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In conversation with Vamsi Krishna, Founder, The Esports Club
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In conversation with Vamsi Krishna, Founder, The Esports Club

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25/08/2020

In a candid conversation with The Gaming Reporter, Vamsi Krishna, the Founder of ‘The Esports Club’ shared his views on the challenges of organizing tournaments, Esports revenue model and Indian Esports.

The Gaming Reporter – What are some of the challenges associated with running an esports organization or being an esports TO(Tournament Organizer)?

Vamsi Krishna – There are a few challenges for an Esports Organization like ours specifically for esport category growing countries like India –

#1: Experienced Talent – As Gaming & Esports is a new emergence category in India we face a significant shortage of trained and experienced talent. A typical experienced roles that we need to conduct a world class tournaments are –

  • Tournament Managers
  • Casters
  • Broadcast Specialists
  • Community Admins

#2: Investments – To produce a world class Content and Production organizations go thru high Investments initially –

  • Broadcast Studio
  • High Performance PC& Accessories
  • Production Software’s & Subscriptions
  • High-speed Internet (dual for redundancy)
  • Power Backups etc.

#3: Sponsors – As the market is growing and not fully developed there are very few sponsors who are active in India. It will take few more years before Endemic and Non-Endemic Sponsors fully invest into Gaming & Esports.

TGR – ‘The Esports Club®’ recently completed its 1 Year Anniversary & right now is arguably the only company that has shown such commitment to Indian esports and has had an exponential growth while partnering up with brands like AMD, JBL Quantum, WD & LG, Lenovo and more to provide quality tournaments. What made it all possible?

VK – Our first-year journey was incredible, and action packed. We started with a 4 Member team and quickly scaled to 14 Member team and we also work with an army of freelancers on project basis across India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. While Covid19 was a big challenge to all businesses and start-ups, we succeeded by changing our business model to 100% Online. We launched our tournament platform www.theesports.club which offers a significant engagement opportunities to Gamers, Viewers & Sponsors and they see value. Some highlights of our achievements I would like to highlight are –

  • Organized 56 Professional Esports Tournaments
  • 22K Gamers participated from India, Bangladesh & Sri Lanka
  • INR 38Lakhs of Prize Money Distributed
  • Broad-based, our focus on multiple Esport Titles like CS:GO, Rainbow Six Siege, Valorant, PUBG, FIFA, Tekken, Freefire& World of Warships
  • Signed up with big partners like Lenovo, LG, JBL, AMD, Wargaming, Zotac, Western Digital, ACT Fibernet & Comicon India
  • Organized India’s largest PUBG PC LAN Tournament for Lenovo called Legion of Champions
  • Executed the biggest Gaming event in partnership with Comicon in Ahmedabad called TEC Arena, where 17K footfalls experienced over 2 days
  • Record braking participation for TEC Valorant CUP in July20 with 408 Teams
  • Executed the longest and consistent League tournament conducted for Rainbow Six Siege that spanned for 5 months, which provided a roadmap and motivation to R6 Teams in South Asia 

TGR – Esports organizations rely heavily on their sponsor brands, as most of their revenue comes from sponsorships, do you think there needs to be a paradigm shift in such a way that esports organizations become self-sustaining?

VK – In current scenario sponsorships are the large chunk of Esport Organizations revenue. Self-sustaining model may not exist for many years to come, but we try to broad-based our revenue sources.

Here are few –

  • #1 Sponsorships
  • #2 Events
  • #3 Advertisements

The main gap in India exists because non endemic brands haven’t realized the value of an esports event or activity. It provides the most engaging platform to reach that young demographic, much higher ROI than traditional ATL BTL campaigns. Globally we see them seizing this opportunity, it’s only a matter of time before we start to see that shift in India as well.

TGR – Branding has always been important for esports organizations to represent themselves & establish their foothold in the market, with the rise of content creation, does the same apply for players too?

VK – Branding is the most important aspect for all parties. Brand Value and Perception enables us to get Sponsors. The same applies to Players as well. As these players perfect their skills and gain viewership, it provides them with multiple revenue opportunities. We work with a number of successful players who we collaborate along with Sponsors to do Influencer marketing. It enables Players to consider Gaming/Esports as viable career opportunities.

TGR – Do you think post COVID the experience at a LAN Tournaments will be the same as before? or will safety take a toll on the experience?

VK – LAN Tournaments took significant hit due to COVID19. Currently there are no LAN Tournaments happening anywhere in country due to travel restrictions and safety concerns. Industry is eagerly waiting for the situation to ease and will see a massive surge for LAN Events come second half of 2021. For PRO Esportorganizations LAN Events are key as the other option of Online Tournaments has few disadvantages.

  • Online Tournaments: While it gives us massive flexibility to conduct Esport Tournaments online in massive scale there are few disadvantages. Players will not have same level playing parity across as they play on different platform configurations, Internet speeds, Pings etc.
  • LAN Tournaments: All players will be in same level playing parity. Identical gaming platforms, same pings and Internet speeds. This is why PRO Esport Organizers prefer LAN than Online. LAN events also provide an unparalleled viewing experience for fans with all the excitement involved!

TGR – What types of employment opportunities does esports provide? How does esports compare to traditional sports in terms of audience, accessibility & reach?

VK – Esports is same as traditional sports. There are ample career opportunities exist in Esports. Here are few –

  • Professional Esports Athlete where he/she can choose if they are good at any title and practice with discipline. They can earn via winning tournaments, sign up with Pro teams and sponsorships.
  • Esport Casters: Similar to traditional sports a caster plays an important role in moderating the live game play for viewers. Tournament organizations hire them full time or use the services on project basis.
  • Tournament Organizers have requirement for specific roles like Tournament management, Broadcast Specialists, Community Admins, Talent Managers, Content Creators, Creative Editors to name few

Similar to traditional Sports, Esports is also a spectator sport. Hence it depends on audiences for revenue opportunities. Unlike traditional sports in India which existed for many years, Esports is new and hence the audience is very different. In India a typical Esports players and audience are heavily skewed to age bracket of 15-24 and they are highly connected audience. Social Media, Smart Phones & Online are the preferred medium of reach and engagement.


TGR – What makes for a good esports title?  

VK – A Good Esports title needs to meet certain criteria.

  • Be A game that runs on most hardware without significant performance issues
  • Have a great spectator experience, if viewers cannot watch and broadcasters cannot leverage it for content then it won’t be a successful esport title
  • Lesser impact of RNG mechanics, more emphasis on skill and tactics.
  • Publisher Support – While a lot of titles tend to become popular, the really successful Esports titles are accompanied by a solid roadmap and investments by the publishers, Great example of this is Riot Games who make their games with an esports ecosystem in mind. They’ve done it successfully with League of Legends, probably one of the most successful esports games around and now I expect more of the same with Valorant. PUBG Mobile is another great example for a game adapting really well to it’s popularity and building a strong esports ecosystem around it with direct publisher involvement.
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