Esports more than online players
The competition is fierce and the rewards are magnificent. National team players spend up to 14 hours a day keeping fit. Millions of spectators around the world follow their every move in front of their screens. Welcome to the world of eSports.
That's right, you don't move from your seat. In eSport, speed is not measured in legs of steel, but in responsiveness and agility with a keyboard or mouse, in giddy reflexes practically reserved for 20-year-olds. One exchanges boots and ball with empowered "heroes" or "champions," as in the wildly popular LoL (League of Legends) or DotA 2 (Defence of the Ancestors), or against a group of terrorists or anti-terrorists armed to the teeth as in Counter-Strike, or against one's own virtual team of soccer stars in FIFA.
Enthusiasm is at an all-time high, and like any sports league, eSports are governed by strict rules, with structured competitions and a set of values, explains Sergi Mesonero, "that bring video game play closer to sports." The director of the Liga de Videojuegos Profesional (LVP), one of the industry's most important events in Spain, estimates that a quarter of a million spectators watched the "Final Cup" during the three-day competition and followed the matches over the Internet.
In the case of LVP, the season takes place mainly online and culminates in a major event where spectators can meet their favorite players in person. And eSports fans are delivered. For example, the 10,000 tickets for The International, DotA2's August tournament in Seattle, which last year raffled off more than $10 million, sold out in 10 minutes. So did the 12,000 spectators at League of Legends' European Spring Split final, which turned Madrid's Palacio de Vistalegre upside down in April.
Both games are prime representatives of MOBAs (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena), in which two teams of five players compete online in real time to conquer opposing territory. To win, one must not only master the map on which the action takes place and the dangers lurking, but also the skills and weaknesses of dozens of characters. The game is free, but you can purchase various add-ons and virtual goods for aesthetic purposes and to progress in the game.
There are those who start playing as a hobby and then turn it into a profession, in a sector that is becoming more and more professional. Among the best players in the world are Spaniards: "I never thought I would be where I am today," says Enrique "xPeke" Cedeño (Murcia, 1992). Who would have thought that he would one day carry the 32 kilos of the Summoner's Cup, the League of Legends trophy he won in the first edition in 2011, when he was only 19 years old. And that three years later, this same final of the LCS, the European championship organized by the game's publisher, Riot Games, will gather tens of thousands of spectators in the Sangam World Cup Stadium in Seoul.
What started as a game in a local cyber-gaming club soon led him to one of the biggest clubs in Europe, Fnatic, where he played for four years. In December, he took the plunge and founded his own team, Origen, based in Tenerife, which within a few months managed to reach the LCS, the "champions" of LoL. xPeke also breaks the stereotype that the uninitiated may have of video game fans. Sporty, flirtatious and handsome, he briefly appears as a nice young man with a good head: "The life of a gamer is short because you get exhausted playing so much," he admits. He wastes no time and plants the seeds for the day when the time comes. "My goal is to keep playing as long as I'm having fun and doing reasonably well," he says with a straight face, "I can keep going for another year or two."
The business potential is interesting. Newzoo predicts that direct public spending on eSports will be about $500 million in 2017, a conservative scenario that could double under optimal conditions. In Asia, eSports is already a highly developed industry: South Korea, a gamer's paradise, has recognized eSports as a second-level Olympic sport. The sector has also grown in Europe and, to a lesser extent, in Spain. Mesonero, from LVP, gives us the key: "We have a very interesting target audience: people between 15 and 30 years old who have a high level of consumption, even if they don't have a high disposable income, and who are difficult to reach because they are not present in traditional media. Germán Domínguez, director of Giants Gaming, the only Spanish team to participate in the LCS this season, also confirms that "the growth this year has been huge [...] millennials are here and there is a lot of investment".
For professional players, the money is good bait. I make more than a normal job," xPeke says cautiously. According to Dominguez of the Giants, salaries at the European level range from 1,500 to 5,000 euros per month, plus the advertising revenue that each player earns from streaming his games on the Internet. Carlos "Ocelote" Rodríguez (Madrid, 1990), another player who founded his own team, Gamers 2, a year ago, and who in February announced in this video his retirement from the game to devote himself entirely to managing his brands, comes up with higher figures: "An e-player without a fan base, without a brand behind him, without anything to sell, can earn around 100 .If you also have a fan base and you stream shows, you can get up to 150,000 euros a year; and if you also have a brand, royalties on items you sell with your logo, etc., you can certainly get up to 500,000 or 600,000 euros a year. The people who manage these numbers can probably be counted on one hand.
One of the keys to this activity are the streaming platforms such as Twitch or Spanish Gaming TV, which play an essential role in generating advertising revenues and increasing the fan base in order to monetize the player's image. Indeed, if in the world of eSports there are dozens of professional players, there are tens of thousands of "amateurs" and as many simple spectators. As in traditional sports, it is a show. Newzoo estimates that up to 40% of the people who log on to watch a game are not active players of the major eSports titles, but mere spectators.
It's 2 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon in April, and on Gaming TV, Giants Gaming's Jorge "Werlyb" Casanovas is broadcasting from the game room in Berlin. Between games, the 17-year-old from Grenada chats with some of his more than 500 online followers, in Spanish in one chat and English in another. He hasn't eaten yet, Werlyb says, waiting for one of his teammates to wake up for breakfast. The life of a professional player is non-stop, and it seems common for nights to drag on after games, delaying waking up considerably.
The fan base, as today's "Ocelote" entrepreneur pointed out, is crucial, and international crowds of top Western players number in the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands if we're talking about Asia.
Giants Gaming is the only team composed entirely of Spanish players to have reached the highest level of the LCS. Currently there are 25 people working on the project: analysts, coordinators, managers, communication and audiovisual staff, etc.
But earning a living requires a lot of work and, in the Premier League, exclusive dedication. "You have to realize that you can't make a living from this job if you don't perform well. That's why we usually prioritize studies and work," says the director of Giants Gaming, who is aware that parents don't want to let their children play all the time. In the LCS, however, gaming becomes a job and you spend up to 14 hours a day, six days a week, or even seven.
Spaniard Luis "Deilor" Sevilla (Valencia, 1986) has been the coach of Fnatic's LoL team in Berlin since January, a position he says is still in the midst of professionalizing the industry. "My tasks range from psychological, tactical and strategic preparation to supervising the exercise, diet and schedules of the five players," says Sevilla, who already has experience in the poker world and with the Spanish team 34 United.
The eSports, explains the Fnatic coach, have precisely inherited one of the most feared and characteristic concepts of the card game par excellence: the "tilt", a state of frustration and mental confusion that leads the player to use "suboptimal strategies" and fall into bad decisions and aggressiveness towards his teammates, which can make him "toxic" for the team.
Ocelote, who has experienced this firsthand, describes it this way: "When you're in the 'zone,' you don't listen to anything or anyone, it's just you and your animal instincts. But when a game goes wrong, you always react. A toxic player is someone who cannot control his emotions and reacts to his team.
Yes, in this respect too, eSports mirrors any other competitive sport: emotional control is essential, along with strategic and technical skills, to one day become a champion.