NZ e-sports firm grows
Kiwi company Let’s Play Live is aiming to solidify its position as a significant producer and televisor of ‘‘e-sports’’ after acquiring Australian-based video-gaming website Cybergamer.
Let’s Play Live (LPL) is 40 per cent owned by NZX-listed casino operator SkyCity and last year produced 65 live e-sports broadcasts for Sky TV and Maori TV. Co-founder Duane Mutu hopes to double its broadcasts, partly thanks to a new partnership with an unnamed Australian TV company.
Globally, the management of e-sports competitions is dominated by games publishers, such as League of Legends publisher Riot Games and Dota 2 publisher Valve Corporation.
They run ‘‘official’’ competitions, some offering prize pools of tens of millions of dollars to professional players.
LPL has offered prizes of tens of thousands of dollars for its competitions which have included New Zealand and Australian ‘‘invitationals’’ for popular multiplayer-shooter game Counter-Strike.
Publishers ‘‘wanted to control as much as they could’’ but there would always be room for ‘‘third parties’’ such as LPL, Mutu said.
The acquisition of Cybergamer would move LPL into bigger markets and would make the business a more valuable partner for publishers, including as a bridge into TV, he said.
LPL employs 15 fulltime staff, while six-person Cybergamer has grown from a hobby site to attracting more than 12 million users around the world.
Mutu said the acquisition would help LPL provide more opportunities for ‘‘grassroots players’’ and provide a pathway for them to compete in its televised online tournaments.
Televising e-sports posed some challenges, he said. In particular, computer games did not tend to run for a fixed time.