Konvoy Ventures is a thesis driven venture capital firm focused on the video gaming industry. We invest in infrastructure technology, tools, and platforms.
Highlights from the Esports Business Summit
This past week I was in Las Vegas speaking at the Esports Business Summit. It was a fantastic conference at the MGM and was well attended by those in the industry. Below are a few of my takeaways from the conference around YouTube, media, and the collegiate scene.
YouTube Gaming: Ryan Wyatt, the head of YouTube Gaming, gave a keynote around their focus in regards to esports:
They also mentioned that YouTube Gaming alone had 50B hours watched and 200M DAUs in 2018.
Media / Sponsors: in esports, sponsors today have more tools and data at their disposal than they did a few years ago. This is allowing for a more analytical approach from non-endemic sponsors as they look at entering the gaming/esports space. I spoke with several Fortune 100 brands who are leveraging tools, platforms, and the strategies of their piers as they increasingly direct more marketing dollars to esports/gaming.
Collegiate Scene: the collegiate esports scene is still very early on in its development. While there has been great progress over the last few years, the infrastructure and school-buy-in is still in its infancy. A major debate is whether the collegiate scene will play a key part in the “path-to-pro”, given that many professional esports athletes are going pro much earlier than age 22. Many of the esports team CEOs think that college won’t play a key role in their recruiting and that they will adopt the academy model that we see in European soccer. Naturally, the collegiate scene leaders disagree, yet they will need recruitment validation from the pro-scene to disprove this.
Highlights from the Esports Business Summit
This past week I was in Las Vegas speaking at the Esports Business Summit. It was a fantastic conference at the MGM and was well attended by those in the industry. Below are a few of my takeaways from the conference around YouTube, media, and the collegiate scene.
YouTube Gaming: Ryan Wyatt, the head of YouTube Gaming, gave a keynote around their focus in regards to esports:
They also mentioned that YouTube Gaming alone had 50B hours watched and 200M DAUs in 2018.
Media / Sponsors: in esports, sponsors today have more tools and data at their disposal than they did a few years ago. This is allowing for a more analytical approach from non-endemic sponsors as they look at entering the gaming/esports space. I spoke with several Fortune 100 brands who are leveraging tools, platforms, and the strategies of their piers as they increasingly direct more marketing dollars to esports/gaming.
Collegiate Scene: the collegiate esports scene is still very early on in its development. While there has been great progress over the last few years, the infrastructure and school-buy-in is still in its infancy. A major debate is whether the collegiate scene will play a key part in the “path-to-pro”, given that many professional esports athletes are going pro much earlier than age 22. Many of the esports team CEOs think that college won’t play a key role in their recruiting and that they will adopt the academy model that we see in European soccer. Naturally, the collegiate scene leaders disagree, yet they will need recruitment validation from the pro-scene to disprove this.
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