Believe it or not, eSports and MMA are similar. They both are emerging sports compared to traditional sports, they have niche audiences, cater to younger male audiences and have issues with the burgeoning infrastructure. At a sports tech conference held in Seattle on Thursday, Bleacher Report’s CEO Dave Finocchio saw parallels with the growth of eSports and MMA. The comparison was not positive.
When posed with the question of the future of eSports, Finocchio stated that he had concerns with the mainstream breakthrough of eSports because of the lack of a star that is known to the mainstream. “The shelf life of an average player is short and players burnout,” he noted. He stated that a big part of the model for sports leagues is building the brand of the players and leveraging their celebrity.
He looked to the UFC in comparison citing the absence of Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey leaving the company without any other known starts to build around. “[i]f you look at the UFC…it did kind of ‘tap out’ from an audience standpoint…they really built their brand on the backs of a few fighters.” Although he recognized that the UFC is a successful business and one of the reasons it sold for so much is due to the celebrity of a few fighters. His concern was that while the business can be monetized, it will be segmented to a small audience.
(You can see the comments around the 24:00 minute mark in the embedded video story on Geekwire)
Right now, eSports reporting on BR is limited to aggregation rather than original reporting. Finocchio did indicate that BR is looking into doing more in that space.
The lack of mainstream stars is a concern since without these highlighted people, the casual fan does not have someone to look to in the sport.
Notably, Finocchio also stated that Fantasy Football peaked and is now out of date. He noted that Fantasy is not catching on with the BR audience. Daily Fantasy Sports is now the future. He did note that “[i]deally, betting becomes legal.”
Payout Perspective:
There are many parallels between the sport of MMA and eSports that will look at in the future. But, the statement from Finocchio is true. This has happened in other sports. The NBA had a problem with the lack of marketing of stars in the 1980s and the early 2000s pre-LeBron and Kevin Durant. But, eSports and MMA are niche sports. One might argue that it might take more of an effort to market and feature its players/fighters. Demetrious Johnson complained of his lack of marketing to feature him and realistically only eSports followers know the names of the sport’s most popular gamers. It will be interesting to see what/how each sport handles this issue and which sport will break through quicker.
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