eSports
Allied Esports Enters Latin American Market with TV Azteca for Debut of Live Original Event NATION VS NATION™
TV Azteca to Launch Azteca Gaming Platform and Partner with Allied Esports for Strategic Esports Development in Latin America
Allied Esports announced its first product launch as part of a strategic alliance and exclusive agreement signed this year with TV Azteca, a Grupo Salinas company and the top sports network in Mexico, to create and deliver live esports experiences and esports-related content for the Mexico market and throughout LatAm.
Titled NATION VS NATION™, Allied Esports’ first event and broadcast production in Latin America will feature a squad of four U.S. players as they battle a Mexican team of 40 total players, including featured and celebrity squads and 32 fan participants, in PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS with the inaugural NATION VS NATION trophy and cash prizes on the line.
“Latin America represents a massive and transformative opportunity for Allied Esports,” said Frank Ng, co-CEO of Ourgame Holdings International, owner of Allied Esports. “By combining our live events experience with TV Azteca’s unequalled reach as the number one sports network in Mexico, this crucial esports ecology partnership will be a major driver in building out the offline-online environment at the core of Allied Esports’ global strategy.”
The global debut of NATION VS NATION will also usher in TV Azteca’s latest platform, Azteca Gaming, joining the company’s leading news, sports and entertainment content across digital assets and more than 40 local broadcast and regional free-to-air stations reaching over 95 percent of the Mexican market. The event and broadcast will launch a new era in mass media esports content in the region.
“The transformation process of TV Azteca, to bring the best television, has led to set an eye in new markets, towards an audience that consumes esports,” said Benjamín Salinas, CEO of TV Azteca. “Sports are part of our strength, and now with esports, we find a way to connect with a growing market in Mexico.”
Led by captain Johnathan “Fatal1ty” Wendel, one of most accomplished professional gamers in history and an inaugural member of the International Video Game Hall of Fame, the U.S. NATION VS NATION team will also include: professional gamer and streamer, Avori; professional player for Ghost Gaming and winner of the PGL-PUBG Spring Invitational 2018, Miccoy; and Ghost Gaming’s soon-to-be professional player, Vegas.
Team Mexico will be led by a featured squad of professional players and streamers – Alberto “QUERETAROCK” Oceguera, Nicol “NicolSteel” Toriz, Anthony “TMX5” Fernández and Isaac “Clumzy” Ramíres – as well as a number of surprise celebrities and guests.
The remaining Mexican team will be formed through two rounds of qualifying earlier in the day. Each qualifying heat will include two games in which players will be ranked by a point system based on kills and finish. The top 32 players will move on to the finals where they will join the featured and celebrity squads and compete against the U.S. team in a best-of-three competition.
Team USA will be designated as the winner of each game if they are the last squad standing, while a Team Mexico win will occur if the U.S. squad is eliminated. The first team to reach two wins will take home the inaugural NATION VS NATION trophy.
NATION VS NATION will air on TV Azteca platforms starting at 6 p.m. local time. The event will also be live streamed on TV Azteca’s digital properties. Allied Esports will offer a live English simulcast of the stream on twitch.tv/AlliedEsports.
This announcement follows news from March 2019 in which TV Azteca and the World Poker Tour® agreed to bring WPT’s poker content library, premier poker events and the development of social poker and exclusively customized gaming products to a growing Latin America audience.
As previously announced, Allied Esports and its sister company, the World Poker Tour, both currently owned by Ourgame Holdings International, will be acquired, subject to shareholder and regulatory approval and the satisfaction of other conditions to closing, by Black Ridge Acquisition Corp., to form Allied Esports Entertainment.
For additional information about NATION VS NATION and other Allied Esports initiatives, follow @AlliedEsports and visit AlliedEsports.gg.
eSports
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eSports
R&D rethink needed for sportsbooks to harness esports’ power
Esports betting is still grappling with a perception problem amongst operators. Despite the leaps and bounds in product development made by suppliers – particularly in the last two years – esports hasn’t shaken off the image built in the late 2010s.
Our good friend, Oliver Niner, Head of Sales at PandaScore, has been kind to share the below article with us.
There’s scepticism around esports betting’s value, how well it can actually perform and what’s needed to make it appeal to bettors. A big part of that comes down to perception, which shapes the research and development (R&D) choices made by each operator.
Self-fulfilling prophecy?
Operators who have put the research and development (R&D) resources into esports are seeing excellent growth, while others are still treating it like part of a long tail. The lack of a uniform approach to esports often translates into hesitancy to be bullish and invest in esports.
Whereas in the United States, post-PASPA sports betting has exploded and operators are seeking to capture as much territory and market share as possible because in most cases, you switch the lights on and the money comes in. It’s, of course, good business sense to take opportunities like this – you can apply the same templates used elsewhere on an incredibly lucrative market.
This kind of approach has been attempted for esports and hasn’t found the same success. Granted, the legislation for betting on esports has been somewhat slower than that of sports betting and iGaming.
However, bullish operators have acknowledged the fact that esports hasn’t found the same success in regulated states and asked what can be done differently, while for others, esports has been thrown into the too-hard basket or relegated to the bargain bucket.
For the latter, the fate of the esports vertical becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy – especially if an operator already using a budget esports product that throttles its very growth.
It takes two to tango
When esports is discussed in broader betting circles, you’ll often hear different versions of the same talking point: the problem with esports is no one is doing it well, it doesn’t innovate.
This argument is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Esports is a driver of innovation, and it is sportsbook R&D that is holding it back.
Multiple suppliers on the market are investing significant resources into R&D, and bullish operators are leveraging these product innovations to acquire new customers and create engagements made for the internet age.
There are understandable reasons why sports betting doesn’t innovate. It’s largely because operators focus on acquisition, entering new territories and spending money on data rights. But the actual R&D on sportsbook products is left lacking, with ever-increasing cost-per-acquisition (CPA) numbers a clear symptom of this.
It means that if an operator does decide to use or acquire an esports specialist supplier but does little to cater its product and attempts to just lay the sports betting template over the top, of course performance will be throttled.
It’s like putting a Ferrari engine in a Prius – no offence to Toyota or Prius owners.
The same problem exists on the platform supplier front. Platforms are understandably focused on compliance and getting customers live, not necessarily improving models or their products.
Even the idea that if you just acquire an innovative company the problem is solved or you have found the solution, doesn’t hold water. In many cases, the company is acquired and plenty of noise is made about it, but there’s little organisational investment in R&D afterwards.
It’s not just in esports
These problems extend to customer acquisition and marketing for most emerging markets, not just esports. There’s a rush to use the same old playbook in newer sectors because it’s easy.
The fantasy vs. house sector in the US is already experiencing an acquisition arms race. As analyst Dustin Gouker points out, deposit match bonuses for new users on fantasy vs house products have jumped from $100 to as high as $500 in some places.
This is the same race that played out in sports betting and despite the costs, there’s little effort from most operators to try something different. There’s less work when you just put the same acquisition template on an emerging sector and call it a day. This seems to be an accepted practice in the industry, for better or for worse.
Esports betting success requires ongoing dialogue
Rather than attempting to wedge esports into hegemonic sportsbook approaches, sportsbooks need to take a completely unique approach.
The fact is the betting sector has barely scratched the surface – communities of esports fans are still dormant. Canadian operator Rivalry has built a successful, esports-first business by embracing the ever-changing internet culture that esports inhabits. French esports organisation Karmine Corp recently sold out a 30,000-person stadium for an event with no prize money up for grabs.
Innovative products developed on the supplier side like microbetting and betbuilders are only half of the equation.
Maximising esports revenues requires institutional investment, ongoing R&D and collaboration between suppliers and operators to create products and experiences. This includes having staff on the operator side that can drive and push the product further, and crucially, rethinking current sportsbook strategies and practices.
Building experiences for betting’s greatest emerging market – one that caters to your future core audience – takes investment, innovation and a willingness to experiment. If the industry wants to make the most of the Millennial and Gen Z audience that will become its primary customers, investment into R&D and close collaboration between suppliers and operators is needed. Many hands makes light work.
eSports
North Star Network Acquires Um Dois Esportes
North Star Network has acquired Um Dois Esportes, a sports coverage and analysis site created from the merger of Gazeta Do Povo and Tribuna do Paraná in 2020.
Julien Josset, co-founder of North Star Network, said: “Thank you to the team at GRPCOM for their faith in us to take the brand forward. Um Dois Esportes is an established and renowned site in Paraná State, and we’re excited about the challenge of developing this asset.
“We’re happy to maintain the collaboration with the existing editorial team, and look forward to working with them, bringing our unique NSN approach, to take UDE forward.”
NSN’s signing of Um Dois Esportes is the media house’s fourth acquisition of 2024, following the recent deals to purchase UK-based SportsMole and MrFixitsTips, as well as Chilean site AlAireLibre, which was announced in March.
The latest addition to the North Star media portfolio joins existing assets including Top Mercato, Afrik-Foot, and Vringe. The Paris-based company already oversees a significant Brazilian operation, delivering over 6 million sessions per month, from the likes of Trivela, Premier League Brasil and Lakers Brasil.
NSN will retain Curitiba-based journalists from the Um Dois Esportes legacy team to maintain the asset’s unique tone and popular coverage of the Paraná sports scene across site and social.
Rafael Mello, Director of GRPCOM, said: “We were surprised by the interest, and initially had no intention of selling Um Dois, but as the conversations evolved, we realised this was a serious group with good intentions. We were very happy to see our project being valued by a large international group and going global, demonstrating the quality of the content we produced.
“We’re also proud that North Star inherited our journalists, who are truly responsible for the success of the product we offer readers every day.”
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