Sean “Day9” Plott has made a living around eSports. The former pro StarCraft: Brood War gamer has built a mini broadcast empire through Day9.tv, including the popular “Day[9] Daily.” Plott wears many hats. He’s a professional StarCraft II caster at eSports events around the world like DreamHack, BlizzCon and Major League Gaming (MLG), he heads up the After Hours Gaming League (AHGL) and he’s co-founder of game company Artillery, which is working on a new strategy game called Project Atlas.
Plott has been a caster at all of Red Bull eSports events over the past two years. Since Red Bull doesn’t comment on its own marketing efforts as a rule, Plott fills us in on what the energy drink is doing right in eSports, and explains how his own After Hours Gaming League has grown over the years, in this exclusive interview.
Where do you see Red Bull when it comes to eSports today?
What we saw before the last two years was treating eSports like traditional advertising. It was just a numbers thing. If you got a lot of numbers, maybe you can sell ads on that the same way you would sell on YouTube. What we’ve seen in the last two years is the publishers themselves getting into the space because it translates in a direct dollar way to the company. It’s not like paying a few thousands dollars to put a logo or a different brand on the game. You’re watching the game, and the people who watch it then want to go immediately spend money on the game. Red Bull is a really interesting in-between, where it’s a company that is taking charge and putting on the events themselves. This allows them to generate the views and make money off of advertising dollars, but also gives Red Bull an actual product in the form the Red Bull can, which has first class presence at the events. It’s an interesting model that I think other companies can look at, where instead of just passively handing out a few thousand bucks to put up an overlay; the company is running the event, participating in the scene and really getting involved. And that’s what I think is super cool about Red Bull.
Red Bull has a background in traditional sports. What do you feel like they have learned from that space and applied to eSports?
The biggest thing that I see is they are immersing themselves in the culture. It’s increasingly not enough to just have some smart people who are organized trying to do a good job. You have to get really passionate community members who are sharp and are really hard working to make sure that the event has the right tone to it. There are a number of things that Red Bull has done this past year that only makes sense if you understand the StarCraft community — like giving pros three lives and having them get knocked out and then having a little 8-bit animation of the player falling over. That’s something that the gaming community gets and I really credit the guys who are spearheading all of that awesome stuff over at Red Bull. The guys at the top at Red Bull are super hardcore gamers. Hogan Carter has been doing gaming events since 2002. These are people are from this community and that’s a real secret to Red Bull’s success; they are part of the communities that they’re building for.
“You have to get really passionate community members who are sharp and are really hard working to make sure that the event has the right tone to it.”
What role do you see the StarCraft II events that Red Bull held this year play overall in the community?
What Red Bull put on for StarCraft this year was insane. Those were some of the highlight events of the entire year outside of BlizzCon. I would not be surprised to continue to see more investment from Red Bull in the space.
How have you seen your After Hours Gaming League grow over the years?
We started Season 1 with eight teams and we’re at 200 this season. It’s just insane how much it has grown. The biggest thing that the After Hours Gaming League shows is that all the competition in eSports is at the absolute highest end, but there are still tons of people that love just hanging out playing against each other. We have teams that have built reputations for not taking the game very seriously when they’re playing, and they’re just trying to do the most wild, out-of-control stuff. And when they win, their whole teams goes insane and they upload photos of the win. It’s been a blast to show how many non-pros there are who just love to compete. It’s becoming almost like a replacement for watching traditional sports. You actually get to play. Instead of sitting down for Monday Night Football, you sit down for your Monday Night After Hours Gaming League match or your Sunday Afternoon match and hang out with your friends and have a blast for a few hours. It’s one of my absolutely favorite things ever.
“Instead of sitting down for Monday Night Football, you sit down for your Monday Night After Hours Gaming League match or your Sunday Afternoon match and hang out with your friends and have a blast for a few hours. It’s one of my absolutely favorite things ever.”
With real eSports filling stadiums, do you see an opportunity for bigger venues for After Hours Gaming League in the near future?
I think possibly, but what’s interesting is that at the highest level of pro play people want to watch that. The spectating aspect is a huge component. There are only like 100, 200 people playing at the top pro level. The After Hours Gaming League is the opposite. People are showing that they really want to participate, so I think that we’ll have huge leagues. Will people want to watch at the end We’ve had big live events at the end of AHGL, and it’s always most successful when it’s focused on the socialization and the fun. Where we have the after party for the AHGL is just as important as the event itself because people love to hang out and play. So spectating wise maybe not. Participation-wise it just makes me so happy because I grew up doing this stuff and it’s a full time professional job that I’m still doing. It gives me hope that I’ll be able to play video games forever.
When it comes to the companies involved in AHGL like Intel, Google, Facebook and EA, how do you see them support the players that are representing them in this league?
It’s been great. You have companies that provide funding for some team members to get shirts for the club and some travel expenses get paid for people who are heavily involved. I remember when IBM was in the Finals and every single person was there in an IBM shirt showing company spirit. It’s really nice because that first season was probably the scariest for us because there’s always that fear of will this company be comfortable with them being referenced as a company in the video game But now that we’re at 200 teams, we have seen more and more and more support. We want to make sure that each team gets approval from their company, so we have a handbook of ways to do that, things to say to pitch it. There’s just less and less friction. It’s really starting to show that eSports and competitive gaming is becoming almost so ingrained that it’s weird not to know about eSports.
