I’m going to change things up today and list a few stories of people I met in esports. Going to keep them anonymous for the most part. After 10 years of esports I’ve met some pretty interesting people across the world. I’m going to share a few stories throughout 2021 so here it goes!
Story 1 – Crypto Guy
It was around 5 years ago or so and I got an offer of $10,000 USD to allow some random crypto currency to be our main sponsor. That crypto? Bitcoin. Just kidding. I’ve never heard of it and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it again. The offer was to promote their newly launched coin and in exchange we’d receive $10,000 USD worth of their coin. The catch? The coin was impossible to sell on the open market and didn’t make any sense. I never heard or saw from crypto guy again. If you’re out there, I hope your coin made it my guy.
Story 2 – Running our first tournament
Let’s say this was an eye opener for me and my business partner. We went under a different name and had 0 cred in running tournaments. We had a vision of doing a tournament and offering a whopping $750 USD (nowadays teams would laugh you out of the room for that amount!). Times were different then and $750 USD was decent for two guys running a sponsorless tournament in Dota 2.
Issues we ran into:
- Open qualifiers were full of mini laywers and people threatening to sue us over them showing up late
- People thought we were a scam
- Teams dropped out last minute
- We had backup teams drop out last minute too
- Stand-ins were everywhere
- We didn’t think of the ping issues of SA vs NA teams (by default it’s been US East and that’s the standard still… luckily that worked out!)
- We made it through the tournament with about 350 concurrent viewers (all from the SA team)
- The winners were smash and company from Peru who eventually got banned from all Valve tournaments for match fixing (sad)
- We weren’t sure how to pay the winners from Peru.
It was a learning experience and one I’ll never forget!
Story 3 – SirActionSlacks casts PUGB
We were looking to expand into other titles and we just into PUBG. It was our 2nd tournament and we had asked SirActionSlacks to cover the tournament to help us get some fresh eyes on it. The tournament was going pretty well until slacks decided to start eating on air into the mic and well, being slacks overall. The email I received from an investor in esports was like no other I have ever had.
It had some of the following:
- “This is the worst tournament I’ve ever seen”
- “This is unprofessional and profanity laced, my children were watching”
- “This is such a bad look for esports”
- “I’m going to cancel all your sponsors and tell everyone to not watch”
It was a rough 24-48 hours of calls but I pulled it through. Sponsors were OK with it and understood. I got the guy to calm down and we eventually had a good call about the industry and the PUBG scene overall liked our tournament. The investor is no longer in the scene and has moved on from esports. Slacks and I have a great laugh about it every once in a while. You could say we had:
Story 4 – Tesla Kyle
Around 5-6 years ago I met a guy named Kyle. He was one of our staff members / admins. In addition to Kyle, I met Michael. I keep in touch with Michael regularly but I don’t know where Kyle went. Anyways, Kyle had always shared his stock tips and he was a fanatic about an up and coming company called Tesla (I know right). Kyle would share paragraphs of due diligence about Tesla saying how it was the future and how he put all of his pay cheques into the stock. He showed so much passion for Tesla and we thought he had some quirks but he was a great guy and kept spirits high. I didn’t end up buying Tesla nor did any of my staff members at the bargain price of $40 USD (presplit). However, Kyle did and if you’re out there Kyle, I hope you held and you’re enjoying your villa somewhere.
Closing
The moral of the story is, you meet some super interesting people in esports and the journey has just begun for me. Feel free to share your own stories or contact me.