Turner Sports brings
eSports to CES 2016 with a "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive"
tournament.
Turner Sports
officially enters the eSports arena at CES with a $50,000 “CS:GO” tournament
that feeds into a $2.4 million prize pool for 2016.
Turner Sports, in
partnership with WME/IMG, has chosen the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show (CES)
in Las Vegas to kick off its eSports play. The company will livestream the
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive finals, the culmination of a three-week online
tournament involving 700 teams, during its daylong sports technology showcase
Jan. 7. Gamers will be competing for $50,000 and a chance to compete in the
first ELeague tournament, which will debut later in 2016. The finals will be
livestreamed on the FaceIt Twitch channel.
This first event will
give gamers a taste of what’s to come from the company’s eSports commitment,
says Craig Barry, executive vice president of production and chief content
officer at Turner Sports.
The first 10-week
ELeague tournament is slated to occur in Q2 with the second planned for Q4.
Each tournament will have a $1.2 prize pool. While the bulk of the eSports
programming will be digital, TBS will air content, including the finals.
“In this changing media
landscape the paradigm is shifting and we’re seeing more digital mobile social
content,” Barry says. “This is a digital play with a linear broadcast extension
to it.”
Barry says Turner chose
Valve’s Counter Strike: Global Offensive because its point of entry is more
accessible to a casual fan to follow the action of the military first-person
shooter than a more complex multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game like
Riot Games’ League of Legends or Valve’s Dota 2.
It doesn’t hurt that
CS:GO is rapidly growing its global eSports fan base. Peter Warman, CEO at
research firm Newzoo, forecasts the game will soon become the top eSports title
in the world.
Barry says the goal is
for the game mechanics and the competition to be authentic. But the focus of
Turner’s eSports coverage will be to shed light on the players and the teams.
“You’ll see the
competition, but you’ll also be told stories of where the players came from and
what they gave up,” Barry says. “There will be heroes and villains. These stories
could be a major driver for a new audience to come in.”
Barry compares
translating eSports for a broadcast audience to the Olympics, where networks
devote a lot of time and effort in revealing who the athletes are. He says this
type of storytelling can make things compelling to an audience that might not
be interested in an Olympic sport such as curling, or a video game.
“Instead of approaching
this as this is our ELeague and pounding our chest, we want to help the entire
eSports ecosystem and be authentic to both TBS and CS:GO,” Barry says. “We want
to help bring stability to the ecosystem.”
Turner is making a big
commitment in eSports. The company is building out an infrastructure in Atlanta
with a custom studio space, a full practice facility, a control room, and all
the bells and whistles.
“We’re looking at
eSports as a national sports league,” Barry says. “We’re approaching it on the
same plateau. We’ll create the same type of national broadcast experience for
eSports as we would with the NBA.”
Sponsors are starting
to look at eSports in the same way. Barry says a lot of big national brands
have reached out to him since the ELeague was announced.
“We’re talking to the
same caliber of sponsors as we do with any of our other sports to try to figure
out the secret sauce that will work for eSports,” Barry says. “In no way will
we affect the authentic game play tournament experience, so everyone has to be
open to creative and innovative ways to connect with this audience.”
Barry compares an
eSports event to soccer, where the ball is constantly in play and there are
limited commercial breaks.
“Sponsors want to
partner with us and figure out how to create the most value for both of our
brands without turning off the gamers,” Barry says.
by John Gaudiosi
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