The Sixers Bought Two E-Sports Teams
The group that owns basketball’s Philadelphia 76ers, hockey’s New Jersey Devils, and English soccer’s Crystal Palace is adding a professional video gaming franchise to its portfolio.
With the purchase and merger of two successful eSports teams, the group led by investors Josh Harris and David Blitzer becomes the first to own professional video gaming team alongside big-time basketball and hockey franchises and an English Premier League club. They join a bevy of traditional sports owners and companies eager to profit on the growth of eSports, which draws hundreds of thousands of typically young, male fans to online matches and in-person tournaments.
Scott O’Neil, Chief Executive Officer of the 76ers and the Devils, said the organization will apply its experience with sponsorship and digital marketing to the new entity, a merger of Team Dignitas and Apex Gaming. The group also owns the Prudential Center, which could host eSports tournaments. A recent championship event sold out the Staples Center in Los Angeles in minutes.
OK so this is somewhat surprising and seemingly comes out of nowhere. I’ll admit, I don’t know much about how e-sports operates, but it is HUGE right now in tech and media circles, and many see it as a genuine competitor of traditional sports in the future.
I’m 33 and right on the cusp of a generation that grew up playing video games. I get it. I have Madden 17 and NBA 2k17. I’m not sure I’d seriously sit and watch other people play for any extended period of time. But there is an entire generation of kids who find watching skilled video gamers play on Twitch or YouTube more entertaining than watching a football or basketball game, and certainly a baseball game. The entire paradigm for how a younger generation consumes “competitive sports” is different. Even for most of us who embrace streaming, sports are still appointment viewing, viewed live, often in a social context, because that’s how we always did it. It’s what we learned growing up. But kids who grow up with wireless devices never had to wait for a network to broadcast a big event– they could simply call up whatever they want to watch on a phone or iPad, and e-sports has been built for that ecosystem. Traditional sports, still, are fighting against it. The reverence with which we treat sports and its characters is how some kids will treat e-sports and its competitors one day, if they’re not doing so already. There’s huge potential.
It’s not just the Sixers. ESPN has embraced e-sports and is covering them in a non-trivial way, and Draft Kings (a Sixers partner) even offers e-sports contests. And then there are Rick Fox, Shaq, Jimmy Rollins and Alex Rodriguez. Owning a sports team and having the marketing and facility infrastructure to promote and host events makes for a logical connection to gaming. It might be something most people over 30 can’t understand, but my guess is there’s an entire not-so-small subculture of kids who just got their hobby validated by a professional sports team.