Catalyst Sports & Media is opening a new facility, announcing the launch of Sandbox Esports, described as a first of its kind esports training facility and program where esports franchises, Counter Logic Gaming and FlyQuest recently trained. The training program and facility is located within Sports Academy’s 96,000 square facility in Thousand Oaks, CA and blends aspects of physical training exercises (weights, cardio, core exercises, etc.), cognitive development (hand-eye coordination, reaction time, etc.) and an in-game esports training component with an initial focus on League of Legends, Counter-Strike, Overwatch and NBA 2K.
Cynopsis spoke with Happy Walters, Co-Founder and CEO of Catalyst Sports & Media, about the new facility as well as his company’s forays into esports, including team advisory, market overview and brand development.
Walters on where esports fits: We’ve been involved in esports since 2012. When I was at Relativity Sports, we invested in Major League Gaming and we were on their advisory board where we were able to help them market themselves and get out there. So we learned about the esports space back then, and when we left Relativity to start Catalyst, we knew that esports was a high-growth area that we knew had a lot of upside and we wanted to focus on both on the team side, league side and sponsorship side.
On Sandbox Esports: Sports Academy is a 100,000 square foot training facility that focuses on amateurs and pros, soccer, baseball, basketball, etc. The owner of it and I are friends and we started talking about doing some kind of esports training facility last August. He wasn’t familiar about esports but quickly learned about the industry so he put aside a few thousand square feet where it could be developed and that’s where the computers, screens and playback are and will be incorporated with sports science, physical fitness and sports psychology.
On other esports endeavors: We are now advising a lot of brands and owners about how to get in the space the right way, what are good investments, for brands how to do it endemically and be part of the community, etc. We are also helping on buy/sell for some of the teams that are looking for investors as League of Legends is going to franchise shortly, as well Overwatch. Eventually we may or may not get into personalities and players as well. Lastly, we are developing properties, with Sandbox being one, but there are a several others in and around the world of esports that we are going to announce shortly.
