Las Vegas once again serves as the centerpiece of esports this weekend, with events set to include MLG Vegas, described as a festival and fan experience taking place at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino starting on Friday. The three-day event plays host to the first North American Regional of the Call of Duty World League featuring Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, as well as an Overwatch invitational and the launch of End Game, described as a special lifestyle event celebrating digital culture. Cynopsis eSports & Gaming asked MLG Co-Founder and Senior Vice President, Media Networks Mike Sepso about the company’s plans for the entertainment capital of the world.
Sepso on returning to Las Vegas: MLG has a long history of great, successful events in Vegas. The hotel and casino operators are extremely interested in esports and we’ve had a lot of interesting discussions with them over the past year at the strategic level about how to bring more event programming to the Vegas market. The city is now clearly the live event capital of the country, if not the world, and we want to make sure we are on that stage.
On introducing End Game: eSports is a focal point for what is happening in the gaming culture. We know from experience that our fans are also really interested in other things. They are tech-savvy. They are early-adopters. They love music, especially dance music and DJ culture. They are also content creators in their own right whether that involves streaming on Twitch, making videos for YouTube or posting on Instagram. We wanted to celebrate that and to establish a mainstream entry point into esports competitions. It is really about establishing a two-directional thing for us having both an established event for hard-core fans as well as an entry point for new fans. You can think of it as a giant, on-going party that celebrates the digital lifestyle with everything from VR experiences to some big headline DJs.
On changes since Activision Blizzard bought the company: I think that we have had some time to invest in some key infrastructure projects that we were never able to get to. We’ve increased the head count by about 50% so it’s a bigger organization now. Obviously, the key to whole thing is that we have a much closer relationships with the studio teams that are developing the IPs. So we are engaged with the studios at the development level and able to provide our expertise, background and experience form the esports world right into the developers who are creating the games themselves.
