Kulikin: Esports holds structural advantage over traditional sports in audience participation
Darcy Kulikin · What's Next for Esports Startups · Jun 7, 2019 · at 20:59
Darcy Kulikin, partner at a16z, discusses interactive audience mechanics during a panel on gaming and esports investment trends.
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“Gaming and eSports has like such a huge advantage over traditional sports, right? Like the idea of like the version you hear of this in the kind of traditional sports media ecosystem is like, oh, we're going to let gambling happen, right? And it's like, that's really the only way that, that fans can interact with a kind of, Brick and mortar sport, for lack of a better term. Whereas if you think about eSports, like, the possibilities are endless, right? Like, I, as a game designer, I can kind of integrate any different way that I want to. I can A-B test, I can try a whole bunch of different things, and like, the, like, solution set is just massive compared to traditional.”
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More from Darcy Kulikin
Kulikin: Top esports events hit 100 million concurrent viewers, outpacing Wimbledon
“There is a hundred million, you know, a hundred million concurrence in, you know, certain eSports events. There's like ten million concurrence for Wimbledon. You know, the viewership of eSports more broadly rivals that of the big four sports.”
Kulikin: Esports has a blank slate advantage over traditional sports
“E-sports and gaming just has such a huge advantage because they're coming from a blank slate, right? And they're coming from an audience that, that they can define how that consumption happens.”
Kulikin: Esports monetization needs infrastructure like Shopify or Patreon
“On the monetization side, because it's so early there you know, I think there's a lot of opportunities for companies to figure out how to exist in that space, and whether that, you know, there's a number of different ways, whether it's like analytics, you know…”