with a million things. The last thing you want to do is have to deal with the technology. So I would say that is a big piece, is the entire IT area. And then another piece I would say is these are not the cyber cafes of the 90s. Back then you just had somebody sitting at the desk and you had high-speed internet and people could go and access their email and get on AOL or whatever the case would be. I was like a small jab at you because I knew you got the AOL email address. That's actually an antique. It's a valuable antique. Correct. And I appreciate and admire everything to do with that. But as an analogy, suit to those days, people were using it for utilitarian purposes, right? Well, today I don't think that's enough. So if a center owner wants to sit there and kind of just expect that people will come in, I don't think that's a sustainable business model. And so what I try and work with center owners on is how to create and develop these different revenue drivers and income opportunities. And maybe also find some passive ones too. There's quite a few things out there if you start to really look into it. And so it really just comes from experience. And after 13 years of doing this, I feel like I finally have really sort of crafted a nice model and it's a lot of complex pieces. There's no defined way to build these venues. It's a very organic process. And I would say that's another reason why I think centers close is because it is organic and there isn't a whole lot of structure. It's very easy to make mistakes in one or more areas. So I guess that's my answer. So when you look at eSports centers before COVID versus after COVID, is there any change? And I guess we have to look at the during COVID too. So how has it evolved before, during and after? Sure. And again, I can tell you from a consultancy perspective. So one of the things I do is I offer pre-consultations from a high level perspective, help people to see if it's the right business for them or if they're really serious about going forward. I try and help them perhaps with their business plans or other aspects of it. And so because I offer initial work for free, I do get a lot of calls and emails and contacts. And I remember before COVID, especially like in the year leading up to it. So we're talking really 2019. I mean, my phone was ringing off the hook and I was absolutely slammed with work. And then into COVID, there were clients that I was working with to help open their centers. They actually did open during COVID. So it's an extremely difficult thing, but they did. And then of course the calls for initial consultations and to ask about opening a center went down quite a bit in the COVID time. But as soon as things opened up, I started getting calls again. And I would say now I've basically reflated back to where I was pre-COVID in terms of my call volume and just being able to have conversations with business owners about setting up these types of facilities. So I think we're there. And I would also add that the online viewership of eSports really has affected the overall global consumption of eSports. And the more viewers are watching online, this absolutely translates into more people wanting to come to physical centers. And so during COVID, while everything was under lockdown, there were no sports. People were watching eSports online. And so again, coming out of all this, you see a much bigger kind of addressable market for eSports and it just continues to grow year over year. It's quite something actually. So you mentioned passive income. Would that be merchandise then? And also is there an element of providing food and beverages in these centers to these income? Absolutely. All the things you mentioned, there's also quite a few others. I started thinking about in addition to sort of traditional revenue. And yes, concessions is certainly a big part of it. I often talk about the analogy that these are like movie theaters, where especially on the weekends, you're gonna have a lot of people come in, you'll probably have a line out the door. If you market your business right and you have the right atmosphere, and this could even happen from when you open the business. I think there's a lot of pent up demand, but like a movie theater, you have concessions, food, snacks, drinks that play a large role in the income model. And then additionally, the merchandising aspect really ties into the branding of your business as kind of a fixture in the community. Again, as it relates to eSports and gaming. So I think that is a huge piece. I've developed an online brand for myself actually with GameSync. And so I have an online merchandise store at GameSync.gg where people can actually buy product. And I do this print on demand, but a lot of people will wanna have, right there in the store, a point of purchase. You have shirts, you can have jerseys. And then if you support local eSports teams, now you've got your own sort of sub-brand coming into the eSports competitive side with teams. I found a really interesting one in Bitcoin ATMs. I don't know if you've seen these around, but these are sort of like ways for people to buy cryptocurrency. And they can go up to a machine and do this. And apparently it's quite popular. So I contacted one company about partnering up to deploy these out at eSports centers. And I actually have one at my center. And they pay me rent to have it deployed there. So I think they're in, and that's passive income for a center owner. So that's another example of kind of a creative idea or a way of generating some income sort of outside of the traditional ways. But there are so many different ways to effectively make money with the business. It's about what the center owner wants to do, what their vision looks like, what their budget is for opening a center, how many square feet and how many game stations are they gonna have, what kind? And are they going to be doing education and is it gonna be competitive tournaments there? So there's many different ways. So have you worked on any projects regarding eSports in cinemas? Because I know that use of that space is happening. I was actually contacted by a cinema here in San Diego and I went in toward their venue. So I've been running Super Smash Brothers Ultimate on the Nintendo Switch tournaments since 2018. I think we actually might have the longest running one in North America or certainly among the most long running. We only stopped for COVID and we never actually stopped before and after it was already something like 161 or something like that. And we do it every week. And so because we are known locally for these tournaments, that this, yeah, this venue contacted me and the theater wanted to explore the idea of running Smash tournaments in their venue. And I would say the biggest problem we had trying to make that work was the kind of lack of refresh rate and visual performance on a larger display. So when you do competitive events, what gamers want and expect, and it really makes sense if you think about it, is the high refresh rate, the high frame rate, the low latency, and kind of like really that high performance experience because every movement you make and everything that you do is all kind of kinetic and connected into what's on the screen and your controller. And so when you start to get into some of these venues, the platform kind of breaks down. And so this is also another mistake that I saw owners make in the past coming back to your point about making mistakes. They would think, center owners, some of them, that a television would actually work for a competitive event because when they think console, they think your couch at home with a big screen TV and you're kind of laid back, right? Actually that's not the case. For the most part, competitive console gaming is on a high refresh rate performance monitor. Not unlike you'd see on a computer. And so yeah, you can have the casual, chilled back, giant TV, but that would be more for maybe your birthday party or for casual gaming or something that's non-competitive. And so I think that kind of same line of thinking may apply to movie theaters, but there are also creative ways to do it where it's maybe not so serious and it's a little more fun and just more casual. So it just, again, depends on who's your audience and what is the expectation. Would you advise a game center to invest in professional e-sports chairs for good ergonomics? I mean, I would think that people would sit longer and they might spend more money if they're comfortable and what are your thoughts on that? So my general take on everything having to do with purchasing equipment, furniture, chairs, tables and kind of really all the purchasing having to do with the center, I really think should be done in a way that really not only maximizes your ROI, but also goes for top quality first. So like buy good things. I'm not a big fan of branded products in the venue because I feel like psychologically, it's much better to have your own brand and kind of wrap that in the center. So I'm really not a big fan of oh, buy an Alienware computer. Well, I can buy Alienware at home. Show me what's unique about your center. Well, oh, you're building your own PC and it's got this really cool case that I've never seen before and it's mounted on the wall and it's glowing like that. I've never seen that. And so that's a draw. The chairs, it's the same thing. There are good chairs out there. You can easily buy those online. But I think branding the chair with your logo is ideal and in a perfect world, you have both. You have a high quality chair that doesn't sag after six months. Unfortunately, you do see in chairs that are sub $300. They often use foam. That is sort of like a filler material that in three or six months, now your chair is sagging. And remember, you have to think commercial venue. This is not the same as an individual at home. You're playing for just in their own space. You're in a community space and it's a commercial environment in a retail setting. So I would definitely say chairs, tables, things that are really maybe a little bit more branded to your logo and design, color scheme even. I have a list on my website of partners that I've vetted over the years. And so I try and offer sort of a full stack solution. But these are only just my recommendations. Of course, center arms can do whatever they want. But I try to find like for the desks for esports centers, this was not easy. They're basically more or less cheaply built across the board in the consumer retail side of things. So I went to a brand that had built custom furniture for us so we could have high quality machined parts that are metal that kids can kick them around and beat them up and they're not gonna fall apart. Everything's gonna sort of stay structurally sound. This just comes from owning a center for a decade and seeing everything and also making mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes in my early days. So now I'm just trying to help people to not make those same mistakes and do a lot better. Do you recommend focus on certain games in a particular center? So I think each community will have its own games and I have a specific strategy for that for owners and what they tell them is I simply say, look, you're opening your center, you don't exactly know what your community likes and especially on the PC side. And certainly with console, we could identify the top games and with PC but you may find that people come in and they wanna play some niche titles. So what you do is you simply be prepared to purchase games on demand. And of course, most of the games that people play are these days called FTP or free to play games. So here you don't have that issue where you have to buy licenses but there are a lot of commercial licenses that you would need to purchase for certain titles that are popular. But if you don't know how many licenses or what titles, if the customer comes in and they tell you at the counter, do you have this game? And again, assuming you have the proper IT platform and infrastructure set up in the way that, I advise people how to do it, then the counter help can actually go ahead and purchase the software right there, put it on a server and make it available sort of globally within the LAN center, the physical location, almost instantaneously. And so now every single computer is going to have that title. And this is to me like a really awesome way to serve the local community and show that, yeah, we're listening to you. You want a game? Okay, I'll buy it right now for you. Install it, boom, it's done. And then of course, when they leave, that game stays in the library of the center and anybody wants to come in and play that game later, they're able to do so. So that's kind of the win-win that we sort of look for in this. And what about marketing? Do you, how do you recommend that they proceed with marketing? Is it, what channels would you, would be best for a smaller game center? So I've built all my businesses over the years starting first and foremost with a website. I do website design, I'm a web developer for many, many years. And so my site for my gaming center, which is gamesync.us is a really good example of bringing people in to a center. What excites them? What makes it attractive, the content, the design? So I think that first and foremost to me is sort of the underlying base for all of this. And then of course, you extend that out with other layers, a social media layer, you start to build an email newsletter and send marketing emails and things of that nature, partnering with local businesses. Probably that could be a whole video unto itself, kind of how to market your center. Another video could be how to set up your center. But from an umbrella perspective, it's, I would say traditional marketing in terms of the digital piece, an online, but then refined and sort of niche targeted for the gamer and for the esports gaming world. So that's sort of a high level answer. There's obviously a lot more to it. So it's interesting that there are some reality shows where a consultant comes into it like a bakery and works with the owner in terms of trying to turn it around, are you able to go into a game center? And even if it's not a reality show, how do you help them to try to turn around their business so that it's profitable? Well, I will say that I've done this quite a bit, but it was largely centers that were kind of doing OK. It wasn't so much that they were sinking, because I think at that point, it's very difficult financially to kind of do the things you need to do. What you should do is ideally forecast out your trajectory. And then hopefully, you realize earlier on that I need to pivot in some way. And then, yeah, I think it's worked out in some centers I'm thinking of right now. They were doing OK, and now they're doing great. And so I just implemented quite a few different things to sort of change the model. And in changing the model, changing the technology, changing the brand, even redesigning the logo, the website, the activities and events, after school education, and some other pieces, we brought all that together. And businesses saw a 400% to 500% increase over time. So this is quite a big transformation. It's a lot of work, but I think it's worth it. So what do you think the future of eSports game centers is? Flex spaces. I think you're going to see a big educational piece. I also think you're going to see parents dropping off their kids after school for eSports practices, just like you see in traditional sports, where you have a football field or a soccer field, and you have parents and teachers and coaches and kind of the support infrastructure. Well, that's what you're going to see with eSports centers. And that's what I'm working on in the ecosystem. I'm trying to help these businesses open. Because I think from a larger perspective, we need these facilities. If you're going to have this kind of eSports integration on a larger scale, we definitely need to have centers and venues. These types of locations are really important. So I'm super passionate about helping people to get those businesses open and then grow their businesses. So I would say flex space with education, eSports tournaments, and then obviously, of course, having more of the engagement as far as a casual play and interactivity from an entertainment perspective. You bring all that stuff together. Fantastic. OK, so I'm sure that there will be a lot of viewers who would be very interested in finding you and having you help them. How can people find you? So the easiest way is to just go to the website gamesync.consulting. You could also Google gamesync.consulting, or even just gamesync. And a number of different businesses will pop up. I have a few. And so sometimes people get confused because we do other things. But gamesync.consulting is specifically for the eSports Center development for both new and existing facilities. And it can be a school. It doesn't have to be an individual business owner. It can be any kind of gaming facility, really. Terrific. This has been very helpful. And Agregati, thank you so much for being my guest today. Thank you. And keep up all the great work and your service. We really, really appreciate it. Gratitude to you. All right. Anyway, thank you to our viewers for joining us today. Make sure to tune in next week. My guest will be Kelly Uioka. Actually, that will be in two weeks. See you then. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the Subscribe button on YouTube and the Follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.