Major changes are coming to the Smite Pro League and Paladins Premier League: in 2019;Hi-Rez Studios will move both leagues from an online regular season to in-studio LAN play in Atlanta, Georgia. Earlier this year, Hi-Rez Studios spun out its esports production team into a subsidiary called Skillshot Media, which will oversee both leagues and eventually offer its production services to esports leagues from external partners.

Just this week, Hi-Rez Studios and Skillshot Media announced a deal that will provide access to data on its 70 million total players to FanAI , which will cross-reference those details with other sources to provide in-depth audience analytics. Skillshot Media plans to use that information to better inform new partnerships for the Smite and Paladins leagues.

Ahead of the announcement, The Esports Observer spoke with Todd Harris, co-founder and COO at Hi-Rez Studios and president of Skillshot Media, about establishing the esports subsidiary, the benefits of in-studio LAN play, and how advanced data can help the company secure more valuable partnerships.

Going Bigger

Splitting off Skillshot Media as a separate entity from Hi-Rez Studios was a necessary move to advance both the Smite and Paladins esports scenes, said Harris. The move allowed those team members to treat the esports leagues as their own products, rather than an extension of the game development and marketing process.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]”From an esports standpoint, we really just wanted to step up the level of competition and the amount of content for the audience.”[/perfectpullquote]

“By taking what was our internal esports group and giving it the identity of Skillshot, there’s just a lot more focus on our esports leagues as product offerings in themselves,” he said. “Before, it was a little bit of a marketing activity for us as a publisher. But now, with a 50-person team and 16,000 square feet of dedicated studio space, there’s a group that every day wakes up thinking about the Smite Pro League and the Paladins Premier League, and how they can be awesome products for that community.”

Smite, a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game akin to League of Legends and Dota 2 , is Hi-Rez Studios’ longest-running game and esport, with the fifth season of the Smite Pro League recently concluding at November’s World Championship. Harris said that the move to LAN is “definitely the biggest step we’ve taken in the history of Smite esports.” Paladins, a colorful team-based shooter, is a younger game, with just two Premier League seasons completed to date. However, both games will benefit from the 2019 push.

“From an esports standpoint, we really just wanted to step up the level of competition and the amount of content for the audience,” said Harris. “We felt playing every regular-season game on LAN and broadcasting it live was the biggest way we could do that.”

Harris pointed to a number of potential benefits to the LAN format, including improved competitive integrity with everyone playing on the same machines without relying on varying internet connections. There are content and presentation-related perks, as well, which will benefit everyone involved—but the one deterrent that leagues typically face is the amount of investment and resources required to pull off a weekly, in-studio league.

Credit: Hi-Rez

“I think it’s fairly well established that LAN is just a better overall product, whether you’re a team org, a viewer, a league operator, or a sponsor. It just takes a lot more money and investment on everyone’s part to execute it,” he said. “Online is very cost-effective, but it’s less even about the visibility of the sponsor jersey. You also really aren’t getting the visibility of the player’s face, in terms of that player building their personal brand, and in terms of telling great stories where the audience is attached to players—not just the in-game avatar—and forming that human attachment.”

Why Data Matters

That kind of increased investment requires beneficial partnerships for both leagues, and that’s the key reason why Hi-Rez Studios and Skillshot Media have teamed up with FanAI to generate better data about its player base and esports viewers. Hi-Rez Studios has built up a pool of 70 million total players between Smite, Paladins, and Realm Royale, and FanAI can cross-reference that data with other sources to provide valuable, anonymized insights about their habits.

“They basically combine that [data] with other third-party data sources—they call it “enriching”—to give us a more concrete picture of the audience in aggregate,” said Harris. “That can cover some of their play patterns, but also content-watching patterns and purchasing patterns. We plan to primarily use that towards esports partnerships. When we’re talking with a potential partner or sponsor, we always want it to be a value exchange.”

Related Article: FanAI to Provide Audience Data to Hi-Rez Studios

The perfect partner for the Smite Pro League and Paladins Premier League, said Harris, is one that provides value across the board: to Hi-Rez Studios and Skillshot Media, to the sponsor in question, and to the players and community around the game. A partnership that only serves one or two of those parties is unlikely to be a particularly beneficial or long-lasting one. That’s why this enhanced FanAI data can be so useful.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]”We want brands that will be long-term members of our community, and support it over multiple seasons and multiple years.”[/perfectpullquote]

“Part of [running a LAN league] is identifying other partners and sponsors to make sure these leagues are self-sustaining—that they’re bringing in other revenue sources,” said Harris. “This data, we think, will help us identify good partners. I think a simple example is just the geography of our player base. A lot of people talk about how esports is global, and esports is very global—but not every specific esport is global.”

Harris said that Smite, in particular, has a strong North American and European player base, so it may not be the right fit for partners that primarily operate in other regions. Beyond geography, the FanAI data can also hone in on purchasing habits to help influence sponsor selection. Harris said that the data might tell them whether or not an automotive sponsor would be a good fit for Smite fans, for example, depending on their aggregate age and interests.

“We want brands that will be long-term members of our community, and support it over multiple seasons and multiple years,” he said. “And that means we want to use data to make sure the audience is a fit with them.”

Further Changes

The move to LAN play will impact the structure of the Smite Pro League and Paladins Premier League, as well. Smite‘s top league will include 10 organizations without regional restrictions, which means that rosters can be made up of players from anywhere in the world, plus the rosters will be locked in for the entire year. So far, SK Gaming , Trifecta Gaming, and the Pittsburgh Knights have confirmed their involvement in the Smite Pro League for 2019. Additionally, Dignitas made Smite roster moves this week, but did not affirm the team’s Pro League status for 2019.

Credit: Hi-Rez

“We tend to work with those orgs on a yearly basis,” said Harris. “For those teams at the Pro League level, they won’t be relegated in 2019, so they can make the necessary commitment around investing in the league. Many of them are setting up a team house in Atlanta for their players.”

Fewer Paladins Premier League details have been announced at this point, but Hi-Rez Studios has confirmed that both games’ leagues will feature the same year-long season structure. That includes a five-week preseason beginning in February, followed by a first 13-week phase of regular season play, two mid-season invitational events, a second 13-week phase, and then a World Championship at the end.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]”I could see a day in the future where the Smite Pro League is open to the best players, and they could opt-in to either keyboard or controller as they choose.”[/perfectpullquote]

Both games also have a console-centric league and a minor league outside of the main, PC-based Pro/Premier League. Harris said that it’s been a worthwhile marketing effort to have console esports efforts for both games. “In general, I think publishers support esports because they see that it leads to higher engagement, and also in many cases, higher monetization within their game itself,” he said. “And so that general approach of having a good business return, not just on PC but also on console, is the approach that we’ve taken.”

But that split approach may not last for long. Hi-Rez is working on cross-platform play for both Smite and Paladins, and plans to roll out that functionality in 2019. They don’t want to rush to merge the esports scenes, however, given the potential for cross-platform issues to iron out next year, but the console leagues could be folded into the Pro/Premier leagues as soon as 2020.