Comcast Spectacor capitalizing on the esports ‘obsession’ in South Korea with T1
IN SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA, T1 Entertainment & Sports, the joint venture between Comcast Spectacor and SK Telecom, is creating a narrative of business innovation and culture fusion in a West-meets-East scenario.
T1, like many other competitive esports organizations, has had to weather the current economic storm that has forced more than a few to shutter. But what has captured the attention of industry insiders is how T1 has adapted and shifted its focus to the Asian market. The organization has brought a western sports philosophy to South Korea, while harnessing the global appeal of esports and respecting/celebrating Korean culture.
“South Korea is a smaller country, but it has a culture and an obsession around esports. So, we started doing some research and learning more,” said Tucker Roberts, president of Comcast Spectacor’s Spectacor Gaming division. “I had seen some stuff back in the StarCraft II days. Everybody had watched a little of that and that kind of got us thinking, ‘This is a really good market. Let’s do some research.’”
As the data from T1’s research came in, there was only one conclusion. “The more we learned, the more we thought that [South Korea] is actually an underserved market,” said Roberts. “While there was a lot of investment going on in America and even in Europe, there hadn’t yet been that wave in South Korea, even though 20 years ago esports got popular.”
T1 began developing a plan that would combine the best of both worlds.
“We definitely prided ourselves on building out the infrastructure. And it’s very much akin to how Comcast Spectacor has run the Philadelphia Flyers,” said Joe Marsh, CEO of T1. “We’ve built it as a Western sports organization, but in video games. We’ve never tried to make it an American team, it’s always been, ‘Let’s amplify what’s great about South Korea.’”
What T1 has done from a Western perspective is create ancillary businesses that augment the organization’s ability to generate revenue. To that end, it created T1 Base Camp, a cultural complex for fans featuring an internet café (referred to as PC bangs) and a retail shop, much like you see in U.S. malls.
“As we’ve grown these past four years, we’ve launched a bunch of ancillary businesses,” said Marsh. “When we first got there, we didn’t sell jerseys, and we had zero income and revenue for merchandise. Now we have a very robust business with centers in Japan, China, and South Korea. And obviously, we have retail shops.
We just launched our first PC bang in May, and it’s already the No. 1 PC bang in South Korea. We sell our goods there. We do our watch parties there.”
However, the creation of the T1 Base Camp wasn’t an endeavor that just worked by chance. South Korea has a storied history of making education a priority and engaging in specialized training. Special-purpose high schools allow those with a high aptitude in such categories as science, foreign languages, art, sports, and now even esports a chance to be the best at what they do. This particular part of South Korean culture is what piqued the interest of both
Marsh and Roberts.
“The telltale sign of why this was going to work was parental acceptance of esports as a profession. In South Korea, compared to the United States, parents are now comfortable because they’ve had esports for 20-plus years,” said Marsh. “With South Korea … most high professional kids are out of school by ninth grade going into an academy and rising up the [esports] ranks … versus America, where you’re expected to finish graduating high school and go to college. We saw that and we realized that we have some of the best 14and 15-year-olds in our system. Because we understand that you have to start young. It’s very much like the hockey system in Canada.”
The educational and sports academy system in South Korea starts esports competitors out at an early age, which allows more time to create fandom around T1 and esports. Fandom for esports in South Korea is much like the fandom you see in the U.S. for stick-and-ball sports. For example, Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok, who plays on T1’s League of Legends team, transcends the genre and is often referred to as the “Michael Jordan of esports.” Sang-hyeok, who is represented by CAA, has numerous endorsement deals outside of competitive gaming, including Nike and Red Bull.
“The level of passion and fandom that we enjoy at T1 rivals that of traditional American sports. We’ve been to quite a few finals,” said Marsh. “There’s a level of expectation at T1 where when we don’t win a championship, we’re getting trucks coming by with signs like ‘Why didn’t you win?’ It’s excellence and it’s winning. That’s what we’ve tried to build across the organization, and we hold ourselves to those standards.”
“The telltale sign of why this was going to work was parental acceptance of esports as a profession. In South Korea, compared to the United States, parents are now comfortable because they’ve had esports for 20-plus years.” — Joe Marsh, T1 CEO