Count Stan and Josh Kroenke and their Kroenke Sports & Entertainment (KSE) business as the latest in a growing list of traditional sports owners who are turning their attention and investing in esports.
On Thursday, Activision Blizzard announced two more teams for their upcoming Overwatch League in Cloud9 and the aforementioned KSE buying spots.
With the acquisition, KSE now adds an esports complement to an already impressive portfolio of professional teams that includes the Colorado Avalanche, Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Rams, Colorado Rapids, Colorado Mammoth and Arsenal Football Club.
The Overwatch League will differ from other professional esports leagues in that it will be more regionally-based with teams representing specific cities. In Josh Kroenke’s case, he bought a team for Los Angeles, the second L.A. team announced for the league.
“Building communities around the best competitive experiences in the world is incredibly rewarding, and the Overwatch League offers the chance to create something special,” said Josh Kroenke in a statement. “We’re impressed by the vision and strategy for the League, and we’re going to build a great team for Los Angeles that inspires fans near and far.”
(Courtesy Activision Blizzard)
The Kroenkes join an eclectic group of owners who have bought spots into the upcoming esports league. This is a range of investors that include traditional sports owners like the Kroenkes, existing professional esports teams and mobile video game companies.
“It was important for us to really find best-in-class operators that, first and foremost, have a proven track record of building and growing and fostering a fan base,” Overwatch League commissioner Nate Nanzer said in a phone interview. “Whether that’s around sports teams like Stan and Josh Kroenke have done, whether that’s around mobile games like NetEase has done and Kevin Chiu has done, or around esports like Jack [Etienne] at Cloud9.”
Below is the full list of Overwatch League owners so far with cities they’re representing in brackets:
• Stan and Josh Kroenke – Co-owners of Kroenke Sports & Entertainment (Los Angeles)
• Robert Kraft – Chairman, CEO of the Kraft Group and New England Patriots (Boston)
• Jeff Wilpon – Co-founder, partner of Sterling.VC and COO of the New York Mets (New York)
• Jack Etienne – CEO, founder of Cloud9 (London)
• Noah Whinston – CEO of Immortals (Los Angeles)
• Ben Spoont – CEO, co-founder of Misfits Gaming (Miami-Orlando)
• Andy Miller – Chairman and founder of NRG Esports (San Francisco)
• NetEase (Shanghai)
• Kevin Chou – Co-founder of Kabam (Seoul)
The Kroenke family, Kraft and Wilpon buying into the Overwatch League is part of a trend that’s seeing traditional sports find ways into esports. Other such examples include Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs and his hospitality company, Delaware North, partnering with multi-esports organization Splyce and the Miami Heat announcing a “strategic partnership” with Misfits.
Overwatch League is expected to begin later this year in a shortened season with a more full, robust offering to come in 2018. Players interested in competing in the league have an opportunity right now to potentially get recruited just by playing the game as Activision Blizzard have a signing window open until Oct. 30. During this window talent evaluators will be looking for top-tier competitors to join the league.
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With the Overwatch League, Activision Blizzard is looking to create a sustainable environment for its professional players with one-year guaranteed contracts of $50,000 and at least 50 per cent of team performance bonuses from the playoffs and other special events also going into player coffers.
“It was incredibly important to us that the Overwatch League is very aspirational in that everyone who plays Overwatch had a premier global professional league that they can aspire to where, if you’re good enough and you make it, you have a real career,” Nanzer said. “That’s why it was very important for us to have the contract length, the guaranteed minimum salary, the benefits and insurance. All that stuff is really vital.”
Overwatch is a popular first-person shooter video game from publisher/developer Activision Blizzard that pits a team of six against each other. Its main hook lies in its 25 playable characters who all boast unique personalities and abilities. The game first launched on May 24, 2016 and as of April 28 of this year has more than 30 million players worldwide.