Interview with James Dean, ESL UK Co-Managing Director
GameGrin sat down with James Dean of ESL UK to chat about the pro scene in the UK, Overwatch and the growth of the industry.
Though eSports is growing in the UK, would it be fair to say that the grassroots still has a long way to catch up?
When we came back into concentrating on grassroots UK about four years ago we had to assess the situation and ran lots of different tournaments to figure out where the community was. Then as we went into launching the UK Premiership two years ago - season one was the start of last year - we introduced League of Legends and CS:GO. The latter we chose because it had an existing scene and we gained some support for League of Legends that helped us select it. League has been helped by a few high-profile tournaments but we’re seeing as much with CS:GO. It’s still good and it still has a place but I think the most exciting thing is the new titles that are coming about. Within these four years we’ve seen two titles launch from Blizzard - Hearthstone and Overwatch. Introducing those two titles at a very grassroots level at the beginning of their lifecycles has prevailed. The quality of play and the personalities coming out is great. As we go along and new titles come about and add new cups a difference will really come about.
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Do you think that games press in the UK could do better in covering eSports?
We do have a few websites that do consistent coverage now. You’ve got the endemic websites like eSports News UK and UK CS:GO but on the more mainstream level we have made inroads with Red Bull, covering all our weekly content. We’ve got CLICKON eSports covering our highlights too. I think that for every website to make it work for them and grow an audience they’ll need consistency, narrative, something to go from season to season. That’s what the Premiership provides. We actually create syndicated packages to make it easier - if we’re streaming for six to eight weeks for three nights a week for six to eight hours it’s hard work to sit there, watch the matches and analyse them in an article. We’re doing the hard work there for press.
It’s the first year that Overwatch has been included in the ESL Premiership, do you see a big future for the game?
It certainly looks that way. We’ve only just started to see the pro leagues emerge really from gamescom onwards. We’re likely to see an announcement about next season, soon, I imagine.
I noticed that there wasn’t a UK team at the Blizzard Overwatch World Cup, do you think there’s a difference of culture between European, American and Asian gamers that prevents teams from the continent doing well? Are Europeans not competitive enough?
That’s a good question. We’ve not seen any evidence of situations where a UK team gets to that position [and fails due to gaming culture]. I imagine if a UK team did make it to a world cup in Overwatch I think there would be a lot of excitement and a lot of support for that - we saw the evidence for that when we brought the ESL CS:GO league to London. The passion of the community was massive but the default support was with the European team due to it being closer to home. We had a show match, too, and HenryG was playing - the only UK CS player we had. The crowd went crazy for that. I think, from an audience perspective, there’s a huge demand for wanting to see [homegrown talent]. How would we get there? I don’t think there’s any disconnect in the way teams will play, I think we need to start seeing teams step up a little bit on their commitment but they can't do that without the financial support and consistency behind the scenes. That’s really why the UK Premiership exists. The winners of our tournament can start to think about taking it to the next level with practice, with going full time. The worst case scenario of course is our players being poached by larger European organisations.
Do you think the UK scene needs more personality, more trash talk?
Yeah! The UK is all about banter, we’re the creators of Monty Python. All that jokey, fun and a bit crude humour is what the UK has to offer the scene. We’ve had loads of firsts for the eSports world with ESL over the years. We were the first eSports tournament to get a streaker on stage! It had to be the UK. We were the first tournament to have beer snakes. I’m surprised we didn't have something crazy at MCM. The UK brings that sort of tongue-in-cheek, real fun feeling. You look at the eSports scene globally and there’s a huge amount of British talent - they’re not necessarily players but there are plenty of casters, people behind the scenes and such. It’s just a matter of time, I’d say, until the UK prevails and takes the main stage.
We should take our rightful place then?
Exactly. eSports is coming home.
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