 Welcome to the wide world of esports, the show devoted to all things esports. I'm your host, Catherine or today our topic is cinema esports, bringing esports to the big screen. My guest is Heather Blair, the president of Cinema Esports Alliance Corp. Welcome Heather. Hello Catherine. Okay, so tell us about your organization. So where do I start? There's actually a couple of organizations that kind of come together, but the Cinema Esports Alliance Corporation was created to be a voice of introduction between cinema exhibitors globally, who would like to have esports and gaming events and tournaments and programs in their cinema. And the whole wide world of esports and gaming that would like to bring their tournaments, bring their events, have hosting parties at cinema. I'm basically just a conduit, an open door of communication between these industries. Fantastic. Okay, so I'm a big movie buff. And I go to regal cinemas or consolidated quite often, usually once a week. And I was really disappointed during the pandemic that regal shut down for about a year. And I think that for about a month at one point actually it might have only been a few weeks, but to not have the ability to go into a movie theater. I think, you know, it changed our world a bit and it also changed our habits. So, how did that impact the theaters and how do esports fit into that. So, the conundrum that the cinemas have been in is the business model that has existed in since the inception of the cinema has been 100% reliant on the studios to provide movies. And the problem with that is the studios are now taking care of themselves. They're going out and putting their titles on streaming platforms and shrinking the window and the window is the amount of time that it plays up in the theater. And they often go to their second and third markets. Well, with the pandemic, there was no fault of their own that they had to shut down. And it's really no fault of the studios with the fault was the business model. So the conversation has been going on for a while was how do we find other forms of entertainment. Another issue that is driving the slow adoption is the cinemas are used to, here comes the content, we play the content, we sell tickets to the content and concessions. And there's a guy at the front who rips the ticket and points you to number theater seven to the left. That's not going to work any sports and gaming there has to be kind of a paradigm shift, and how they look at what they're offering in their cinema. So the idea of having esports and gaming as a new entertainment offer is what interest a lot of the cinema exhibitors. It's now that path to how to make it profitable. That's the big concern. There's yet to be somebody that's been the outside source that says I'm going to bring in everything just like the movie studios do I'm going to bring in the content. I'm going to bring in the marketing. I'm going to bring in everything and you get to take a cut. Nobody's doing that yet. So that my goal with the CEAC is to find all the individual stakeholders and find the ones that can play well in the sandbox and help the cinemas work with them and not have it be some big secret, but the idea of being able to host viewing parties. I talked to lots of gaming companies I said God the cinemas are painted about we want to use a room. We know there's nothing going on in there and they want to charge us. So still at this moment it's still like a new thing that there's a little bit of friction that I hope over time with these introductions that will kind of pull back the curtain and say y'all this is not you're not helping yourselves at the moment. Right because it kind of doesn't make sense for them to have such a high price point like what they might normally do I think they have to think more about like how are we going to make a profit how are we going to fill up the space how are we going to use utilize the space that is so underutilized right now is that right. Yeah, and so one of the things that I do with the CEAC is I host these quarterly events. Basically just to manage my bandwidth and you hosting these regular events you know what I'm talking about coordinating curating people and making sure you have the right speakers and topics so that your audience gets their time used wisely. My last one was on marketing and sponsorship. The cinemas don't really understand that they could get sponsors to come in and underwrite an expense, but it's, it's time consuming to be able to craft that story and be able to talk to brands and say, I have an audience that is a certain age demographic, they're going to be spending this much time here, and it's not a CPM model it's a sponsorship model. So I'm trying to also help that dialogue to help offset the cost of changing equipment and bringing in personnel, because it's a different offer than the movie goes in right at this many times a day, throw it up, play the movie, sell the $10 popcorn and the $20 cook call today. It's just a different a different format of a business strategy so sponsorships could be a way that they make some money and hopefully ticket sales but I'm sure you know in this audience they're not used to having to pay to attend something or used to be able to go and you know show up at something. Right, so you know what I'm curious is about is how the space is used for eSports because in each what we have in the cinema space right now is multiplex auditoriums where there might be a 16 plex or an 18 or an eight plex and and you have and now like the movie theater close to where I live, they have very few movies so they have to show the same movie and a lot of different theaters. Yeah. And you know so I'm wondering like with eSports, does would the stage be utilized for the actual game and there be an audience or how does it work. In some of the events that I've been to and actually one that I put on so one of the pictures that you'll be showing the hair shortly is the the. It was the cinema eSports I put an event to basically I pulled in a bunch of cinema operations marketing and technical people to show them yes this was a team that I had come and I put on a smash brother tournament at a cinema. And I had to have the tournament organizer come in the night before and put his equipment everywhere set the stage up for the Smash Brothers tournament. And then we did like an exhibition style to show the all these cinemas this is how you would utilize this room, and it was played up on the big screen, and then the audience came in and we're just, they were just observing and they were just enjoying it and people that were competing on throughout the time were in the audience and then they were changing out, and it was all to win $1,000 cash, a DX racer chair and HyperX gear, and there was some pros that came in because they thought it would be fun. And trying to help the cinemas understand that it's going to cost them money, they're going to might need to find a sponsor that will come in and bring the pricing to make it worth their time. The conundrum that I was under was that the people that worked at the cinema, didn't go out and engage with the gamers and I said, See the guy with the backpack. That's a pro gamer. See the guy with the man bun. He's a pro gamer. Go talk to them engage with them. Otherwise they're coming here to win that cash and those prizes and then they're leaving and they won't come back and be a patron of your cinema. So for the, for the, for the events that I've been in they they literally brought in the equipment and use the floor and set up for the event, but for an ongoing thing kind of the dialogue that we're having my next CAC quarterly event is on it and infrastructure and companies that are interested in bringing this technology to cinemas are actually telling me that they're finding financial ways to say, we'll do it on a ref share we'll do it on a lease model we'll do it we'll bring in this equipment to maybe take one of your screens and your multiplex and convert it to a room that set up specifically for gaming and esport events. So it's going to evolve into probably being specific rooms. So my clients have land centers, and there's a company called EG they're a public entertainment company, and they have a whole system that is a series of of setup computers the whole setup of like 1212 setups, they have the games all loaded on them. So cinema could literally bring that in on a rev share and let people come in and play. The problem that I that I see instantly is that the cinemas have never had to market right when when Black Widow comes out, Disney's talking and they're just saying hey come watch Starla Johansson, Reguy Disney, Ghostbusters all Sony, they're doing the marketing cinemas haven't really had to with the, I'm sure you're not going to see epic out there going hey go to the cinema. They're not going to promote these events at cinemas the senate the cinemas are going to have to do that themselves. And I think that's one of the issues that we're having is how did they drive people in to the cinema to experience these great opportunities with other like minded people until they learn how to market. And you know, I, I see this as a great opportunity for places like Hawaii where we don't have like an esports arena. In fact, our Aloha stadium has even shut down for the time being because it's going to be, you know, essentially tore down and rebuilt. So, you know, we don't have those kind of places and we had League of Legends championship at UH and you know, so the thing is, the places where a, you know, a tournament could be shown where you could have an audience seems to me that it's the cinema is the would be a terrific location because we do have actually empty movie theaters here because not all of them have even opened up would be an option. What do you know I would think other communities would, they would do that as well. The interest that really is on both sides is actually helping them figure out the path and like where is the money coming from and who's going to be paying for this. And the cinemas are, you know, they're, they're, they're adverse right now the risk adverse because they've all suffered with COVID, you know, requirements shutting them all down. And they're now trying to figure out okay they a lot of them got money from the government. So it's like how do we take the money that we got and prepare and have these theaters be refurbished into the proper room for for esports. Sure, you know, that makes a lot of sense. So I understand that you also have women in exhibition. Can you tell us about that and how that came about. Yeah, so it's kind of common you'll hear in a lot of companies talking about they need to have more diversity, equity and inclusion. And it's, it's a common topic. And it's, when you go to conferences I mean you even mentioned this to me earlier, you find that men because they're used to being the one that are in the sea level. Part of a company, they're leading and it's always the same voices, I go to the conferences it's the same men on the panels, they should call the manals. This is the same men winning awards it's the same men making all the decisions, and I decided a few years ago, when someone that I worked for patted me on the head and told me no disrespect to you Heather feather, but it's a man's world. And I thought that is so, so not cool to tell me that, and it made me angry so when you get angry you take action. And so the first thing I want to do is find other like minded women that wanted to get together and socialized network mentor each other help each other out. And then I wanted to take some action and, and actually help these guys that put on the shows and say okay I know that you have your panels, because it's who you know, I don't, it's probably not intentional that you don't have women you just don't know any of them. So now we have a whole entire global operation of cinema executives all the way from you know the girls they answer the phone to the women's that are CEOs and some of the cinema chains to all the studios and we don't have that many of them because this is our world is a little dicey right now. And then we have all the service vendors, and I found the esports is kind of falls under the service vendors so I've kind of combined these worlds. And it's given me an open forum to communicate. I'm the president and founder of that as well. And so we have these monthly social gatherings where I do a virtual speaker series. And I invite various people that are either entertainers. I've had musicians like Kirby Hancock. I've had businessman Mark Cuban. I've had Howie Mandel. I've had director Patty Jenkins from Wonder Woman so I try to find interesting people that are part of the cinema space or entertainment that might want to talk to the women. So I've used that as a platform to keep in touch with the cinema industry and then, you know, find ways to help them grow and deal with, you know, the 2020s where we're just in a new new business model. And being in LA that probably puts you right in the mix of the movie industry so that you can that you can actually have access to a lot of the people, the executives, the talent that are involved is that right. Yeah, so I live like five minutes from Universal Studios. So I can hop down the street and see anybody even though with COVID restrictions we do socially distanced whatever. So, you know, sometimes I'll just put out a put an email out and say hey who wants to go meet me for some cocktails, and I'll pull together a group of people and we'll just go set out a bar somewhere that, you know, with our little mask on drinking. Sure. And you know your your point about women and getting them kind of empowering them is it you know it's very key challenge with eSports and you know we find that all the time and even in my show to have women on it is a bit of a challenge because it's a little harder to find women in this space. And how did you get involved in eSports like what even made you think of it. Well, so when I first came into this space and I was selling the 4d theater equipment. It's expensive it's so when you go into a room, and it's been outfitted with seats that move and with atmospheric effects in the room there's when there's rain there's scent, water will blast you in the face. I was trying to find a way to make those rooms less expensive so that I could get more cinemas to buy them. And I thought maybe I could get a sponsor again going back to the sponsorship thing, and that maybe could help underwrite the cost of my equipment. So I started thinking who would be a good sponsor, would it be banks would be beverage companies I was kind of going through the litany of companies, and not maybe gaming companies because probably the person that likes this multi sensory experience is probably a gamer. So I went after the gaming companies right the publishers, and in the beginning I knew zero like who was a distributor publisher I didn't know the hierarchy. I'm like, Oh, people actually compete with some of these tiles. Then I kept talking about thinking at some point I'll find a person who has some intellect that can tell me how this can be done. Initially I wanted it in the rooms that I was selling advertising I mean selling the 4d in. And then I realized it doesn't need to be in a 4d room but I was trying to blend the two. Well when I left that company I put out a kind of an email to all my cinemas and said I'm going to go back to consulting, but I want to bring you what you're interested in. Tell me what kind of technology you want or what are you interested in they all wrote back eSports help us figure that out. So I started with basically creating the cinema eSports company was just a, like a stick in the ground, as I started doing my research to find who in the ecosystem, maybe wanted the step into cinema. So I put on a think tank which lasted the entire month of August, and I had about 169 cinema executives attended that think tank. And it was every Tuesday was a virtual one before COVID was like oh my god it's virtual it's great. But I covered great topics, and then I thought okay there was such sincere interest I said I'm going to put on a workshop. Probably was the hardest thing I've ever done. I said I'm going to keep a small group of cinemas. I called up the eSports Awards. Are you familiar with the guys from the eSports Awards. They called up Michael Ashford can I say hey Michael I met you at E3 and you told me about your your little, it's like saying a little Oscars, your little eSports Awards. I had to come with some cinema executives as a VIP. He's like sure Heather just buy some tables. So I bought some tables, and I brought these cinema executives. And what I said to them to make them interested in coming I said okay you're going to come to Arlington. We're going to put you at the Sheraton unbeknownst to me it was adjacent to the eSports arena so we're there with all the eSports celebrities which they love. I had this little dinner where I had the eSports, the pros that would be competing in the tournament came to the dinner. They all got to chat really intimate setting. I made everyone custom eSports Jersey so you'll see in that one picture there. They're in everybody had their own custom Jersey, totally baller move they all loved it. And I told them you'll y'all will wear these jerseys tomorrow to the workshop. So when everybody came downstairs these are all people that I normally see in suits. Little jerseys on is like, darling, and then we put on the workshop, finish the workshop to come back to the hotel put on their fancy clothes to come to the eSports Gala. So that was what they got in a workshop and it was. They all absolutely loved it so I knew I was going in the right direction to teach and bring and continue. And then again that's why eventually I went ahead and created the alliance like I need to make this bigger than just a one event it needs to be a conversation. So somebody sports still exists but it's, it's exist to put on events so there'll be something coming up in Q one that'll be a sim race event that I'm working on right now that's a big event where I'm bringing pro drivers pro gamers and amateurs all competing, and it'll be with a big initiative of diversity, equity and inclusion because it'll be female drivers, female gamers and female amateurs equal ish. And I am 100% convinced in order to be a pro female driver, you have to be gorgeous. All of them are totally odd. So we're working on that and I'll be able to I can't announce it yet because it's still, but you know what the concept is and so cinema eSports will still do that kind of stuff. And the alliance is that communication tool between these, between these industries. So do you have a vision for the future for cinema eSports I mean will we will we go to movie theaters and in every movie theater there'll be eSports component. What are your thoughts about that. My vision would be that these the cinemas get intelligent enough to create their own teams and leagues, because I think that would be totally fun. And I also noticed on how much fun my little workshop was watching all of my cinemas that attended our competitors and under this circumstance they were actually really having a great time, but it also offered no distraction it was only them for this workshop I didn't bring in anybody from the outside. And I got to look at see how how well they connected I thought wouldn't this be awesome if they all had teams, and they would compete against each other on a bigger scale, and then those competitions would get big enough to go or something one of these big arenas that you mentioned, but just for the sake of engaging with your community, go into their local high schools colleges and saying do you have a team do you have a league do you have a club. Could we invite you to do it here at our cinema and let's build this together. That is a vision that I see and I think it's, I'm doing everything in my power to connect those dots. And you know our industry, I mean I'm in eSports and cinema so I can, my, you know my first love is the cinema. I think it would be so beneficial if they could, you know, prove that business model works getting somebody to go in like the local soccer team you go to the soccer field and you play with your family, I just, I see a vision there. Right and you know it's an interesting thing, because you could decentralize this in that these communities that have cinema, they could be a small community and they have their own eSports team in their community and then they can play other, other cinema teams that might be in a town, you know down the road, you know that kind of thing. What do you think that could work. Absolutely because if they're intelligent, then they'll, they'll have online pre qualifiers you can be you know from a certain territory region so it doesn't necessarily mean you'll always have to go into the cinema, but the competition, I mean the, the practices could be there. I mean I'm a former rodeo athlete well not rodeo team roping which is a sport where it's a rodeo sport, and we like to be with other people that that talk our language. But there's a lot of similarities between people lettered in real life sports and eSports. I took a kid with me to dream hack. It was really early on in my ascent into this space. I didn't the first day I went by myself, I didn't know what I was looking at was all these big screens everywhere and there was all kinds of games and competitions going on. I take this kid with me, he knew all the players he knew every single game he was so into it and I was mesmerized with him wanting to talk to him with the same language. I'm like that is what should happen at the cinema, and they could do this online they can chat they can you know all have their jerseys. If they have a team it's the cinema logo on there as the sponsor, I could just say it would only benefit the growth and awareness to an audience right now that's comfortable watching everything right there. It's like let's get them off the phone and off their tablets, and let's get them back into that cinema. And you know, what about virtual reality because I could see some really exciting virtual reality type events at cinemas as well. Yeah, there's many factors that the company that I can't mention right now but they actually came after me see if I wanted to do sales for them I said I'm not selling for anybody else. Their goal is to go after the cinema space and I think it's a great fit they're pretty well known company so I'm like, yeah I do see a fit there and there are some titles out there that lend themselves to VR so I see that in the future as well. Sure. And you know I enter. I understand that you have a newsletter and events and can you tell us how people can connect with your newsletter and and you know about your upcoming events. Yeah, the events are quarterly and they're, they're awesome so my newsletter basically is a vehicle to talk about what's going on current trends and events in cinema and eSports I tried to find those, those things that are happening that connect the dots. I'm always interested in interviewing people that have something interesting a technology, something they're trying to do so anybody that's watching your show that really has something they want to say I'm like, please. You can put my contact up there my LinkedIn contact and the website is the cinema eSports Alliance Corporation. You could go to the website and there's a, you know, joint get the join the newsletter get the newsletter on there. So I'd love to have, you know, we've got over 500 subscribers right now and it's a relatively new newsletter, but we get great attendees and we do our quarterly events. The ones that are between the quarterly ones are just zoom networking. And what I do there is like, there's no, no form formula just is just log on and then I let people work around the room. And interestingly enough, they're never very big they're like 20 or 30 people. So much gets accomplished by these smaller little networking events I love them because people just talking to each other and put their LinkedIn contact or the email in the chat, and I just let them go off and meet on their phone. They're really successful. Sir, and I think we will all look forward to seeing how this evolves in the future, because I do think that there has to be a change I mean I really do want to continue to go to movies, but I, you know it is kind of sad when you see that it isn't really that vibrant and that you can tell that the business model isn't as strong as it had been in the past. Yeah, so I'll give you the last word in terms of your, you know, letting us know, you know, what, what they can do, like what action can take. So the anybody that is interested in supporting diversity equity inclusion can go to women and exhibition.com. And that is $25 membership to join that group. We have regular ongoing meetings talking about diversity at bringing together making sure that there's, you know, parody in our world pay parody things of that nature. And then as far as esports goes, go to the cinema esports alliance calm, join the newsletter and then will make sure that you get invited to all the events are always free, unless I do a workshop so before, like I did the marketing and sponsorship. I asked, if you guys want to a workshop, let me know. And I said what would you be willing to spend so I kind of know if I go get speakers and going to have to pay them, but there are massive learning takeaway so all my speaker all my attendees said they would be willing to spend $250 so take with that I'll go pull together a workshop so the workshops had to charge for the events the other events are just complimentary. It's really terrific. Well, thank you, Heather. I really appreciate. Thank you. Being a guest today. And I thank you to our viewers for joining us today next week, my guest will be Gary Kleinman of skins GG to talk about health and wellness in esports.