Alright, here is the FULL interview, which has to be split up into multiple parts, and will include many of the same answers as before:



Gamespot: Sundance you just got back from Korea after announcing the new partnership with KeSPA, what are your initial thoughts?



MLG CEO Sundance DiGiovanni: It was good, we've been accomplishing a lot on these trips. Obviously the KeSPA part of it was a pretty big part, we're working on some more things which we're pretty excited about, but the KeSPA partnership was the big one. They came to us and said they wanted to talk about a relationship, and content distribution in and out of South Korea, that was obviously a big one because we think they represent the best talent in the world for one of the games we run, and the goal is to have the best players compete. The details of it, there's only a little bit released so far, it's pretty deep and a long-term view relationship. I'm excited to get it started, excited for them to come to Anaheim, excited to push more of it out to the public in the form of real, tangible results.



What made you go to KeSPA to make this all happen?



SD: There's been a lot of growth within the [competitive gaming] scene, not just MLG but all the organizations I think are seeing growth. Maybe some at a greater rate than others, but there's only in terms of opportunistic thinking and being able to expand when you're talking about a global presence. There's two or three things that are left right so this is one, China is one, but this one is really relevant because a lot of the history around one of our most popular games (StarCraft 2) is locked up in South Korea with KeSPA. There's legendary players, there's a history there, but there's a certain way of doing things, that we think has been lacking to a degree. People like yourself saying 'yeah it's just a matter of time before they come over, things are going to change' and there's truth to that. So that barrier is now taken care of.



We're excited, Blizzard has been really supportive of this and they were eager to see it happen. It's crazy to think that the last time we were over there we were meeting with GSL and now it's shifted to KeSPA, but we're very happy and I think one of the things we're also going to try do is to try and focus on winning some of the people who were the foreign players in the western community, and the fans of all this, to understand a little more of the history of KeSPA, because I think that it's misunderstood to a degree. I mean they are a very serious organization in the way they operate, and that's gotten misinterpreted at times. There's other times when they've done things that have obviously not been as well received by the community as they may have liked, but that's shifted now, because it's global now. They own a very important part of this but we bring a very important part as well. It's a dynamic partnership in that regard. We're going to work on softening their image to the western fans.



Can you explain the difference between the partnership between KeSPA, OGN, and IEG?



SD: KeSPA is the governing body around the activity within South Korea. OGN is a broadcaster so when you think of OGN, think of a Viacom who has a bunch of different channels, or a Time Warner who has a bunch of different outlets. OGN is a company who has a MTV-like KPop channel, they have soap operas, news, and they have gaming. They're a broadcaster that also operates and runs tournaments. They have the broadcast deal with KeSPA to be the official broadcaster right now - as of today - then those rights, the KeSPA rights are owned by another group, called IEG, who's also our partner in this. So IEG is essentially like - think of it like when FOX bids for Major League Baseball, the NFL, they bid on these things and have the rights to broadcast matches. It's a bigger scale in Korea as the value in those distribution rights is greater than it is in the US because you're dealing with broadcast television and the advertising dollars that are associated with that. Yeah it has taken a bit of a hit as of late because they haven't had the latest game, but Brood War is still incredibly popular in South Korea.



What Blizzard is working towards, and what we're working towards, is trying to convert those masses slowly. First what you're going to see is this blended OGN BW/SC2 event which is going to be interesting, then you're going to see some team stuff, then you're going to see some exhibition stuff around Heart of The Swarm with us, and then you'l see a gradual transition to full-time adoption. I think there may still be some Brood War activity in the future to be honest with you. As this happens some of those pieces are going to end up being broadcasted by OGN, some are going to be broadcast by potentially another group, and we're going to be helping with the distribution and monetization of that content on a global scale.



IEG is a broadcaster too, so they have two sports channels within Korea, they do a lot of Basketball. The owner was a former team owner and board member within KeSPA, and a strong ally of ours. He got Artosis started in the business, brought IdrA over to train and play in a Korean house - this guy's been around and he's got a very strong position within South Korea on a media, entertainment, gaming point of view.



OGN is not exclusive terms though, correct?



SD: The OGN component - something else is going on there and we're in negotiations with them, and we're talking to them, as are other people. We get a lot of good intel on people making trips to Korea and try and set stuff up but we're really uniquely positioned in this regard because the way we handled ourselves and the way we run our business, and the long-term view that we take.



We talked about the differences between KeSPA and OGN. Is OGN allowed to talk to a DreamHack, IEM, and make a deal with those leagues while you have exclusivity with KeSPA?



SD: They are allowed to talk about deals the question that comes back to is are they allowed to do a deal around StarCraft. There's a rights issue there with StarCraft. If you want to do something with OGN around StarCraft, there's procedures to be followed. For a game like League of Legends, it's a whole other story.



So one of the biggest questions here regarding the new partnership is the announced exclusivity between yourselves and KeSPA and what this means going forward. What actions are we to see from this?



SD: What this means is that outside of Korea, we're the official partner for KeSPA. We're the tournament KeSPA players are allowed to play at the moment, by letter of the agreement. Our plan is to work with some of the partners that we have to bring those players there as well. I'm going to try my best to arrange something with DreamHack as we have a strong relationship with them. We're going to talk to the [Electronic Sports League's] IEM about working with them. Those are the two groups that I've been in contact with and have been thinking about. It could go deeper, but the point of this is that KeSPA takes this very seriously and they want to align with like-minded people.



They've made their choice and they've given us a bit of a directive in terms of how they want to handle it inside of Korea and we're gonna let them do that. We're happy to partner with them, we're happy to have broadcast outlet capabilities within South Korea for MLG content as well. We're going to go and run with it out here, with (GameSpot owner) CBS Interactive being a partner on the distribution side, we think we can do some pretty big things. The online commentary and everything else popped up of course around exclusivity, but without exclusivity there's no leverage. The point of leverage is that we need to be able to monetize this. If we get over-saturation with this next level, that's not going to be good for anybody. What we're doing is we're creating a partnership not for what exists today, but for what is going to exist next year, the year after that, and the year after that.



What I can say very confidently is that KeSPA shares this view, OGN shares this view, IEG shares this view, and those are the people we're working with over there. We did some work with GSL for some time, and that didn't end the way I would have liked it to, but that's in the past. They chose the direction they wanted to go in so we've moved on. Not saying we'll never work with them again but it's yet to be seen how those players in the SC2 association (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=324843) are going to migrate over now. KeSPA is the big organization there, the ones with the sponsor dollars, the revenue, and the broadcast deal. In the current scene over there, I think some teams are struggling which will be interesting to see how they react. We want to be a bridge for the existing teams and players to be able to get out from underneath that KeSPA ban that was put in place when those players went to play in GSL for StarCraft 2. A way for them to get access to both our tournaments , and those in South Korea, it'll just take some time.



There is some concern since this was announced that StarCraft 2 esports or competitive gaming as a whole will be hurt by limiting the Brood War stars access outside of South Korea. Do you think this is an issue at all?



SD: No one's saying that they have to go to us, but KeSPA runs their organization the way they run it. If they're not going to send their players to a certain league, that's their perogative. What I can do is take a partner and sit in front of KeSPA and I can say "Have you met my friends from DreamHack? They run a fantastic event in the Winter, the Summer, in the Spring, look at these great locations, TV, look at the arena, I think we should do something with them". I can do that, but I can't force them to because they have a different relationship with the teams and players than we're used to in the west. Now over time will that soften? Most likely to a degree, but right now I wouldn't count on it. Right now we have to work with what's available to us. I can't accelerate the process, it doesn't happen over night. If the community has a better option and solution to this that's going to keep KeSPA happy, the players earning the level of income they need to earn, and the scene from over-saturating itself, I'm happy to hear it but I don't think you're going to find something that's better than this. The rest of the year is about getting our feet wet, and next year is about going off on a global scale.



Are DreamHack and IEM events you expect to approach, and is it going to be next year or possibly come this year?



SD: Plan on heading to DreamHack Winter with a bunch of our new Korean friends from KeSPA. I don't see why not, I reached out to [DreamHack CEO] Robert Ohlén already, will be trying to talk to him sometime this week. IEM there's deeper stuff we're talking about with them, just trying to line things up time wise. In terms of a timeline, I don't see why we would need to wait till next year to at least kick things off. Are the [Brood War pros] going to compete in tournaments this year? I doubt it - but can they make appearances and play show matches? I don't see why not. I have to check with Blizzard, I have to check with KeSPA, and make sure everything works with everyone. I'm also not going to walk a bunch of players in and have someone incur a bunch of costs and unreasonable demands so I have to make sure we do something that makes sense, Being a tournament operator I know that every time we add something new to the event there's logistics and there's cost. There's only a certain amount of hours in a day, I don't want this to get lopsided. The other thing that really important is that, these players, I want them to go out and have this experience that the GSL players had when they came to the states last year to our events. The hype crowds, the high energy. They've got their Korean version of that but the international version is a bit different.



I'm only one organization, I'm not representing all the leagues, or the teams. I'm trying to set something up that works for my company first because that's where I work, for the players and community that we serve, because if I don't take care of my company I can't serve either of those. Then comes the teams that are trying to put money in the players pockets and make sure that they're able to play the games the way they want to. Then I've got my publishing partners who are also at the top of the list. We've created this partnership with KeSPA for flow in both directions and where we both have the opportunity to grow. if everyone bears with me, they'll see what that turns into in terms of the DreamHacks and the IEM's of the world as well.



You mentioned over-saturation as something to look out for. Do you believe there's too much esports or StarCraft content right now?



SD: There's some things we can learn from KeSPA and there's some things we learned from GSL. There's a structure and system for this that can work really well. The problem right now is that we've got all these different events, no tie-in with each other, no continuation, different rosters of players for each, there's challenges we have to get through. It's no secret for a long time we've been trying to figure out the fixed location thing and we're doing it here in New York City for now. The plan is to have a global organization that runs a unified league with meaningful matches happening in multiple locations. So if I could have matches that are happening in South Korea, matches that are happening North America, Europe, South America, that at the end of the day, week, month, they relate somehow, that's going to be great for everyone. Some people now go 'oh this event's player pool isn't as great as the last one, I'm just going to tune in on Sunday' - you kind of have to borrow from traditional sports a little more I think to get to the right place, in terms of a scale and growth perspective.



Earlier you talked about the players not playing in the official tournaments, along with the showmatches in Anaheim, is this based upon their own decisions due to lack of practice time, or is there something more?



SD: These guys are in spring training right now while everyone else is in the regular season. They're not going to be caught up in a lot of ways and although some of them have been playing the game for a while, I think what we want to do is make sure they're eased into it. We had talked about them playing in the open in Anaheim, and what we decided was that, lets not rush it, we have two more events this year, lets see how things go. Let them go through the first season in Korea and see what happens with that and how comfortable they are. Try and set them up with some of the folks who are out there as current GSL Code A/Code S-level players, and see how they feel. The players are ready to go. The teams are making sure not to rush with their guys out, they want to do this properly, take their time, so it's going to be a bit more ceremonious than what the community wants in terms of the timing and such but we're half-way through the year. I think we'll start to see stuff shake free by the next event, but I can't promise anything because the players and teams need to think they're ready.



If the Brood War players want to sign up to play in Anaheim, could they?



SD: Absolutely. We'll have some spots open for them if they'd like to. I guess we haven't announced who's coming yet..



Will any of these names be showing up in Anaheim?



SD: Yeah.



Of the ones I mentioned?



SD: Yeah. The plan is have KeSPA fully represented in Anaheim, with each team represented. That's as much as I can give you.



Now going the other way in this partnership, with the potential of seeing foreign teams and players that compete in MLG head over to the Korean KeSPA events. What will that entail, will we be seeing foreign players head to KeSPA by the next season?



SD: I can't put a timeline on it, but yes eventually you will. No details at the moment, but you will see foreigners playing in KeSPA's flavor of StarCraft in Korea.



One of the other things we haven't talked about is now I have to talk to some of the western teams. I have to say 'hey you know I have an opportunity here, how do you want to come together on it'. This week I hope to have the chance to get to talk to some of the guys from each of the teams and try to come up with something stable, that works, we'll plug you into it. If we can't, I'll make the introduction but you're on your own. I can broker a lot of this stuff but only if there's stability. If you rewind and look at the history of this in Brood War, when they started bringing the foreign players over, a lot of the guys we're familiar with today like IdrA and Tyler, were over there training with KeSPA players, and they got their name out and established themselves through that process.



I think there's a good opportunity to do that again. One of the big challenges is the KeSPA house structure is different than the current house structure for a lot of the other Korean teams. Not saying the StarCraft 2 teams don't take it as seriously, but there's limited financial resources for some of the SC2 teams. My hope is for training environments in North America, and South Korea, with players and coaches going both ways, and where this isn't an 'exchange program', but there's actually league play where you've got everyone playing in all international areas.



KeSPA released their own version of the press release, which did not specify either the exclusivity, or the multi-year dealings of the partnership. Is this only an editing discrepancy, and why was it written this way?



SD: In terms of the exclusivity part of it, I don't say this to come off as disrespectful but in their eyes they are the only ones over there. It's Korea and it's KeSPA, that's it. I'm not gonna lie and tell you I was running in there hoping I was going to do a non-exclusive deal because what sense does that make, you saw what that got me last time. It got me Naniwa not getting what he had earned, and I'm not going to do that again. From an operator standpoint, you could grab anyone from the other organizations and they all would have said they'd sign an exclusive deal too.



In terms of multi-year, well, it's June, we just started this thing, of course it's multi-year. From the North American compared to the Korean stand point of it, we have a memorandum of understanding. The business terms, not all of them are in the press release, snippets are. Some are customized for what the Eastern audience wants to see and wants to read, and others are for ours. There's certain things in there for us that are going to help go and do things like sell against the content, get people excited about distributing, get people excited about having these players come over.



The partnership is the same on both sides, the way the difference in press releases is the semantics, what was chosen to be pushed where. Press releases in the states - barely anybody reads them, they're for business purposes. It's not written for the community, it's for us to be able to propel the business.



Originally the first partnership in Korea was with GomTV one which deteriorated by the end of last year and has been briefly mentioned here. What happened with those guys that led you to go the route you have now with KeSPA?



SD: [GomTV's StarCraft 2 Manager] Chae "Mr. Chae" Jung Won is a fantastic guy, I respect him and think he does tremendous work for Gom. Mr. Chae has a lot of bosses, and there's a lot of complexity over there within GSL and Gretech in general and you know…we pushed some buttons and they came after us to a degree I think based upon the way they behaved.



What buttons were you pushing?



SD: You know, we grew really quickly and started making some money, wanted to do more and the players came back saying nice things about us, and it's like…competition? Partnership? It's like, you're not gonna do it the way we want to so they went out and got a new partner (The IGN ProLeague (http://www.gomtv.net/forum/view.gom?topicid=218150&cid=0&kind=8)) which is great, and I hope it continues to work. But I can't worry about that, we've got Anaheim coming up here in a couple weeks and they made this behind-the-scenes announcement that Up & Down matches would be at the same time. Well all of the players chose us. I think that should tell you something.



This doesn't have to happen. We've been playing chess with these guys for over a year, it's not checkers, it's the long game. From our point we've gone as far as we thought we were going to get, and now we're going to start to build for the next part of it. I hope that all the players in the SC2Association in Korea come along, and I think they can and will. As far as GomTV and GSL, I have no idea what's going to happen to them now they're not the only league running. When they were the only league running, there were not able to get to the scale as expected which is why KeSPA has come back, because Blizzard wanted them to. I mean it'll be fine and there's enough going on over there if everything goes properly, it's a question whether KeSPA and GomTV can get along, which isn't my concern.



What caused the partnership to turn into a chess battle?



SD: Everything was going to great and then suddenly they made us an offer that we didn't really want to take, with costs associated with it, and from there it went sideways. They came over and went to the event in Atlantic City and that was kind of the beginning of the end. After that we said alright guys, that's cool, you have fun, we're not interested. I don't have any ill-will towards them - I don't like the way they handled some things - but it's business. I don't take it personal, it's good for us to be in the position where there's multiple parties who push each other to innovate.



The SC2 Association out in Korea is independent but more close with GomTV than they are with KeSPA. Right now the SC2 Association/GomTV players aren't allowed to play in the KeSPA leagues, how do you believe the current Korean SC2 players, all of them champions of MLG, are going to perceive this new partnership?



SD: I think they're probably waiting to hear what's going to happen. Luckily we're going to have a bunch of them here this weekend at the MLG Spring Arena 2 to talk to them. We have people on the ground in South Korea who work for us, are relaying messages from the team houses. My goal is to help with this transition. I don't want any of these guys to get knocked off. I've grown to like a lot of these guys as I've gotten to know them. You know what I'd love to see Nestea and Flash face-off in a meaningful match, I think that'd be ****ing awesome. I think it'd be great, I'm going to try and make it happen sooner rather than later. Now of course there's certain political components, and I don't know if you'll see that in South Korea anytime soon, but I think you could probably see it at our next event after Anaheim at the MLG Summer Championships or the fourth event later in the year.



There's a lot of work to be done, there's cultural differences, language barriers, a long flight, but my goal is to try to get through this quickly, and so that no one gets penalized for just pursuing their passion. That's my view of the world right now, the KeSPA view is theirs, the SC2 Association is theirs. We had people meeting with the SC2 Association tonight in Seoul, and so far initial reports are good, but it's going to take a little while. Initially people are going to be shaky, maybe a little concerned or annoyed, but eventually it's just hey, lets make good games and tournaments for players to play in.



If I had to predict, I think you're going to see the KeSPA teams potentially attempt to expand their rosters a little bit…maybe. They'll take a look at some of these players who are top notch and see if they can attract them. Now, is that going to be fair? Probably not. Is it guaranteed to happen? Definitely not. Will KeSPA go back to 10 teams? I don't know. What would the two teams be? I know what the buy-in is, I know it's pretty expensive, I know it's a big deal. I don't know if the current SC2 teams could afford it. It's a free market economy basically and if the teams with the deepest pockets are going to go and try and sign players, they're probably going to. Is it going to stretch this way and and come towards teams in the States or Europe? They may. I'm hoping to talk to these teams and work something out, to solidify these teams.



KeSPA hasn't exactly had the best reputation in the Western community from their history, from their lawsuit with Blizzard not to long ago, dating back to when they denied GomTV access to their players during the original GomTV Brood War events. Why partner with them, with what they've shown to the world outside Korea?



SD: In their mind they've had no reason to do something for the bigger scene outside Korea. This is a Korean initiative with a Korean broadcast inside Korea. But now things are global, they see how the scene has shifted, and we're going to work with them. The fact of it is, we struck a deal with the other Korean league, didn't work out. Okay, I'm going to go to the other Korean league and wait for them to be ready. I want to be partnered and aligned with the place that's got the richest tradition and the best players. There's tons of companies that have taken stances and done things to protect their territory that aren't the most well-received, but we have a very inflammatory community who has a hard time…digesting all the facts, and having a conversation. Things turn into anger-fests and name-calling pretty quickly.



Now I'm not saying what KeSPA has done in the past is with no ill-will, but what I am saying is that I've met with them, I've broken bread with these people, I like them. If in 3 months I'm looking at this and saying this is such a headache, but I don't how that's gonna happen. Getting the best players in the room is all I've ever wanted to do, whether it's around Halo, StarCraft, League of Legends or any other game, and KeSPA's got some amazing history and some amazing players. We're just talking about the ones they have today. They also have a system of developing new ones, and there's a lot of guys we haven't heard of yet and will be here soon. That's something I'd like to transfer to our scene.



Although online live video is the focus at MLG, you've hinted at TV broadcasts at different times. With this new partnership, will we be seeing MLG on OGN-Korean TV anytime soon?



SD: No comment.



Will we be seeing KeSPA tournaments on MLG?



SD: I can answer that at Anaheim probably. We're working on what we're going to do with it. There's a couple of different options. On MLG could be through our site, through our distribution partner CBS Interactive, take a big check and broker it through YouTube, who knows there's a lot of options. If you follow some of the trails of some of my tweets around YouTube and PPV and the premium channel initiative, there's a lot of options for this content. There's a lot of demand from not only the community, but from the people who control the distribution platforms. We're going to go around and talk to some folks at E3 and then here in NYC, and come back with the best overall plan.



What does Blizzard think about all of these wheelings and dealings with MLG and KeSPA, GomTV and IPL, etc?



SD: Well I think they let folks operate but we work very closely with them, everything we do is discussed with them, vetted with them, the overall scene and growth of the scene, what we're trying to accomplish. We're a tournament operator for a few of their events in the upcoming months. There was a time when I sat in the office with [Blizzard CEO] Mike Morhaime, and he said Korea is the center of the esports universe, now when I sit with him he says 'you guys are it'. The next next piece I think after we've figured out the online broadcast component is tradition, that being TV. Now we've got that figured out in South Korea, can we figure it out here? I think so. I think fall is too soon, but I hope to be able to do it next year. Everyone wants to see it on TV so I'm going to try and make that happen.



So right before Anaheim hits I'll be seeing you at E3 as MLG has a big booth there, with us at GameSpot actually. I'm not privy to information though so I'd like to know what we'll be seeing there. Games? Players?



SD: Only thing I can say is StarCraft will be there with two other games. No details on players yet but if I could, I'd have Flash at E3 with me hanging out, playing StarCraft. If I could! Not saying I can, he has some stuff going on in South Korea around that time.

