We
breathe
soccer
breathe
soccer
ISL’s Tandhem player Luis “Koldo” Pérez was presented yesterday as one of Koi’s players – the new esports team founded by Ibai Llanos, one of the biggest Spanish streamers, and FC Barcelona star Gerard Piqué.
The Koi presentation took place at Barcelona‘s Palau St. Jordi, with a full house of more than 15.000 attendees. The tickets were sold out only 5 minutes after their release, and the event was live streamed on Ibai Llanos’ Twitch channel to over 300.000 viewers.
ISL attended the presentation, where Ibai and Piqué unveiled Koi’s LoL team members, content creators, and sponsors, including Disney+ and Cupra.
There was also a live draft of a car valued in 36.000€, and a show match against the French world renowned team Karmine Corp, which was the first victory for Squad Koi by 2-1.
In less than one day, Koi gathered half a million followers on Twitter and Instagram, surpassing many established esports teams, such Kcorp themselves.
We at ISL are thrilled to join this ground-breaking and innovative project with our Tandhem Esports branch.
Tandhem stands out by its unique capacity to identify and develop new soccer and esports youth talent.
Koldo is one of the numerous promising talents managed by Tandhem,
Born on November 7th, 2000 in Murcia, Spain, under the name of Luis Pérez, Koldo is a League of Legends jungler, previously playing for G2 Artic. He is very excited about joining Koi and looks forward to beginning this new challenge.
“I’m glad to be here, and very happy with the team, the club and this opportunity” Koldo said during his presentation speech at Palau Sant Jordi.
Koldo and the rest of the team will compete in the LVP and live at the Gaming House – an esports villa especially designed for high performance esports players.
Stay tuned for more updates on the Gaming House and Squad Koi’s results!
João Carvalho is a die hard fan of esports and an expert in the matter.
He was the Founder of Prémios Esports Portugal (Portuguese Esports Awards) and has been working with the esports industry for 10 years.
We asked him to explain to us what esports are and how they have grown so fast, to tell us about the leading esports games, and to share his insights from a business perspective.
But before, let’s take a look at the latest facts and numbers about esports and the video game industry:
The video game industry has been generating more revenue than the movie box office and music industries combined over the last decade, reaching $159.3 billions in 2020.
The esports popularity keeps growing and it is expected to reach over half a million viewers in 2023.
Esports is the competitive side of gaming. I always explain it like this: a person juggling a football ball is not playing a football match. He’s using the same tools (football boots, the ball, might even use a net and a goalkeeper), but he is not competing against anyone other than himself. It is the same with esports: when you are playing video games against other people, in a competitive way, you can call it esports.
I would attribute that to 2 main reasons: the technological advancements of our society, that created the infrastructure needed (high speed internet, accessibility and affordability of video game consoles and gaming PC’s) for people to connect online like they were in an offline environment (no lag, no difference in ping, etc.) – vital for competitive integrity; the eager that human beings have to compete. Since the beginning of time humans are competitive animals in everything they do, so it is just natural that the same applies also to video games.
Tandhem Esports is an extension of Tandhem itself. Tandhem is a global talent agency, with expertise in athlete management and sports marketing. Tandhem Esports shares the exact same values and principles, but applied to the esports industry.
We aim to help semi-pro and pro esports athletes to achieve their goals, both professionally as well as personally. The majority of the athletes in the esports industry are very young and still very naive. They just want to compete and there is nothing wrong with that. We try to defend them from people who know exactly how to take advantage of that, giving them financial, legal and representation advice.
We see ourselves as partners of the players, more than their agents, in the traditional sense of the word.
They are aware of the phenomenon. They know that not entering now may jeopardize their business in the future.
Traditional sports are seeing their fans and viewership grow older as the time goes by. They need to do something to reverse the trend and one way to do it is to target the kids who give the majority of their attention to esports competitions, other than traditional sports ones.
Football and non-football sports institutions know this and see esports as an amazing opportunity to captivate younger audiences.
It is very difficult to tell which teams generate more revenue as the majority of them don’t disclose their annual income in full. One can only grasp and assume, based on the teams they build, the players they hire, the content they produce. Which is not exclusively related to the revenue they organically generate, because some teams survive via continuous outside investments from people still trying to enter the scene.
As of the games with more audience: League of Legends and Counter Strike have been producing top numbers for quite some time and I would consider them top 1 and top 2, respectively, based on the longevity of the numbers they’ve produced.
However, Fortnite and FIFA have been producing amazing numbers too, in platforms such as Twitch and Youtube, and it is very interesting to see what the future holds.
It is important to remember that there is a HUGE gap between the amount of professional teams in traditional sports compared to esports. Top esports players can earn multiple million dollar deals a year, but there are only a few of said players in the world, while in traditional sports it is rare that a player from a top league does not earn those amounts.
This is changing however, because esports players are more keen to create content and to share certain aspects of their daily routine (like training, exercising, habits), something that the younger fans want to see, because they want to emulate their idols.
Could you imagine the hype if Cristiano or Messi would train with a gopro on their heads? The world would stop to see it.
It depends on different factors, but right now I would say it would cost more than one million dollars a year. Two years ago, with talent from Europe (the best region in terms of talent besides the Asian market), you could build a great team with half a million a year.
The salaries increased a lot since the players perceived their power and how much they were generating for the teams just in exposure and stream numbers.
Currently, sponsors are the biggest source of income for team organizations.
I would say that TV Rights will play a huge role in the next 5-10 years, because only now the teams are understanding their importance to the Leagues: the Leagues capitalize on the teams’ exposure to close multi million dollar contracts with sponsors – League of Legends European Championship – LEC – is the biggest example of this.
Other than that, esports have the same revenue sources as traditional sports teams: merchandise, player buyouts, prize pools from tournaments, events’ ticketing, etc.
It is one of the best investments one can make still of today. Esports exposure will only go up, as more and more kids change their hobby habits to playing video games on a daily basis, because they now have the access to the technology (mobile phones, tablets, computers, consoles, etc.) that we didn’t have 5-10 years ago.
5G will also play a huge part in the dissemination of mobile competitive gaming, as we will only need our cellphones to be able to compete at the highest possible level, from anywhere in the world.
I believe that because all of this, associated with the streaming tools that exist today, in 10-20 years esports the number one sports in the world.
ISL’s player management arm, Tandhem, is one of the first sport talent and marketing agencies in Spain to open an international esports section.
In February 2020 ISL announced Tandhem, a global player management agency created to help athletes reach their maximum potential on and off the field, with a 360 degree management service covering representation, intermediation, marketing, and legal/financial support.
Now, not even one year after Tandhem’s launch, ISL’s “baby” is ready to expand in new directions and apply its full expertise to esports players and content creators.
“It only makes sense that we share our valuable expertise in soccer representation as well as our strong sports clubs network. Our proposal is to bring in the values and work models of traditional sports to help improve and develop the esports sector.” says Marc Segarra, ISL Co-Founder and Tandhem managing partner.
Tandhem Esports is a reflection of the brand’s vision to keep growing and expanding, always on the lookout for the hottest trends in the sports scene.
For this e-chapter, Tandhem is teaming up with Portuguese esports lovers and experts, João Carvalho, Founder of Prémios Esports Portugal (Portuguese Esports Awards) and ex-partner and founder of Braver Media Group, and Tiago Niza, who has worked in multiple countries and multinational environments, primarily focussed on RPA.
Tandhem esports has already signed 2 top LOL players: Francisco “Xico” Antunes, from BDS, and Amadeu “Attila” Carvalho from Vodafone Giants.
The vision of Tandhem Esports is to bring professionalism and integrity to a fast growing industry that not always operates with the organized and legal formats that we are used to see in traditional sports.
“We have the moral obligation – as entrepreneurs and passionate fans of videogames – to protect and nurture the centerpiece of this evolving market: the Player/Content Creator. They are the ones who add the most value to the market but unfortunately also the ones who are treated the worst. We intend to help by creating the support infrastructure that they need in order to become the best version of themselves.” explains João Carvalho, Tandhem Esports Co-Founder & Esports Director.
Just like the football section, the esports section will also offer 360º services: representation, intermediation, sponsorship brokerage, marketing, and legal/financial support.
Why esports?
Video games have experienced an exponential growth in the past 2 years, currently generating higher revenues than the cinema and music industries combined:
In 2019, the video game industry was worth about 145 billion $, while Box Office and Music were worth $42.5b and $20.2b, respectively.*
The esports audiences keep growing both online and offline, surpassing the number of spectators of the world’s most popular sports events such as the NBA finals: the 2019 League of Legends World Championship Finals amassed a staggering 44 million concurrent viewers while the NBA finals in the same year averaged 15.1 million viewers. *
Esports are not the future, they are the present, and both ISL and Tandhem want to actively participate in revolutionizing the way in which sports are being played and consumed by contributing to the continued growth and development of this fascinating new sector.
Sources:
* https://www.statista.com/chart/22392/global-revenue-of-selected-entertainment-industry-sectors/
* https://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/2019/12/2019-world-championship-hits-record-viewership/
Esports has quietly made its way into the forefront of the gaming world, taking its place in the sports landscape. Teams are popping up in major cities around the world and it has turned into a multibillion dollar a year industry with significant prize money and endorsements on the line.
It’s hard to deny the popularity of Esports. Viewership is increasing year over year, there’s constant experimentation with new revenue models and it’s redefining the way we engage with online content. It’s a fresh, digitally native take on watching competitive sports, and it’s here to stay.
ISL is proud to announce a new partnership with the Ultimate Gamer – the worlds first and only multi genre esports proving ground – to find the Best Gamer on Earth, offering a $1Million prize purse during an upcoming esports tournament. The partnership reflects ISL’s vision for a future where sports and esports play together.
The partnership consists of high profile ambassadors helping promote the tournament and take it to audiences that otherwise wouldn’t be reached. ISL connected Marcelo, Real Madrid defender, Sergio Busquets, FC Barcelona midfielder, and Darko Peric, actor in the hit television show Money Heist, with Ultimate Gamer. The three celebrities will be using their social media influence to promote the tournament.
The goal of this partnership is two fold, to help Ultimate Gamer break into the sports and entertainment market, while helping sports and entertainment personalities connect with Ultimate Gamer, building everyones brand in new markets.
We’re looking forward to the partnership with Ultimate Gamer, and continuing to disrupt the esports scene. The partnership is set to continue for further ventures in the space. Follow us on social media and sign up for our newsletters for future announcements on this partnership!
With over 500,000 competitors worldwide, the Ultimate Gamer brings people together through the power of gaming, and the best part is: you can join in for free and from the comfort of your home, anywhere in the world.
The tournament will feature 17 of the most popular video games in the world, including Fortnite, Fifa, LOL, Apex Legends, Dota 2, Overwatch, or Counterstrike. Registration ends and qualifiers begin September 1st.
