Facebook and Major League Gaming (MLG) have entered a partnership beginning with the 2015 X-Games Gold Medal Gaming Events to create unique experiences for fans across Facebook and Instagram. The deal, which will continue beyond X-Games events with future details to be worked out, includes video programming posted natively to Facebook capturing key moments of tournament action, pro gamers, and game highlights throughout the tournament.
In addition, MLG will incorporate Facebook and Instagram content into MLG.TV {link no longer active} exclusive live global coverage reaching several million unique viewers over the course of the three-day event. An Instagram portrait Studio will photograph medalists. Live feed screens inside the venue will include data, insights, and fan content to help generate in-venue social activity that extends the event beyond the Austin venue walls.
Mike Sepso, president and co-founder of Major League Gaming, explains what this deal means to MLG and the bigger picture growth of eSports in this exclusive interview.
How did you end up partnering with Facebook?
Facebook has a sports partnerships group headed by Dan Reed and they identified MLG as an emerging sport they want to focus on. We’ve been using Facebook and Instagram for MLG – and Instagram is also part of the deal. That’s important because a lot of our pro players have big Instagram audiences. Facebook sees eSports as an emerging sport. They focused on MLG as a key emerging sports property. We’re working with the same Facebook team that works with the NFL, NHL, MLB, and NBA.
How are you utilizing this partnership for X-Games Austin this weekend?
We put together a plan with Facebook and Instagram to provide them with exclusive content and create new places for community dialogue. We’re doing exclusive video pushes and an Instagram takeover with Call of Duty personality Pamaj, who has 250,000 Instagram followers and 187,000 Facebook fans. Facebook is focused on using their platforms as a rich media experience, which suits us very well. Facebook has been one of our number one drivers of traffic to let people know about events.
How does this partnership capitalize on the multi-year ESPN deal for the X-Games?
A huge part of our mission at MLG is to help bring eSports into the mainstream and these types of partnerships help us do that. We’re not satisfied to just cater to the hardcore gaming audience. We want to make what we do along the lines of all the other sports out there. The reality is that eSports viewership and participation is big, but it’s still growing among gamers. We want to use these partnerships to help spread the reach to a broader audience. We want to reach a broader audience than we have today.
Look at the NFL, it’s the biggest sports property in North America and very few people watch games every Sunday in other countries.
And yet the global eSports fan base will be bigger than the NFL fan base by 2017.
The U.S. fan base in eSports won’t be as big as the U.S. fan base for the NFL in 2017. Those numbers looked at the global audience. We want to grow eSports as a whole.
The NFL is exploring digital with its broadcast this upcoming season of a London game exclusively on Yahoo!
The NFL makes money from its rights fees from traditional TV, but the future is in the digital distribution model. The NFL needs to get more international and that Yahoo! deal takes place in London. The NBA has been leading in international expansion among all of the leagues. But all sports today are focused on exploring digital and growing a global audience. And those are two things we’ve done well for over decade now.
What role do you see television playing for eSports, given your ESPN deal?
All leagues and developers involved in this space are looking to make eSports bigger in places outside of Asia. The challenge is tow to crack the U.S. market when there are so many different things to watch from sports to entertainment.
What was learned from the success of Heroes of the Dorm on ESPN2?
That was an experiment that worked well. Everyone’s happy to get some eSports content on a traditional TV broadcast.
Why won’t X-Games be on ESPN 2 or any broadcast networks?
ESPN3 (a digital platform) allows us to reach a more traditional sports audience with the Dota 2 tournament. And for Call of Duty, it’s difficult to put a violent first-person shooter on TV – even if it is a more mainstream brand. Plus, ESPN digital is substantial globally in reach, which benefits the eSports audience as a whole.
What role, if any, do you see TV playing for MLG or eSports in the future?
We did two years of MLG Pro Circuit on TV eight years ago on USA Network, and while it wasn’t suited to our traditional audience it opened up MLG to a mainstream audience. TV is not necessary for eSports, but it’s a good tool to expand to a more mainstream audience. When you look at the traditional TV landscape, a lot of the established properties are going digital like HBO Go. They’re trying to reach the demo we reach well through digital channels.
Is there more interest from TV broadcasters today?
There are a lot more incoming phone calls from the TV networks to MLG interested in broadcasting in some aspect today. There’s still a lot of difficulty in taking a three or four day tournament-style format and packaging that into one or two hours of TV. It’s not an easy transition.
ESports, in general, has to be more league oriented and not tournament-structured. That will help with traditional TV. We’re looking for more content that’s suited to a more mainstream audience for TV. We’re not going to just throw a Dota 2 tournament on TV and expect people to understand what’s going on
How has the X-Games competition evolved with MLG over the past year?
We change the line-up of titles on a year-to-year basis and we’ll continue to build the X-Games into our overall league schedule plans and make sure we’re bringing the best of the best to Winter and Summer X-Games. This is our third one now and they’ve been special for us. We’ve more than doubled the footprint from last summer in Austin to this year. We have two games running simultaneously this year for the first time with Call of Duty and Dota 2. By the end of this event we’ll have awarded 18 medals to gamers across Call of Duty, Dota 2 and Counter Strike: Global Offensive. And ESPN is happy with the numbers.
