DUBAI: Legendary sports agent and business guru Mark McCormack said, “You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just attach it to a new wagon.”
That’s a sentiment Power League Gaming (PLG) managing director John Lacey would likely agree with.
The Dubai-based firm is looking forward to the final of its Fanta Masters video game tournament next month. It’s the culmination of months of preliminary rounds at events staged in Jordan, Egypt, the UAE and other Middle East countries.
“We’ll be bringing all the winners from across Mena,” said Lacey. “It’s the first real opportunity for Arab players to take part in something that’s focused on them, on the most popular game, FIFA.”
Behind the scenes, PLG is using the amateur tournament to spot and recruit talent for its professional gaming league.
Neither league management nor professional video gaming — known as esports, or electronic sports — are new wheels. But a dedicated Arabian esports league is a new wagon. PLG has started from scratch.
“What we are doing, we want to be out there talking and working with the masses,” said Lacey. “You can do that in two ways; we have two levels. We have our elite leagues, which are smaller, such as the Superleague. That’s the very cream of the crop of Arab talent, the top 16 players who came out of Fanta Masters.
“Fanta Masters is the best of the amateurs. We take the best players out of that and put them in the Superleague. That’s more about streaming and broadcasting. We’re doing that on League of Legends as well, with the Legendary Tour.”
While playing video games as a career may seem like a pipe dream, is it any different from a teenager dreaming of playing cricket for India or football in the English Premier League?
But while the elite can earn big money — the top esports earner, US player Saahil Arora, has to date earned just under $2 million (Dh7.35 million) — they are the esports equivalents of Lionel Messi or Sachin Tendulkar.
“There’s a lot less money in esports than people think,” said Lacey. “Publishers are focused on developing esports as a marketing tool. They use them, run them as an event company. Professional sports, playing against each other online, has been changed by the publishers. They have their own events — but they work in partnership with others.
“How a third party like myself does it is to develop other programmes.
“[Fanta Masters] runs on several tracks, but the main one is FIFA 15. It’s free entry. We rely on business marketing support to build a programme. Fanta’s not funding esports [in particular], it’s part of their marketing programme, putting their brand out.”
As an amateur event, Fanta Masters’ grand prize at the November 21 finals is a 2015 Dodge Charger. with runners up and national winners earning a holiday, video games and consoles.
“We’ll be bringing all the winners from across Mena. It’s the first real opportunity for Arab players to take part in something that’s focussed on them, on the most popular game, FIFA,” said Lacey.
Unlike publisher-dominated leagues, PLG emphasises physical tournaments. It has staged events throughout the GCC, and as far afield as Iraq, Algeria, Jordan and Egypt.
“It’s a different business model. Publishers want everything online and have 10 people in the event. We had 300,000 people at events last year — 10 per cent of them played in tournaments and out of that maybe half a per cent end up in the league online.”
Box: Fanta Masters Final
When: November 21
Where: Ice Rink, Dubai Mall
Box: World’s Top 10 Esports Earners
1. Saahil Arora (US) $1.97m
2. Peter Dager (US) $1.96m
3. Kurtis Ling (CAN) $1.88m
4. Clinton Loomis (US) $1.74m
5. Zhang, Ning (CHI) $1.67m
6. Sumail Hassan (PAK) $1.64m
7. Chen, Zhihao (CHI) $1.56m
8. Jiao, Wang (CHI) $1.21m
9. Wang, Zhaohui (CHI) $1.21m
10. Zhang, Pan (CHI) $1,19m
Source: esportsearnings.com
