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I'm wondering if any major sports outlet will figure out how to monetize esports. Yahoo and now ESPN have gutted their esports departments. Feels like there should be huge opportunity/$$$ in that space but for whatever reason mainstream execs can't or won't figure it out
Look at how wildly successful Twitch is. Literally worth billions of dollars. There's mega cash in the industry. It feels like esports is where fantasy football was like 10 years ago. Treated as an also-ran by mainstream execs who don't get it and don't want to get it
I can tell you from personal experience, you would think that rating, clicks, engagement, profitability, all those metrics would actually matter to higher ups. Often times they absolutely do not.
While in local news I had a MMA show that did reasonably well ratings wise. My MMA interviews CRUSHED anything we were posting online. I'm talking 10-100 times the clicks/views of regular news stories. My GM couldn't care less and had me stop doing them. It was baffling
Fantasy was like this when I first started at NFL Network. Our ratings were competitive with any daily show they put on. When we were crushing it in terms of growth with the pod and written, they wouldn't even hire guys full time! Extra web/tv presence? Pshhh no chance
I think the current environment is MUCH better over there from what I hear (ps guys I'm no longer over there!) but it's been a long road. But I feel like esports is in that painful growth stage w/ major media where in 10 yrs we're all going to be wondering what took so damn long
Just to be clear, that wasn't an indictment on NFL Network, I largely loved working over there w/ a few notable exceptions. I mean look at ESPN fantasy 10 years ago. It BARELY existed, now they're doing all-day programming marathons and it feels NORMAL. Wasn't always that way
That concludes my TED talk.
