KSV eSports bears its Silicon Valley heritage right in the name. The esports startup, which fields the undefeated (at the time of writing) Overwatch League team Seoul Dynasty, is now battling for business bragging rights among U.S. sports heavyweights like Robert Kraft and the Kroenkes.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“We’re not trying to learn how to incorporate data into our business, it’ll be a very natural part of how we run.”[/perfectpullquote]

CEO and co-founder Kevin Chou, believes his startup background makes him unique among most of his new peers—and not because of the trendy office fixtures the media often focuses on. “Perks do not equal culture, in my mind,” he says.

“One of the nice things about the Silicon Valley mindset is this whole ecosystem of people trying to look at things from a different perspective. I think that’s probably my biggest asset coming into the ownership group.”

That, and a penchant for technology. A co-founder and former CEO of mobile app and gaming company Kabam, Chou says his was one of the first companies to build its own in-house Hadoop-cluster—an early big data storage network. “We’re not trying to learn how to incorporate data into our business, it’ll be a very natural part of how we run.”

Kabam was founded in 2006, not long before the economic recession. After a decade of ups and downs, Chou sold off the company to Netmarble last year for a reported $700-$800 million. Seeking a year’s reprieve, the tech entrepreneur says that it was during a kite-surfing trip to Hawaii he realized he was ready to venture out again into the high seas.

“This time off had been great, I felt recharged,” says Chou. “I sent a message to Nate Nanzer, asking what was going on with the Overwatch League. I’d read about it a little bit, and he said ‘why don’t you come in, we should talk. We’re in the middle of a process right now, and it would be great to see if you’re interested in buying a franchise’”.

Related: Guide to the Overwatch League — Team Brands, Owners and Investors

Chou first became familiar with Nate Nanzer’s work when the now-Overwatch League commissioner worked at Magid, a research firm. Kabam itself had looked into esports as a potential adjacent, with Chou at one point in talks with the owners of Team Curse and Team Vulcun. “I never really jumped into those specific opportunities,” he says. “I was running a game publishing company, and it would have created a conflict.”

KSV eSports wasn’t formed with any outside investment—instead much of the equity belongs to Chou’s former Kabam co-owners, including former Kabam China General Manager Michael Li, and former COO Kent Wakeford. “We’ve each done well in our prior lives,” says Chou. “We don’t have as much money as a Bob Kraft or Stan Kroenke, but we felt like let’s go start this ourselves, and we’ll put together our own money.”

Pictured: Kevin Chou with the players of Lunatic-Hai, prior to their signing to Seoul Dynasty.



The company really came to the forefront of esports during the League of Legends free agency period, where KSV eSports acquired Samsung Galaxy’s roster, en masse. After the announcement broke, Chou told The Esports Observer his company wanted to break the meta in terms of how esports organizations are run in the country.

[perfectpullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“My mandate and what I’m excited about is growing the Seoul market for Overwatch

League…”[/perfectpullquote]

“The market in Korea, in esports, is very much bisected,” says Chou. “You have the big conglomerate companies that have run esports for a very long time, and done exceptionally well. They’ve got good budgets obviously for esports, and they pay their players very well, but they’re not run as businesses, but as the marketing, PR side of the business, where it’s just an expense item for them.”

The historical underpinning for this can be traced to right after the Korean war. Samsung, along with other family-owned domestic conglomerates such as Hyundai and LG, were inundated with financial support and protection from then president Park Chung-hee. “They really wanted to catch up to Japan in terms of economic growth,” says Chou.

These conglomerates (known in Korea as chaebols) now run their sports subsidiaries—esports included—less as businesses, and more as investments in society.

“On the other side you’ve got the entrepreneurs, who are generally former players,” says Chou. “They pulled together their own money, took a bunch of risks, and they’re fighting for scraps because the biggest companies, that would naturally be partners and sponsors, have their own esports teams.” As an incoming force for the Korean esports scene, Chou believes KSV eSports can usher in a new wave of global partners, media and technology companies.

“I think if Korea doesn’t open itself to the global esports market, and find a way to lead on a global basis, it will fall behind.”

Although the Korean esports scene is insular, it’s interesting to see its influence over the supposedly-global Overwatch League. The Cloud9 owned London Spitfire boasts an all-Korean team, as does the New York Excelsior. Asked about this particular observation, Chou notes he himself isn’t a native Korean, and that every team owner will take their own approach when it comes to developing a local market.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]”The Silicon Valley mindset is this whole ecosystem of people trying to look at things from a different perspective.”[/perfectpullquote]

“My job isn’t to tell other team owners how they should run their business,” he says. “My mandate and what I’m excited about is growing the Seoul market for Overwatch League, and I can best achieve that with an all-Korean management team and player roster.”

A key part of growing that market, as mandated by Blizzard Entertainment, is for every OWL team to develop its own home venue by season three. Chou says that while he doesn’t have a perfect vision for what Seoul Dynasty’s home could look like, he’s been impressed by Blizzard’s LA Live Arena, where the map literally wraps around the audience, and a large LED halo shows the audience the process of the payload, control points, etc.

“I love that interactivity,” he says. “The physicality of that experience immerses you into the competition in a way you couldn’t get if you were just watching at home.”