Rejoice! The latest 'MTV of esports' claims to be more esports' 'Sweet 16' and 'Pimp My Ride' than 'Catfish'
Sports Illustrated flogging their brand to allow an e, surely means nothing?
I can remember some weird media site launches, but honestly this one seems to be up there with the absolute most random of any. Welcome to the esports media world, esi.si.com (?)
Marketing strat checklist:
Thursday night?
Claim to want to be the MTV of esports?
Social media manager of appropriate age to speak to other social media managers and obtain ‘common Ws’
Website with ‘League of Legends, Valorant, Call of Duty’ as the three headline totals
Tweet to read “Dibs ESI” given the industry’s leading B2B site is very much known as ESI
Logo with similar colour scheme to ESI (or Esports Insider, or ESI or do I mean Esports Insider?)
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Right let’s b-b-b-b-reak it down!
Alex Lee, a cracking writer (follow him here) with bylines at the likes of ESPN and WashPo who have both shuttered esports projects, clings onto this being a potential show that mainstream sports media haven’t given up on esports in his Digiday artcle.
The difference here, from immediate inspection is that a formidably named entity “G3 Esports” (honestly apparently nonchalant) has struck a deal with The Arena Group to license the Sports Illustrated brand. So therefore I’d like to initially suggest that Sports Illustrated give precisely zero fucks about esports, but they got lobbed some free money for a random domain at the end of a list on their site.
Lee realises rightly that the launch of this brand very much comes at a pivotal time, and it’ll have to do something different from Dot Esports and Dexerto. Simply put, there’s really just not a B2C media model that works if you don’t go about it in the way that Dot and Dexerto do. Dot and Dexerto drive an astounding amount of traffic by using influencers and gaming as enhanced revenue drivers because… news flash… esports isn’t big enough yet to build pretty much any product on alone - without crossover supplementing the top line.
The owner of G3 is not someone I’ve met, but he does seem like a nice chap with no nefarious intentions. Although he specifies that Vie.gg and Esports Entertainment monumentally fucked up their New Jersey launch, his argument that with marketing spend it’ll be up there with market leading products, is a tad naive - so if you’re reading this Mr G, don’t go and lose even more money with a NJ esports product launch, please.
He’s touted his new publication as the MTV of esports.
While I’d love to see “Sweet 16” rebranded to “Sweet 35” and have event afterparties made utterly ridiculous for a reality show, I don’t think it’s going to happen for worry of career suicide.
A lot of esports casters don’t even have cars, because who needs to drive when you’re a gamer? Pimp my ride could work with the racing fanatics, however.
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The claim of ‘we call dibs on ESI’ with the colour scheme above is also just odd.
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As I’ve said repeatedly in the past, the content pyramid in esports is so irreversibly difficult, there just isn’t good money in B2C esports media (solely).
The typical Pyramid dictates that social media or direct conversation sees the biggest gossip posted on Twitter by players, before it then moves to a content aggregation platform. B2C transfer news then can be regurgitated from a Reddit post onto a platform, but the share ability is already gone.
There are of course certain roster leak journos who get a text everytime something happens and make a mint out of it, but that’s not a way to run a website - as Upcomer beautifully showed everyone.
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We shouldn’t put off people who wish to spend money in the industry give the current climate, no matter how ridiculous it may seem. But surely it’s almost a responsibility to advise them against spaffing thousands before they do?
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Esports Illustrated’s social media looks aimed at 12-16 year olds? Anyone that spends most of their time on SoMe with a cartoon avatar posting ‘Dub’ or ‘Win’.
They’re attached to a huge media brand but it’s taken one day for…
BREAKING NEWS (article says 9 March), posted 11 march.
Literally copy pasted from (unsourced above) Yahoo. [HERE IS THE ACTUAL ARTICLE]
If you read this Mr Gaud, drop me a message - there’s enough of us who could build you a media strategy that might not see you be sued and post juvenile crudd on social media for a few months before waving goodbyes to thousands of dollars.
Blimey.
Probably a reason they don’t often nudge their own editorial. Opened a random article (here) to have a ganders. Please stop pissing money away.
