Arby's, Buffalo Wild Wings Execs Discuss ELeague's Debut Season, Future Expectations

Arby's VP/Brand Media Mary Ellen Barto said the while the QSR is "currently evaluating its ROI" after the first season of ELeague, the fast food chain from the outset was "less concerned with a traditional ROI number and more concerned with a genuine engagement with the fans in a fan-to-fan way," according to John Gaudiosi of ALISTDAILY.com. Arby's VP/Brand Experience Jeff Bakernoted said that "all of Arby’s ELeague content and activation was developed in partnership" with Turner and WME-IMG. Baker said, "It would not have been possible otherwise." Barto also said that the TV component of ELeague was "was important, but it was just one piece of the broader distribution of the competition." Barto: "The fact that fans had the option to experience the competition in the way that was most desirable to them -- television, Twitch, or in-person -- was compelling to us." Gaudiosi noted ELeague was Arby's "first foray into eSports." The QSR also is "currently considering if their involvement would make sense" in the newest Turner/WME-IMG e-sports venture -- September's "Overwatch Open" (ALISTDAILY.com, 8/4).

WING COMMANDER: Buffalo Wild Wings VP/North America Marketing Bob Ruhland also discussed his restaurant chain's involvement as a primary sponsor in ELeague's debut season. Ruhland said, "Everything we anticipated happening, happened. We were impressed, from a Turner perspective, in the production and how people who tuned in on Fridays could see where everyone was in the whole [Counter Strike:Global Offensive] map so they knew what was coming -- which you don’t get in the game itself." He said of overlap between fans of ELeague and college basketball, "There’s a lot of overlap with our NCAA basketball audience. ... There are a lot of common threads across NCAA basketball and eSports." Buffalo Wild Wings also streamed weekly ELeague content at its chains, and Ruhland said of customer reaction to e-sports in the restaurants, "We wanted to do a soft launch with the start of the season to make sure it looked good on the TVs. What we didn’t anticipate was how much demand there would be out of the gate. We missed the expectations of the guests" (ALISTDAILY.com, 8/2).

NEED FOR DIVERSIFICATION: VICE SPORTS' Kevin Hovdestad wrote sponsorships and advertising currently represent an "enormously disproportionate amount of the cash flow" into e-sports, and the industry "cannot sustain the trajectory that it is currently enjoying without transitioning to a model where fans carry some portion of the costs." Research from Superdata shows that 77% of all revenue within e-sports is via sponsors and advertisers, and that is a "serious liability to the long-term viability of the entire scene." The problem area in e-sports is the "lack of infrastructure necessary to secure the core revenue source that almost all other sports enjoy: the sale of broadcasting rights." Much of e-sports "operates on the assumption -- incorrectly -- that sponsorship and advertising revenues can simply supplant broadcasting rights as a source of income." In the immediate future, the level of influence from sponsors and third parties on e-sports will "likely be minimized by the rush of brands racing to get involved," but the "pace will inevitably slow." E-Sports is "entering a complex but critical five-to-ten-year window in which it will need to formalize its infrastructure and whittle down its dependence on third-party advertising budgets" (SPORTS.VICE.com, 8/3).

EASIER FOR VIEWERS: THE DAILY DOT's Samuel Lingle wondered whether Activision Blizzard's "Overwatch," the game being played in Turner/WME-IMG's new tournament in September, is "really ready for mainstream viewership" with its "complicated spectator mode." The spectator mode in its current form is "still a barebones product." Broadcasters and viewers "do not have access to statistics required to build a narrative around the haphazard action on the screen." Activision Blizzard Game Dir Jeff Kaplan said, "We want to work on more spectator mode features, in particular for esports. And when we do more for esport we want to add a spectator mode that has a lot of statistics for the match so that broadcasters and observers can surface more to the viewers and I think make a really great experience for viewing esport or competitive 'Overwatch'" (DAILYDOT.com, 8/4).

DUTY CALLS: Activision Blizzard execs during the company's quarterly conference call on Thursday said that viewership of e-sports competitions in the first half of the year involving the "Call Of Duty" franchise "increased sharply." The WALL STREET JOURNAL's Sarah Needleman noted the company in June "began publishing live e-sports programming on Facebook" through Major League Gaming, which it acquired earlier this year (WSJ.com, 8/4).