11/10/16: Blizzard attacks the Overwatch League map

CYNOPSISeSPORTS & GAMING
11.10.16

It’s Thursday, November 10, 2016, and this is your weekly early morning eSports & Gaming brief.

Last week’s announcement at BlizzCon that Blizzard would be launching a pro sports-style Overwatch League was an expected and welcome game changer for the eSports industry. Now teams, brands, platforms and players alike await details on what the publisher is describing as “a world-class, sports ecosystem for professional Overwatch competition.” Blizzard announced that the league would focus on long-term stability for teams with regional franchises instead of team relegation, as well as a player combine, signing period, minimum salary and benefits with a debut set for 2017. The move further blended the mix of traditional and eSports executives, as Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Rams owner Stan Kroenke and Nuggets owner Josh Kroenke were all in attendance at the event. Click here to hear the details.

“The Overwatch League represents not only the pinnacle of Overwatch competition, but also a genuine career opportunity for the most skilled Overwatch players,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We’re building a league that’s accessible to players and fans, sustainable, and exciting for everyone involved.”

One factor designed to keep the league sustainable will be the regional franchise element, as teams will be asked to bid to represent their city/state/region, with teams projected to be housed around the world.

“Anyone who says they are not interested is probably not a tier one or tier two team,” said Marty ‘Lazerchicken’ Strenczewilk, CEO & President at Splyce.gg, whose team could theoretically represent New York. “But I would say that, right now, it is a bit of a wait and see to see what the specifics are going to be because none of us know what the costs are going to look like, how the revenue structure will support it early on, etc.”

Strenczewilk noted that the regional element was an important piece of the puzzle, noting that “As the only major team in New York state, I find that when people find out they we are from their state, they become a fan. It’s a tactic we haven’t tapped into enough.” The sentiment is shared by Frank Villarreal, Co Founder and CEO at the Las Vegas-based Rogue, who plans to bid to represent the city.

“The current plans for Overwatch League are extremely ambitious, which is worrying a lot of eSports fans because they fear that the league will take on too much before the audience is ready to support it,” said Villareal. “But talking to the people in charge, they are planning to scale this up over time. A lot of what they presented on the video won’t necessarily be in its complete form until 2019 so they understand that they need the audience to support something as massive as this and it is going to take some time to develop that audience.”

That represents a new opportunity for brands to sponsor and activate in the eSports space, boosted by the fact that schedules, teams, etc. would all have a formal structure with which to work. "We are excited to see the industry creating even more predictable premium opportunities for brands to connect with and reach the desirable audience engaged in eSports,” said Stuart Lipson, Executive Director at the eSports Ad Bureau. “Even better to see members of the eSports Ad Bureau demonstrating their leadership in moving the industry forward.”

Overall, Blizzard invited around 125 owners and representatives from traditional sports and eSports organizations to discuss potential involvement with the new league. Blizzard Global eSports Director Nate Nanzer told the OverView podcast that “Every single person who owns an Overwatch eSports team was at BlizzCon,” adding “We are absolutely trying to include everyone.”

COMPETITION

FIFA detailed plans for the FIFA Interactive World Cup, which kicks off this weekend. The FIWC17 Grand Final in London will see virtual football players from around the world battle for the title as well as $200,000, with the runner up snaring $100,000. The tournament, of course, is backed by EA Sports’ -new competition mode FUT Champions. “We’ve listened to our community and tried to adapt the new tournament format to their meet their needs,” said FIFA’s Head of Digital Marketing Christian Volk. “Getting through to the live qualification stages will put players under the spotlight and let them show off their skills. In addition FUT Champions is really popular with our players and this will definitely bring more excitement to the competition.”

Ultimate Media Ventures announced details for the next round of its Pro-Am eSports tournament series in Nov., this time featuring Super Smash Bros. 4 and Street Fighter V. The finals will be held at SLS Las Vegas, with pro and amateur teams able to sign up at BattleOnTheStrip.com on Nov. 11. UMV will host regional qualifiers at the Press Start Gaming Center and at the UNLV “8-bit eSports” Lab. “Building on the successful inaugural October event, we’re thrilled to deliver even more exciting programming and special appearances to the eSports community with our November installment of Battle on the Strip,” said UMV CEO, Jon Bukosky. “This time around, we’re focusing on three amazing competitive titles, showcasing our fresh approach to creating a unique esports lifestyle experience, with something new and different every month.”

ESL and WESA unveiled details of the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Pro League for 2017. The event will showcase more teams and regions next year, with a prize pool of $2 million to mark a 25% rise over last year’s US $1.5 million. Season 5 begins Feb. 7 and will run through the offline finals to take place at the Verizon Theatre in Dallas, Texas on June 3-4. This will mark the first stand-alone ESL Pro League Finals held in the US. Season 6 will then be held from August-November with the Finals in December.

Speaking of which, WESA launched an independent arbitration court to take on legal issues and disputed in the industry. The court will operate independently and is open to everyone involved in the eSports industry, from players and teams to organizers and publishers with all issues presented to the court to be decided by an impartial panel of three arbitrators. "The creation of an independent arbitration process is an important step to achieve one of WESA’s goals to professionalize eSports," said Ken Hershman, Executive Chairman and Commissioner of WESA. "The impartial nature of the arbitration process ensures a variety of issues from contract disputes to prize money distribution and many others can be handled expeditiously in a fair, equitable and cost effective manner."

ESL announced that the grand finals of the fourth season of the ESL Pro League last weekend saw upticks with the finals notching an 18% rise in the total number of sessions over last season, and a 13% uptick in the number of hours watched. The event clocked above 16 million views, with the peak concurrent viewership reaching over 400,000 viewers. Overall, close to 5.5 million hours of content was consumed by the online audience. The finals also recorded over 74 million impressions on Facebook and Twitter, with the engagement passing the 12 million mark.

Super Evil Megacorp has is bringing Replay Mode to Vainglory, announcing that with the game’s next update, a slate of recording and broadcasting features will be introduced. Replay Mode will allow players to pan, zoom and slow-down the action from clips recorded in-game.

Helsinki based ice hockey club IFK Helsinki announced its plans to get into eSports, launching a team to compete in Overwatch. The team will compete under the name Helsinki REDS and uses the tag #hREDS on social media.

Elsewhere, Spain is shoring up its eSports oversight, with the Spanish Institute of Youth and the National Association for the Promotion of Digital set to launch the Spanish Federation of Video Games and eSports according to Spanish news platform Marca.

Blizzard once again changed the game for some of its eSports titles, announcing tweaks and additions to its titles at BlizzCon. They include:
·       Mean Streets of Gadgetzan – new Hearthstone expansion, coming in early December that will new game mechanics and 132 new cards
·       “The Tomb of Sargeras”the next major content update (patch 7.2) coming to World of Warcraft, which will feature a new raid zone and a new dungeon, introduce player-vs.-player Brawls, bring flying to the Broken Isles, and more
·       Varian and Ragnarostwo heroes who will bring new and vastly different styles of play to the Nexus in Blizzard’s fast-paced team brawler Heroes of the Storm later this year
·       Blackheart’s Revengea uniquely asymmetrical attack/defend battleground, featuring everyone’s favorite ghost pirate, coming to Heroes of the Storm’s chaotic Heroes Brawl mode
·       Alexei Stukova new (infested) co-op commander who will bring a blend of Zerg and Terran might to bear in StarCraft II’s popular Co-op Missions
·       Sombraa stealthy hacker who’s joining the roster of Overwatch, Blizzard’s smash-hit shooter released earlier this year

INSIGHTS

Source: Activate Tech and Media Outlook 2017

PLATFORMS

Blizzard released a new documentary, dubbed A New Hero, showcasing the rise of college eSports with a spotlight on Heroes of the Storm. The story follows the 2016 Heroes of the Dorm competition and several of the competitors taking part in this year’s tournament. You can watch it by clicking here.

Swing by Swing Golf launched SwingCast, described as the world’s first golf-focused video gaming channel that will be broadcast live on Twitch. The platform will see more than 100 hours of live golf video gaming entertainment streamed each month, boasting agreements with several golf and gaming social media personalities that maintain more than 500,000 followers across Instagram and Twitter, including former ESPN and Fox Sports contributor Rebecca Grant; golf social media star Karin Hart; and the two top golf trick shot artists in the world, Ryan Rustand and Josh Kelley. SwingCast will focus on golf video games played on XBOX One, PlayStation 4, PCs and mobile smartphones.

Google is turning to Blizzard’s StarCraft II to train artificial intelligence for DeepMind. The company’s researchers will now receive access to the game, noting that “StarCraft is an interesting testing environment for current AI research because it provides a useful bridge to the messiness of the real-world. The skills required for an agent to progress through the environment and play StarCraft well could ultimately transfer to real-world tasks.”

Make your mark in eSports! Learn how in our upcoming webinar, “eSports: How to Maximize and Monetize Competitive Gaming” on Nov. 17 with speakers from Turner Sports/ELeague, Quest Nutrition, eSports Ad Bureau and Frank N. Magid Associates. Don’t miss your shot to get in early by registering here now!

Plays.tv launched its Automated Highlights integration with Blizzard’s Overwatch, designed to offer players full match replays and an easy way to share videos. According to the company, along with match replays, every elimination, multi-kill, death, resurrection and Play of The Game in Overwatch will automatically be captured and tagged, appearing on an Annotated Timeline to make it simple for players to find those moments and share them

MARKETING & SPONSORSHIP

Xbox forked over $39.9 million in ad spend in October, according to GameBeat. Tallying 16 commercials that ran 4,118 times and topping PlayStation’s estimated $12.1 million spend on 11 commercials that ran 1,612 times, according to the report. That equated to 1.2 billion ad impressions for Xbox compared to Sony’s 428.6 million.

Pizza Hut teams up with Microsoft to offer consumers free Xbox One S consoles. The promotion will run through Dec. 24, and will see the chain award about one prize an hour or 1,140 consoles overall. Fans can enter either by purchasing one of Pizza Hut’s Triple Treat boxes or via the sweepstakes website.

Ubisoft is teaming with Spinnin’ Records to promote the release of action-adventure game Watch Dogs 2. With DJ and Producer Oliver Heldens in tow, the company will produce the official music video for ‘Good Life’, Oliver’s latest track with the video inspired by” the lifestyle of in-game hacking collective, Dedsec.” The video premiers tomorrow on Spinnin Records’ YouTube page.

Veteran sports and entertainment industry executives Happy Walters, Founder and former CEO of Relativity Sports, and Josh Swartz, former President of Relativity Sports, announced the launch of Catalyst Sports & Media designed to act as a “strategic advisor, investor and talent representative with a focus on global growth properties, including basketball, global football and eSports.” Bryce Blum will lead its eSports division as Executive Vice President.

Alberto “Crumbz” Rengifo announced on his YouTube channel that he will be opening a new eSports talent agency dubbed APE (Agency for Professional Esports).

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

CYNOPSIS ESPORTS WEBINAR:
ESPORTS: HOW TO MAXIMIZE &
MONETIZE COMPETITIVE GAMING

ESports is ushering in a full-blown shift in entertainment and culture, but how do you maximize and monetize this phenomenon? Get the answers during our webinar on November 17, from sponsors and marketers as they share their insights into connecting with eSports fans, laying out a blueprint for how brands can reach and connect with a generation of skeptical but affluent consumers.

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INDUSTRY

Vivendi has now upped its stake in Ubisoft to 24% with 21.29% of the voting rights. Ubisoft has been looking to fend off a hostile takeover from the media giant, with the Guillemot brothers also upping their own share of the company to stem off a takeover.

Capcom stated that it expects to ship about 4 million copied of Resident Evil 7 during the company’s current financial year. In addition, according to the company, “the sales lifecycles for titles has grown due to digital distribution, so we expect this game to become a foundation title, producing revenue not limited to the next two fiscal years but into the long term as well.”

Activision Blizzard announced better-than-expected financial results for the third quarter of 2016, telling investors that “This quarter we again over-performed our plan, delivering record third-quarter revenues of $1.57 billion, up almost 60% and earnings per share of $0.49, more than doubling year-over-year on a non-GAAP basis (as redefined).” Bobby Kotick, Chief Executive Officer of Activision Blizzard, noted that “We continue to see enthusiasm from our global audiences for our key franchises including Call of Duty, Destiny, Candy Crush and World of Warcraft, plus our newest franchise Overwatch, which after only about four months had already reached over 20 million players and has incredible player engagement. Looking forward, we expect continued momentum from all of our growth strategies, especially our eSports initiatives and our integration of in-game advertising.”

POWER PLAYERS Andrew Paradise

Mobile eSports company Skillz continues to shore up resources even as audiences multiple five-fold. The company as recently granted two new patents: one of which enables Skillz to evaluate how much of the outcome of a given game depends on skill vs. chance, while the other allows developers to implement the Skillz Tournament Management System entirely through self service. Cynopsis eSports spoke with company CEO Andrew Paradise about its growth, mobile trends and its recent revelation that game developer partners are achieving more than eight times the mobile gaming industry’s average revenue per daily active user.

Paradise on the benefits of eSports: We were pretty excited to see that recent piece in the Wall Street Journal showing that eSports will be a $5 billion business by 2020. For us, we see that developing an eSports infrastructure can be one of the most powerful tools you can have for enhancing engagement, retention and revenue. Recently we announced that Skillz’ developer partners are achieving about eight times the mobile gaming industry’s average. In terms of engagement, we are seeing about twice the average time spent in game. Those are both pretty incredible numbers. If you put a game in that competition system and in the broadcasting system, even an older piece of content can be refreshed by enabling it as an eSport.

On growth: We served 8 million minutes of footage last year and this year we will serve 40 million minutes. We a tracking at about 5x and we think that next year will be even bigger. Twitch has shown that mobile viewing is now about a third of all viewership, so when I think about what eSports viewing will look like in a couple of years, we feel that it will hold the lion’s share of viewership and that leaves us in a great position to engage brands.

On demographics: In the console and computer eSports world is that it is very male and very 18-24 year old. What’s fascinating in the mobile eSports world is that we are seeing a much higher concentration of female players. So currently, Skillz is 45% female player and 55% male player across all the studios that we power. That’s with over 10 million players.

On its recent patents: Our two recent patents are really designed to set up the mobile eSports industry for long-term success. We are big proponents of having the technology to build for both the developers and for the players. Developers don’t have the opportunity to build an eSports infrastructure organically, we can offer them the resources to build a system.

TRAILER OF THE WEEK Mass Effect: Andromeda

Electronic Arts officially launched the Andromeda Initiative, calling on explorers to “take their first steps on a 600-year journey to find a new home.” The release of the cinematic trailer serves up the first story details, as well as glimpses of the game’s protagonists and crew members with world gameplay reveal coming in December. Click here to watch.

ON THIS DAY in 2010 – EA Sports releases Madden NFL 11 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Trivia: Which Lord of the Rings star voiced Spyro in The Legend of Spyro? (Email [email protected] with your answer and be sure to include your name, company and city.)

Answer to Our Last eSports Trivia Question: Name the villain pictured last week. Answer: Master Hand. Kudos: Chris Davies-Virgin/London; Ray Hughes-Food Network/NY; Danny Araque/NYC; Glen Ross/DC; Christian Perilla-Fusion/Miami; Tom Moore-Kalt Productions/LA.

Later — Chris
Chris Pursell for Cynopsis | eSports @VegasandVine
11.10.16

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