With the appointment of Ari Segal to President and COO of the Immortals e-sports organization, it created a great opportunity to talk with someone who comes directly from the world of traditional sports. We sat down with him and asked about what he will be bringing to the organization, the state of e-sports as a whole, and how e-sports will grow its audience in the upcoming years.

This interview was edited for clarity and length.

GameCrate: You’ve had a great career so far in sports: the Ducks, the Gulls, and most recently the Coyotes. What made you want to switch over to e-sports? Was it the growth potential?

Ari Segal: I think it’s a lot of things. One thing that I’ve said a lot is that any time you have a chance to work with great people, people with whom you share vision and values, it’s something worth considering.

Immortals, at the executive management level and at the team level, it’s just an A+ group of individuals with a common sense of vision and values. When you have that kind of alignment up and down an organization you become really well positioned to do great things. That was one really attractive element of Immortals.

Another thing is, this market’s current stage of evolution presents all sorts of challenges and opportunities. Certainly, the NBA, NHL, MLB, etc. etc. are growing every year in terms of revenue. A lot are experimenting with new games, structures, and tweaks to their drafts. They’re looking to get better and to improve.

In e-sports we’re going through massively different scale of evolution and change in real time. Overwatch League is a chance to be part of the actual formation of a league and have a voice in the league in how it gets off the ground and takes shape and evolves. Because of how long the other leagues have been around it’s just not an opportunity available.

Additionally, the opportunity to be so close to the fans—to be directly connected to the fans, without the middlemen is unique to e-sports. For example, if I’m the New York Giants or the LA Chargers and my content is primarily consumed Sundays at 1 o’clock at local time, or via Sunday Ticket—the entity that stands between the team and the fans is either the broadcaster or DirectTV. In e-sports we have a chance to cut through all of that and be directly connected to our fans. Not just as a community, but to actually deliver the content directly to them.

Final thing I’d say is that it’s not just the growth and reach, but the opportunity to really build something in that emerging space. While the industry is growing can you build something that grows even faster? The industry is gaining all of the attention and can you build something that stands out for all the right reasons? Can you leverage all the positive tailwind to do something different and special?

GC: You talked a little about streaming there, and e-sports is all about streaming. Is that something that needs to change for e-sports to grow to the same size as traditional sports?

AS: I get this question a lot. There’s this tendency to want things to fit neatly into a narrative that’s either A or B. Does e-sports need to change the streaming culture in order to be as big as traditional sports? One, the League of Legends World Championship is going to be viewed globally by more people than any other annual sporting event other than the Super Bowl. So I think that from a content consumption standpoint, I think the traditional sports really envy the viewership and distribution that e-sports has on some levels. But I don’t think it needs to be all one thing or all the other.

I predict that the streaming economy will continue to grow. I think it will continue to thrive, and I think it will be monetized and altered in different ways—not just on minutes viewed, but also on engagement, and micro-community, and facilitating e-commerce on other platforms. Like merchandise purchases on Twitch that are actually realized via Amazon. But at the same time, live events, whether it’s the Overwatch League home games or international tournaments, I think those offer additional opportunity not only to deepen relationships with your current fans, but also invite new people in the community.

In the future, for an Overwatch League home game, imagine a Friday night in the middle of February for potentially thousands of people in Los Angeles, we’re going to be able to offer not just an Overwatch game, but an experience that you might choose instead of going to a movie, or a comedy club, or a bowling alley. This is out of home entertainment. By offering these people great experiences—people that are just trying it out—if you approach it as an invitation you have a chance to really broaden your reach and involve those people who might not be comfortable coming into your community if you’re simply being passive viewers of a steam.

In summation, the streamer economy will continue to grow, and will actually grow in many positive ways. And at the same time, live events will offer a second and complimentary growth opportunity.

GC: Since you mentioned live events. 5, 10, 20 years down the line are we going to see e-sports fill stadiums 3-4 nights a week?

AS: I think the interesting thing about e-sports is that one thing that I’ve really observed since I’ve started studying the space is that e-sports is a generalized term. In reality, each game—each title, has all sorts of its own particulars and nuances.

I think that for DOTA 2 we will continue to see The International promoted and celebrated as the main event, to use a boxing analogy. What you’ll see is growth of regional tournaments and qualifying structures that feed into the international.

People love the idea of a grand showcase. Think about golf. We have the U.S. Open. But then you have all these local regional qualifiers for folks to get into the U.S. Open. And as big as all those regional qualifiers have gotten they still feed into the U.S. Open. Same thing, to some degree, with the World Cup (Soccer). Every single country, more or less, in the developed world and some in the undeveloped world participates in their region to qualify. And even though there’s insatiable demand for regional qualifiers and championships the World Cup is still held once every 4 years.

I think The International has that kind of cult following/gravitas to continue to grow as a major event. Overwatch League is going to be a bit different. It’s going to be successful, I believe. I think it will be a localized model with more of a traditional sports structure. There will be between 1 and 3 games a week in any given market, some home and some away. I think those events will be well attended.

There will be some teams that do better than others, just like in every other league. That will be attributable to some combination of performance and management. Bad teams competitively can do well commercially because they embrace their fan base and deliver value that goes beyond the results of the competition. Other teams will do okay but won’t be able to sustain success beyond the single year they’ve been successful.

The good thing about e-sports is that if you think about all of these different structures, new games, and global reach, is that there is space in the market for there to be significant event monthly, if not weekly, all over the world. It could be major qualifiers for The International in the same week that two LA Overwatch teams are playing in a rivalry game.

GC: Traditional sports haven’t changed very much in the past 100 years. Do you think that’s why e-sports is more popular among younger people because they are consistently changing?

AS: I want to push back a little on that notion that traditional sports haven’t changed much in the past 100 years. 60 years ago there was no Super Bowl. There was the NFL, which had a championship game, and then there was the AFL which was sort of an upstart league. It wasn’t until around 1960 when they combined and started playing the Super Bowl. A few years after that they actually merged. Now the Super Bowl is the single most televised global sports event. That’s a pretty significant change.

Baseball was segregated. There was no free agency among players in sports until Curt Flood (Editors note: Ari is referring to the 1972 Supreme Court case, Flood v. Kuhn) in the 1970’s. In hockey, up until the late 70’s early 80’s there really no Europeans who played in the NHL. It was largely a North American League, and I could bore you to death with the small changes that were substantive to the NHL.

To the outsider, there’s been consistency in the basic goals of the games: NFL is about touchdowns, baseball is always about runs, basketball is always about baskets—things of that nature.

The reason that e-sports, by and large, are connecting with younger people is a function of technology and content, more than anything. Plus, just a general trend towards on-demand entertainment.

For example, during an NFL game—and I love the NFL, I grew up watching the NFL—which is 3 and a half hours long, the ball is in play for something like 15 minutes. For today’s 25 or younger audience they’re just not used to 3 hours and 15 minutes of dead time to support 15 minutes of content. They’re used to spending hours and hours watching 2-minute user-generated content on YouTube and getting the same or more enjoyment out of that as I got as a kid watching a 3-hour baseball game.

E-sports, generally, has a flow that is absent from traditional sports. Baseball is pitch, stop, pitch, stop. Football: play, stop, play, stop. Hockey, basketball and soccer are a bit different, but I think that that flow of e-sports is much more appealing to today’s young consumer.

Because technology is so ubiquitous with our life—both economically and personally—that constant communication because of an electronic device that 20 years ago wouldn’t have been possible. Our phones connect us to our friends, family, and entertainment in a way that never really happened before. And e-sports is highly conducive to transmission on a mobile device, tablet, or computer. Content is available any time of day, live or on-demand. There’s active social engagement that supports that content. And both the hardware and the infrastructure has only really come about in the past 10 years to allow for that completely immersive mobile experience that is every bit as fulfilling to someone who grew up on this technology as to a big screen television experience is for someone who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s or radio in the 20’s and 30’s.

Is it any wonder that baseball, which really lends itself to the radio, was the national pastime when the primary distribution mechanism was radio? Football is a game built for TV. Is it a coincidence that Football rose to prominence when TV was the dominant mode of consumption?

Now we’re talking about a mobile based consumption world. It’s not surprising at all if you look back at history that e-sports would really start to gain ground, given that context.

GC: I want to shift a bit now. From your years spent in the NHL, what’s your biggest takeaway that you’re going to bring to the Immortals and e-sports?

AS: If I was going to pick one, it would be that, and this isn’t something that is unique to sports, there’s a lot to be said for really, and truly, trying to understand your customer or fan, and then doing what you can to meet them on your terms.

That doesn’t mean you need to compromise your values. That you just shift strategy just because someone gets upset on social media. It means that if your fans or customers are clamoring for something authentic—or based on what you’re seeing there’s a way to deepen your connection—and it’s something you can do without forcing massive behavior change, and if it makes it easier for the people who want to consume your content or to attend your events then you’re well-served in really trying to do that.

I think sometimes it’s easier to think what’s good for us, as the organization, but the result, not surprisingly, is an unenthusiastic response from fans. You have to think about what’s going to make it better and easier for the fans to really be there and support you. It’s a really important thing to think about.

GC: Immortals are at the forefront of e-sports these days. What are you going to do to keep them there?

AS: I think Immortals is connecting, not only because there’s been competitive success—that’s certainly a factor—but how Immortals is achieving competitive success. Immortals is committed to process. Bringing on players who are not just going to perform well, but be part of the culture we are trying to create, and then obviously when folks are deviating from that we’re making changes.

I think fans respond to that. I think that if you have an organization where the fans are being told this is what we are and this is what we stand for. The players are being recruited because they say and act like they stand for things—and they do in fact—and there’s competitive success—you’re really onto something.

I think it’s easy to say we’re about accessibility, accountability, authenticity, and transparency. It’s another thing to actually walk that walk. When times have been tough, whether it’s because of subpar competitive performance or disciplinary action we’ve had to take—Noah has consistently lived by that credo, no matter how difficult that is. And people see that. Whether it’s partners, fans, players, coaches, or others, they respond to that. It adds a measure of credibility, but it also demonstrates the kind of backbone people like to really be associated with.

It’s not just about signing the next partner. Building a bad deal is not building an asset. It’s just cash in the door and then cash out the door. We’re focused on building specific partnerships that are aligned with our vision, who appreciate our process by which we’re going about training and competing, who agree and embody the same values that we have with their customers, and who think that the synchronicity between their message and ours is real because we stand for the same things.

Then really working together for not just months, but years to understand each other better and to try things and refine things together. To grow our business together and deliver great value to our fans. To help leverage a partner relationship to attract new fans, and for them to drive their own sales and deepen their relationships with their own customers through Immortals. It just takes hard work and consistency, which is exactly the way we approach both good and less fortunate outcomes, thus far.

Certainly, I think there are things I can do—strategies I can bring to bear and people I can hire—but I think it’s really much more about the high level aspirations of building relationships with fans and sponsors that are really authentic rather than just a sales strategy.

We’re too close to our fans to B.S. them. They’re gonna know immediately if we’re full of it. And if on the other hand we’re authentic and consistent, they’ll know that too.

GC: A little more about players. Throughout most of the scene we have Korean players dominating. Do you think this will be a problem for American audiences?

AS: I really don’t. Every sport deals with this. The NBA is always dealing with the notion that the league is disproportionally African-American. Baseball is dealing with the issue that it’s disproportionally Latin-American, and Hockey is disproportionally Canadian and European as opposed to American. All of those leagues seem to be doing just fine.

I think those are lazy narratives that generally come from not a great place. If you look at soccer—it’s probably the most global sport—there is certainly racism, ethno-centrism, and some really difficult issues to deal with depending on the team/market/player, and by no means is soccer perfect, but it’s a multicultural game. Lionel Messi is really popular in Barcelona, David Beckham is really popular in North America, and those are just two of many examples.

E-sports has an opportunity to be a groundbreaking sport in how multicultural it is, and how accepted its athletes are in every country regardless of country of origin. I think it’s an exciting thing for e-sports.

By the way, there’s a difference in baseball of the lazy narrative that there’s a lot of Latin players and that Americans can’t pronounce their names and they’re not going to watch because there’s not enough North Americans playing. That’s absurd and ridiculous.

It’s a different thing to say: Why are there fewer African-Americans playing baseball? Are the resources to play being distributed fairly and adequately in African-American communities? Do we need to take a step back and think about why participation rates are changing? Participation rates obviously fuels who makes it to the pro scene at the end of that funnel. That’s a different conversation. That’s a substantive conversation. If the conversation is about what do we need to do about the participation rates in America or North America, so that there are more players that have the skill and capability to play professionally, I think that’s a really interesting question. I certainly think it can only help if more people are participating, but I don’t think for one second that it’s a problem that Koreans are the best players in the world right now.

GC: E-sports players are generally younger on average. What are some of the problems we’re going to run into when dealing with these players compared to the players of traditional sports?

AS: Remember, just like how all e-sports are different all traditional sports are different. In basketball, up until around 2004, players were drafted straight out of high school into the NBA. Yeah, there was LeBron James who would come around, but there were other guys that would come around and weren’t as mature or as professional in the NBA at 18 years old. So the NBA had to change its rule.

Football you have to be 3 years removed from your high school graduation to play. Hockey is a bit of a hybrid. You can be drafted at 18, but rarely will you ever play at 18. Each traditional sport has its own mechanism of taking its amateur players to professional. Those standards are constantly evolving.

I think in e-sports… it’s less of a mature path from highly skilled amateur to professional. So I think that process of how talent is identified and cultivated, and then developed from high amateur to professional, I think that process is likely to undergo some change and refinement. I think that it’s a really exciting opportunity for teams to help players embark on that journey and achieve their professional dreams.

Remember, any time you’re dealing with young people, and young professionals—and this applies to professionals in college, athletes, or anytime you’re talking about someone’s first job—there’s always a learning curve. In our office—have we had to have conversations with folks about what time they get in? Or what they wear on their feet? Or how they engage to a particular negative interaction on social media? Of course. That’s part of evolving, growing, and maturing. I think it would be naïve to think that won’t be the case in e-sports. But by the way, that would be the case if your players were 18, 21, or even if they were 25. There will always be a learning curve for folks that are embarking on a new profession.

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