Why eSports Companies Need To Own Their Digital Presence

In a rapidly evolving world where digital trends are ever changing, eSports teams have been left in an odd space. Whilst the entire eSports world has moved online in recent years, the sector is still growing on paper, but it isn’t reaching the sort of audiences and cultivating as large a fan base as it would like.

Previously, eSports teams held tournaments at large stadiums with capacity crowds cheering every move and the players all on the same local server. Highlights of games were then released on the tournament’s website and YouTube and were then clipped up and pushed out by the teams’ social media managers. The dialogue between fans and teams was entirely done through social media, and this remains largely the case today.

Nowadays, the picture has changed slightly. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, all of these tournaments have been staged completely online, removing the in-person attendance revenue stream completely — so much so that it’s not outside the realms of possibility that 99% of fans may never attend a game in person.

That in itself has so many implications for how the eSports experience is consumed, but let’s firstly take a look at how eSports teams can harness this to their advantage.

Sports fandom, be it eSports or otherwise, is visible just about everywhere online, with platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Discord being the main mediums through which teams communicate with their fans. Like many industries over the last two decades or so, sports organisations have built their content and communities on the borrowed land of these social media giants, utilising their vast reach.

However, they are beginning to recognise the importance of owning their digital fan experiences, or real estate, by understanding that fan engagement is not something one can outsource anymore.

Ticketing, merchandise, and sponsorship revenue are all driven through fan loyalty and engagement, so it makes sense to funnel this all through their own channels, such as a proprietary app, now that the online fanbase has been fully established.

This is leading to a large transformation in the sense that eSports organisations are now becoming media and entertainment organisations in their own right, and they are therefore recognising the opportunities and importance of taking on more ownership of their digital content and fans.

This isn’t to say that social media will become irrelevant for teams in the future; quite the contrary in fact. Social media will continue to be the starting point of online fan engagement by attracting new and casual fans, leading them to teams and therefore to the newly owned digital experiences, where casual fans can become a true consumer for the team.

Once they’re at this point in the customer journey, they may not necessarily be buying tickets to the live events regularly, but they’re able to see and consume all the merchandise, subscriptions, content packages, experiences, and sponsors’ products the team has to offer; all of which are additional revenue streams which are growing in importance and prominence.

Put yourself in the shoes of a proper sports fan, in any discipline, for a minute and imagine receiving specific pieces of information and communication from the likes of Lionel Messi, Virat Kohli, or Marcus Smith during and around matchdays.

Particularly for sports where individual players are revered to the same extent as the team itself, of which eSports is most certainly one, this is an extraordinarily powerful tool that is just waiting to be capitalised on.

Features such as live chats with these players, exclusive behind-the-scenes content, interactive polls and quizzes, and other gamification elements that reward fans for their loyalty all bring a sense of community to the fans and will only serve to increase their engagement, and therefore spending, with the team.

Partnerships with sponsors can be integrated seamlessly within the app and they can also provide valuable data on fan demographics, preferences, and content consumption habits, empowering teams to make informed decisions about future content creation, marketing strategies, and merchandise development.

The cherry on top of this new piece of real-estate that teams will own is that all of these engagement and community features will all be wrapped up in a neat, team-branded package. The user experience will be heavily emblematic of the team’s colours and their overall aesthetic to ensure constant brand-recognition amongst casual and super fans alike.

This all leads to the conclusion that an all-encompassing direct-to-fan sports app is the best way to harness the buying power of a team’s expanded fanbase, building genuine centralised fan bases which are more meaningful, consistent, and measurable than their social media counterparts.

In other words, direct-to-fan apps are no longer a luxury, but a necessity for eSports teams in today’s landscape.