(Photo: ReCode)

My Take: How quickly times change. That quote was from ESPN President John Skipper less than two years ago and just after Amazon bought Twitch for a cool Billion.

This Sunday, ESPN2 and ESPNU will air a combined 18 Hours of eSports programming starting at 10AM ET and leading up to the EVO Street Fighter V Championship at 10PM ET (Yes, the majority of that programming is taped and some events are from 2015 but don’t discount the larger picture).

Before diving into ESPN deeper, as of today, there will be 16 eSports TV Events in 2016:

(Source: The Next Level)

For ESPN, here are my two big takeaways:

Programming

I spent about two minutes looking into this so there maybe a detail missing but it looks like a very smart programming move from ESPN. Here are the current Sports options for Sunday:

NBC: British Open and Beach Volleyball

British Open and Beach Volleyball Fox: MLS

MLS CNBC: Indycar

Indycar ESPN: College Baseball Home Run Derby, MLS

College Baseball Home Run Derby, MLS ESPN2: Summer League Basketball

Summer League Basketball FS1: NASCAR, Surfing, UFC

Same on the eSports end. Last weekend had the ESL One Major but this weekend seems fairly empty (not the full list):

(Photo: Splyce)

I’m very interested in Sunday’s 18–49 ratings for the EVO Championship. Outside of my already professed love for Street Fighter, my early theory is that the Fighting genre should perform well for new audiences simply because it’s very easy to understand. Look to The CW Mortal Kombat ratings as one potential example — but please don’t put a Mortal Kombat League on TV. Please don’t.

What’s even more surprising is the amount of programming that ESPN has already put on. In an interview with ESPN VP of Programming John Lasker, a stat was revealed that ESPN has aired 300 Hours of eSports programming since 2014 — I’d like to see that number broken out between TV and Digital but more than likely heavy on the latter.

Agility

This is potentially more interesting. When the EA NFL Madden Championship was announced, it was literally a day or two before the airing. This Sunday’s EVO Championship announcement was about a week prior.

I’ve worked directly with ESPN during my time at Major League Gaming on X-Games. Due to the size and scope of X-Games, this required a lot of planning well in advance. My guess is that ESPN is moving a lot more nimbly and quickly with regards to eSports programming than they did before.

Of course we can’t end without bringing up jovial TV Sports personality Colin Cowherd talking about eSports and the people who watch them as “booger eaters”:

(Source: YouTube)

It’s so easy and lazy to just criticize. Ill let his TV ratings Speak For Themselves— pun intended:

(Source: The Next Level)

As quickly as ESPN turned around, watch now Tech Visionary Colin Cowherd yesterday explain Augmented Reality and his are-you-really-serious quote “I’ve been on Pokemon Go relentlessly”:

(Source: Twitter)

Welcome to your new mass medium Colin.

[Hint: For next weeks’ THE NEXT LEVEL, there are two MULTI-BILLION $ Media companies that I believe will make a push into eSports.]

CHINESE VR TREADMILL MAKER PARTNERS WITH GAME AND ESPORTS COMPANY HERO ENTERTAINMENT

(Photo: Hero Entertainment)

My Take: Oh China, you never stop to amaze me. Chinese company Virtuix, which makes a multidirectional treadmill for use with it’s VR headset, is partnering with Hero Entertainment, to implement VR into their popular title Crisis Shooter.

I’ve said before that VR is the future — it’s just not now. Case in point: At an eSports Conference in NYC several weeks back, I asked the audience who had a VR device that wasn’t given to them for free. Two people raised their hands out of several hundred. So in the most populous city in the US, at a Gaming and eSports Conference, VR had <1% penetration rate. I absolutely believe in VR — although AR/MR is more fascinating — I just question how it’s used by certain Brands and companies in the near term.

The Virtuix deal is interesting to me for three reasons.

/01 To get a sense of the eSports potential, watch this video of Virtuix at CES:

It addresses one of the biggest critical pieces of Gaming and eSports in general: Physical movement is actually required as a part of gameplay. Whether it takes off will remain to be seen but it’s a interesting new twist and also doesn’t require a large physical space as some VR devices currently do.

02/ Instead of going after the home market, Virtuix is going after the Arcade market (Its 4AM and this just hit me — VR + Drones + Whatever Comes Next as the New Dave and Busters) . Just like everything with China, they go big. Virtuix has already secured an order or 5,000–10,000 of their Omni devices for arcades, malls, and amusement areas.

03/ Hero Entertainment operates China’s largest Mobile eSports league, Hero Pro League. Using that expertise, you can easily see them using the physical locations as a launching pad for a VR eSports league.

This is exactly what I talked about previously when analyzing the Chinese eSports market in THE NEXT LEVEL 010; when you have 160 cities with a population of 1M+, establishing physical locations becomes a lot easier than the US.