‘‘We’ve gone from pariah to darling . . . If you borrow a boxing term, we are the last man standing right now – but at what a huge cost.’’
With sport shutdown, virtual sports have gone from "pariah to darling" as audiences climb, TV networks fawn and organisations turn online. Steve Kilgallon reports.
Television sports schedules are filled with replays and talking heads. The playing fields are closed. Sports-loving punters are reduced to gambling on Ukrainian tabletennis.
Barring those eastern bloc ping-pong players and some Indonesian volleyballers, sport has shut down. But e-sports (or electronic gaming), a virtual world which was already growing rapidly, can continue almost unfettered.
The stage has been left wide open for e-sports to grow audience, participation and sponsors – but also to talk to traditional sports bosses, who wouldn’t have entertained them before the world locked down.
‘‘We’ve gone from pariah to darling,’’ says e-sports investor John McRae. ‘‘And a lot are seeing us as a white knight – especially the sports sector.
‘‘If you borrow a boxing term, we are the last man standing right now – but at what a huge cost.’’
It’s tough in the sports sector right now, with no fixtures, no ticket and merchandise sales or broadcast revenue. How do they keep their fans interested when they’ve no product to offer them?
The answer is online. Kiwi e-sports company Let’s Play Live say they’ve had conversations with all the major sporting codes about their options. First to market were New Zealand Football, who yesterday kicked off a three-week tournament for fans on football simulator FIFA.
For sports like football, motor racing, basketball and American football, the transition is relatively easy: all have popular, easily-played sports simulators they can push their audience towards.
This weekend, US network ESPN were broadcasting the finals of a tournament in which professional NBA basketballers played each other on the video game NBA2k, the winner receiving $100,000 to donate to charity.
But those are the easy wins, says McRae, who co-promoted boxing’s ‘Fight of the Century’ between Shane Cameron and David Tua, but then switched to e-sports. ‘‘It’s short term activity based on a short-term closure or lockdown,’’ he says. ‘‘But what happens if they can’t play the rest of the season, or can’t play next season?
‘‘Like everyone, I hope it’s over quickly but you hope for the best, and plan for the worst. I think you can rule out this season and next season [for regular sport].’’
So when it comes to the long term, and for sports without an easy video game option, the conversation is more difficult.
But it is happening. Let’s Play Live director Duane Mutu says he’s talked to all the major sporting codes – and before they were dabbling, but now they are planning a ‘‘fully-fledged assault’’ on the electronic world. Some without a natural video game equivalent are wondering whether to get involved in major e-sports games like League of Legends.
‘‘Is this the right move for them?’’ asks Mutu. ‘‘It was the right move before Covid19, they just didn’t see it as clearly. They dabbled a bit, some better than others, now they are really looking at what it looks like if they are all in on it.’’
What does it look like? He paints a picture of leveraging big brands like the Warriors and the Brisbane Broncos to keep existing fans engaged and entertained, of picking up new fans in the key 18-35 demographic, of producing at least some content during the shutdown.
New Zealand e-sports federation president Ben Lenihan says there’s just one problem with those conversations: ‘‘Nobody has any money right now,’’ he says. ‘‘Obviously, those sports NSOs are struggling without their normal income streams. So although there’s a lot of desire to get involved in e-sports, the resources are not there.
‘‘It’s a positive time for us, but obviously a double-edged sword: it has pushed e-sport to where it’s on TV1 News every night, but at the same time, all the sponsorship has dried up.’’
He thinks there could be a window between the return to work and the resumption of sport where businesses looking for sponsorship opportunities will turn online. He’d also like the government to give sports specific grants to use for online engagement with their fans.
McRae, taking a wider view, thinks it’s time for the industry to lobby government for the same rebates and incentives given to the film and creative sectors, because during the inevitable downturn, he expects e-sports and game developers to be fairly unscathed – and able to hire those who lose their jobs in other creative industries.
Lenihan predicts game developers will be spending more time on producing decent sports simulators – he says there’s room for good cricket and rugby league games – and predicts virtual horse racing will become big business.
Then there’s the interesting question: should sports be setting up games with the best available players – or using celebrities and real-life sports heroes to play and risk alienating the core while attracting new viewers. ‘‘Will they tune in if it is Stephen Fleming and Daniel Vettori? Is that more interesting for the average punter?’’ asks Lenihan.
Mutu just doesn’t want the traditional sports to love them and leave them once coronavirus departs. ‘‘Don’t just dip your toe in, have a play and leave,’’ he says. ‘‘I want e-sports showcased to traditional fans, a meaningful engagement, and for them to stay. Of course I understand that you’ve got to run traditional sports leagues, and that’s your priority, but why can’t you also stay in e-sports and help grow an audience there?’’
Coronavirus arrived in a timely fashion for Kiwi e-sport. In the past month, the government recognised them as an official sport, and their federation as the governing body, and the TAB began accepting bets on games. All of this was already in train, but accelerated once the virus struck.
If you’re a hardcore sports punter, your options right now are limited. This week, the TAB were offering odds and tipsheets on NBA 2K, shooter CS:GO, and League of Legends. TAB spokesman
Mark Stafford says they’ve seen brand-new punters signing up to bet on e-sport. ‘‘We were quite surprised at how happily it was greeted.’’
Also starved of content are broadcasters (although regular e-sports viewers aren’t watching so-called ‘linear’ TV). In the US, ESPN augmented their celebrity basketball with virtual NASCAR racing, American football and more pure e-sports games like Rocket League. John Lasker,vicepresident of digital programming, told Variety he hoped the sports sims would be ‘‘an entry point’’ for viewers to get into the more purist content.
In New Zealand, Mutu says Let’s Play Live’s viewing figures on Sky Sport have ‘‘skyrocketed’’ but admits networks aren’t paying for content yet. He reckons TV audiences worldwide for e-sports will double within four years and are up 25 per cent year-on-year.
LPL also broadcast via Stuff, who agreed a pre-coronavirus deal to show e-sports through its PlayStuff subsidiary. PlayStuff’s Paddy Buckley sees it as a longterm project, with huge growth potential. But he’s intrigued to see what impact lockdown has. ‘‘You’ve got to assume a lot of the [audience] traction built during lockdown will remain afterwards,’’ he says.
Some sports have been forced into particularly creative lockdown solutions. Earlier this month, triathlete Mirinda Carfrae was riding second in a bike race in Boulder, Colorado, when her race suddenly ended; her husband had walked behind her fixed bike in their home in Australia and kicked out the power cord.
Ironman triathlon’s answer to coronavirus has been to establish a virtual race series and ‘virtual clubhouse’, offering training sessions and achievement badges, for recreational athletes. Some 7000 of them competed in an online run-bikerun race last weekend, while a pro race with four elite men and four elite women (including Carfrae) was livestreamed with commentators, live video of the athletes cycling in their lounge rooms, and a virtual-reality rendering of them on the actual Colorado Ironman course.
Once again, it had been talked about, but was accelerated once coronavirus kicked in. Globally, 80 Ironman races have been affected by the pandemic. ‘‘We wanted to find a way for athletes to stay engaged with each other and provide motivation and goals for people to keep training while in lockdown,’’ says Ironman’s Oceania managing director Dave Beeche. The feedback suggests they will keep doing virtual events, he says.
In the UK, second-tier rugby league is precarious even in the best of times. Some clubs have held online games on the Playstation/XBox game Rugby League Live 4, but York City Knights came up with a unique idea. An imaginary game against rivals Featherstone was played over their social media accounts, with fictional lineups including club mascots and longretired legends.
York sold virtual tickets, pies, pints and even virtual match sponsorship. ‘‘We’ve been trying to keep as active and engaging as possible during these strange times,’’ says the club’s media manager Gavin Wilson. ‘‘It was really well received. We just try to remind ourselves that everyone is in the same situation, and hopefully soon we will all return to some sort of normality.’’
‘‘It was the right move before Covid-19, they just didn’t see it as clearly.’’ Let’s Play Live director Duane Mutu
Duane Mutu says the purists might ask why e-sports would bother getting involved with sport, but actually, he says the old geek versus jock model is outdated and their fans are now the same person – playing sport, but also playing and watching e-sport. He believes e-sport can learn from global giants like Real Madrid and Manchester United on how to build big leagues and big brands.
But a counter-view comes from LAbased based Kiwi gaming veteran Jason Spiller, who advises brands on e-sports involvement.
Spiller says e-sport has carved a unique path where regular sport’s linear television deals and geography-based competitions are irrelevant.
They don’t need traditional sports, and their geographic-based league structures are meaningless to e-sports fans. And most traditional sports have missed a trick by doing this much sooner. There’s a few exceptions, basketball engaged early with a young digital audience, had stars who played video games, and have a directlycomparable e-sports product. Yes, some of the major brands like Manchester United or the All Blacks could be big enough to crossover. But the others ‘‘could’ve softened the blow and had a content schedule still getting eyeballs’’ if they’d learned sooner.
Spiller says e-sport will grow rapidly as a generation of fans reaches maturity. McRae agrees, saying coronavirus has merely accelerated the inevitable eclipse of regular sport by e-sport.