‘We have a lot of teams who are out in the marketplace, and they’re struggling’: A Q&A with Riot Games esports head John Needham

On Wednesday, Riot Games president of esports John Needham published a blog post outlining his company’s vision for the future of competitive gaming. The post directly addressed many of the flashpoint issues of the embattled esports industry — including esports organizations’ struggles to turn a profit and Riot’s plans to help staunch the bleeding.

The blog post comes during a period of considerable uncertainty for the esports industry. As longstanding esports companies such as Beyond the Summit and CLG shut down or search for acquisition partners, some investors and industry observers are losing confidence in competitive gaming’s ability to generate sustainable profits.

Riot might be one of the better-prepared esports companies to help correct the course of the industry. Its marquee titles, “League of Legends” and “Valorant,” regularly draw millions of viewers and drive ample sales of in-game items, making Riot’s involvement in esports into a lucrative endeavor. Now, the company is looking to share some of the spoils with the esports teams in its ecosystem in a bid to help keep the industry afloat.

To learn more about the vision and strategy behind Riot’s blog post, Digiday spoke with Needham for an annotated Q&A.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

On the timing of the blog post

John Needham:

We have a lot of teams who are out in the marketplace; they’re trying to source new sponsors and new investors, and they’re struggling, frankly. A lot of it has to do with uncertainty about general economic conditions, but another part of it is just the narrative that’s out there around esports. And a lot of that is how other publishers have run their esports — which isn’t Riot’s way. No, as in most things, Riot is just very player-focused and team-focused as a company, and we take it seriously, our business relationship with teams. So it was trying to dispel some of the narrative around how other publishers have approached esports.

Digiday:

Needham didn’t mention any other game developers by name, but it’s not hard to read between the lines in this answer. At the moment, Activision Blizzard is at odds with the esports teams in its Overwatch League, with the majority of teams hiring a law firm to start a collective bargaining process against Activision Blizzard in January. By promising to create more opportunities for esports teams to share in the profits, Riot might be looking to avoid a similar blow-up on its end.

On Riot’s strategy for selling broadcast rights in esports

John Needham:

I can tell you we are not focused on that right now for two reasons. One, we don’t think that doing exclusive broadcast deals is something that’s player- or fan-friendly; we have a philosophy around being everywhere that our players are, and …read more

Source:: Digiday