(Photo: 2K)

Your Monday June 27 eSports News

2K’S WWE ESPORTS POTENTIAL

My Take: I’m not a Wrestling fan. I think the last “fight” I watched was Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant in 1988 (Wow, I really date myself often). However, I saw something interesting this weekend. While watching the CEO Orlando Event I saw these two gentleman:

(Photo: ESPN)

I had no idea who they were but between the banter and the crowd reaction, it was fun to watch. The unscheduled appearance were from Wrestlers Xavier Woods and Kenny Omega and they were here to fight — in Street Fighter V.

Here’s where it gets even more interesting — Xavier runs a YouTube gaming channel with almost 600,000 followers. While researching TV Ratings I started seeing Wrestling performing well in the 18–49 Demo. Here’s a look at one week of Sports programming last month (Excluding NBA):

(Source: SportsTVRatings.com)

WWE RAW vs. the Stanley Cup Finals Game 1 Head-to-Head was about equal for younger viewers. To confirm I wasn’t crazy here are WWE’s Ratings from this past Monday:

(Source: SportsTVRatings.com)

The audience holds up across the three hours of programming. That’s even more astonishing considering that WWE Ratings are apparently down this year. Now here’s the next important metric: WWE2K16/PS4 and Forza 6/Xbox One sold about the same in the US.

My conclusion: If Forza can be turned into an eSport with no comparable TV offering and a much older audience, why not WWE? Sure WWE faces the same challenges I’ve already analyzed of Sports Games as eSports but this is a minimal investment from 2K to experiment.

I say give it a shot.

GERMANY LOOKS TO MAKE ESPORTS OFFICIAL

(Photo: ESL)

My Take: Apologies in advance but I haven’t spoken German since I was a DJ in Hamburg during my youth. Based on this Press Release, the BIU along with executives from ESL, Activision, EA and Microsoft are working on an initiative to officially recognize eSports in Germany. I’ve already covered Australia, England, and Russia looking into this and the US based petition, so expect more countries to follow suit. The constant Visa issues that plague teams needs to be eradicated for this industry to grow.

ESPORTS ON TV [NEW]

Note: With the explosion of eSports TV programming and media deals, I’ll be covering this more regularly

(Photo: Aron Drayer)

NBA2K ON NBC

My Take: This weekend the NBA2K Road to the Finals was replayed on NBC in the Bay Area (No Press or Info online). I don’t have access to Local TV Ratings but you’ll probably see more people out your window right now than who watched this. The usual qualifier about the challenges of Sports games — although the one data point from Madden on ESPN2 this year is interesting. Here’s how NBA2K’s online viewership was previously:

Here’s the interesting thing about NBC — they already tried Gaming TV programming with G4. In a case of unfortunate timing, G4 was shut down in December 2014 and potentially could have thrived now, although I don’t blame the Execs for not continuing to support losses after so many years.

[Ill say it again: Great opportunity to take G4 cultural/fun/Vice-like content for the eSports space. Someone’s going to do it — who will it be?]

So what’s the actual sports programming across NBC now?

(Source: NBCSports.com)

That looks great but let’s remove NFL and NBA for a moment and here’s just the NBCSN schedule for Sunday June 26:

(Source: NBCSports.com)

Fishing? Indycar? US Olympic Swimming? Volleyball? Awesome.

BRANDS

(Photo: Super Evil Megacorp)

VAINGLORY SNAGS A̶M̶A̶Z̶O̶N̶ TWITCH AS PREMIER PARTNER

My Take: I just call it like it so let’s fix that Press Release first. Vainglory and Twitch have been partners for a while and Amazon owns Twitch — there I said it.

Further, it’s not even the first A̶M̶A̶Z̶O̶N̶ Twitch activation as they sponsored the Autumn 2015 Finals:

(Photo: Super Evil Megacorp)

Mobile eSports is a great emerging opportunity and another platform to offer Brands. While Vainglory’s biggest sponsor to date has been Samsung; between the Twitch partnership, eSports League, Collegiate Star League and top teams like TSM involved — we should see bigger brand partners before the year ends.

Vainglory has clearly been trounced by Supercell’s Clash Royale as not only the hot mobile game but consideration for New eSports Title of the Year — I’m still giving it to Rocket League.

Ill go deeper into Tencent/Supercell tomorrow but what is Vainglory’s biggest Brand advantage? I don’t see Clash Royale taking on multiple — if any — Brands due to the game bringing in an estimated $1BILLION this year alone.