(Photo: White House from Saints Row IV — Deep Silver)

Your Thursday June 30 eSports News

WHITE HOUSE FAILS ACTION ON ESPORTS VISAS

My Take: I just wrote on Monday in ESPORTS DAILY 05 about Germany joining other countries in looking to make eSports official. Here in the US, a petition started in April after popular athlete William “Leffen” Hjelte was deported as he entered on a Tourist Visa as most eSports players do because they usually don’t get granted P-1 Visas, which are for “athletes”. The P-1 granting issue is somewhat random with some teams and players getting in and some not — like the Mongolian Counter-Strike team (Stop for one second and put this in perspective: Mongolia has eSports).

The petition hit the required 100,000 signatures and the White House just responded. Ill play John Oliver for a moment and boil down the response:

“Hey there eSports! Wow, you guys play video games for a living — that’s cool! Anyways, we looked at the petition and here’s the deal: We can’t talk about Leffen as it’s an individual case. Sorry. We never said you guys can’t come over here and play. You just need to ask us every time you want to” — We the People Team (Seriously, that’s what they’re called)

And therein lies the rub. Handling everything on an individual basis is not efficient or nearly scalable to help grow the eSports industry.

Please let’s not turn this into a Political argument and focus on the main issue — this is critical because while the US has plenty of eSports athletes, many are still from outside the US. They’re either going to end up staying in Europe or Asia and that limits the US growth potential further. I think what you’re just starting to see in Pro Soccer Athletes getting poached by China vs. coming to the MLS is an interesting corollary.

Without putting emotions into it — lets see if we can dig deeper. I’m curious to see how the P-1 failure rate for eSports athletes vs. general applications is and will be digging into that further. Team Owners and Athletes, you know where to reach me.

BRANDS

(Photo: Buffalo Wild Wings)

BUFFALO WILD WINGS LISTENED TO THEIR AUDIENCE

My Take: Two weeks ago in ESPORTS WEEKLY #10 Jun 14 I looked at Buffalo Wild Wing’s promotion of E LEAGUE. Bdubs had never spent in the Gaming space before — let alone eSports — and this was a pretty big first step. Even the fans were excited to hear that not only was one of their favorite brands sponsoring eSports but they could actually see their favorite teams play on TV next to traditional sports — at a Buffalo Wild Wings.

While all of that sounded great, the execution unfortunately wasn’t there. Outside of the challenges with communication, the biggest issue for me was the deafening silence of the promotion in general. This is from their website two weeks ago:

(Photo: Home Page — Buffalo Wild Wings)

(Photo: Sports Page — Buffalo Wild Wings)

There was no mention on either the main page or under the Sports listing. Further what they were promoting, Euro 2016 and the MMA, were comparable to E LEAGUE’s ratings — yet it wasn’t even there. The overall marketing at their locations was also not evident.

I even discussed it with Kevin Knocke on his SiriusXM radio show on Friday June 17th (Starts at 22:30):

(Audio: SiriusXM IGN eSports Daily June 17)

It just felt like a really big missed opportunity on the part of Buffalo Wild Wings to plant a stake in eSports. Then a few days ago I saw this on Reddit:

(Photo: Reddit)

Ok pretty cool. Great branding, fits both E LEAGUE and BWW as a destination and info for the fans. 👍 I then checked the website under their Sports listings again:

(Photo: Sports Page — Buffalo Wild Wings)

WHAT!?! If you look closely this part is key:

“Stop in and ask your server to turn on the finals”

Not only did they address the overall promotion, broadcast schedule for fans — but basically said “Tell us to put E LEAGUE on”. Just. Like. Every. Other. Sport.

Buffalo Wild Wings. Here’s to you for listening to your audience #BWWListened