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| EA Sports Cup |
| Gent, Belgium |
| 2008/11/15 |
Teams attending
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The biggest mistakes in eSports management
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| posted by: jetset on 2007-11-23, 21:35 |
| viewed: 189 times |
| comments: 1 |
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page 1: Article
In the past I’ve written two articles about managing a gaming team and getting started. I’ve had quite a good response on both articles and this lead me to guiding several managers to their own success. Surprisingly, some made excellent progress and are getting there on their own now for which I congratulate them.
So now I wanted to write another article about management and picked the biggest mistakes in eSports. Close to that, I would also like to point you in a direction which offers a solution for these problems and try to make people realise what they have to do to get eSports growing. I’ve divided the article into three larger parts:
- The biggest mistake you can make
- Other often made mistakes
- Solutions!
The biggest mistake you can make
I’ve got a clear vision of where I want to go in the future, but what some people quite often don’t understand is the way eSports is now and how it should evolve. A large factor that makes this possible is the average age of an eSports manager. Many youngsters are already trying to manage a gaming team and this causes problems. A mistake most inexperienced managers make is promising things they shouldn’t promise (or can't deliver). This can be to either a crewmember, player or sponsor. It doesn’t matter. Managers too often don’t realise they are breaking the entire eSports business with their false promises. Let’s take a closer look at why this is such a big mistake and how this happens shall we?
First of all, making false promises hurts your credibility and ability to negotiate in the future. Let me rephrase that: making fake promises is short-term thinking. It might help with attracting a team to your squad, but once they realise you were just tricking them they will be gone and your team image will be destroyed. Next time you talk to a team that will have heard of what you did to your first team, they will think twice before joining you.
The biggest example I can give here is managers promising teams LAN expenses paid, PC’s or even a salary and never backing that up with something real. It just remains a promise. This is the most common way managers can go wrong but this hurts the community, not the professional sport. What does hurt the professional gaming scene more is when the same managers give the same kind of promises to sponsors. All too often I’ve heard sponsors that put money into gaming and were then robbed by the managers that never did their end of the bargain. This only makes the job harder for others (you’ll be damned sure the sponsor will now think twice before investing anything in gaming) and for yourself too, you will not have a shot at that sponsor anymore. If other potential sponsors found out what you did you’re dead too.
I can’t emphasise this enough: MAKING FALSE PROMISES IS THE BIGGEST MISTAKE YOU CAN MAKE.
An eSports team is all about two things: teams and sponsors! Everything else is beside the point, if you don’t have a healthy combination of both good teams and good sponsors you are slacking behind (unless your ambition is not "going more professional"). If you lie to your sponsors and teams, you might find that one team or sponsor, but your promises will come back to hurt you and it’s stupid to think short-term success is a foundation for a long-term success.
Other often made mistakes
Ok so making fake promises is a huge mistake, I hope you got that by now. Then let’s take another look at other mistakes I often see with eSports managers. First up: " If my team performs, the sponsors will follow "
Wrong! If your teams perform well you should be happy! But this doesn’t mean the sponsors will be at your feet! For every sponsor, you need to work hard to get them, no matter what your performances are. Healthy performances will help your case when talking to a sponsor but they are not the only reason a company sponsors you. I’ll even go over the edge of comprehension for some with this statement but a company doesn’t sponsor performances, it sponsors managers. That’s right, you, as a manager, have a great potential. Companies that have a stable marketing department look at numbers, not people. So it’s your task as a manager to make those numbers as interesting as possible! Let me put that in an example. Say you have one bad manager (manager A) but he has a great team, and they performed well at the last 3 large international events by placing top 5 at each of them. On the other hand we have a manager (manager B) of a "ok" team, who also attended these 3 international events and placed "just" 12-16 at them. Manager A focuses on the successes of his team when talking to a sponsor, he talks about who his players are, what experience they have, how long they have been together as a team. He talks about the biggest games they played during those international events and how they came on top. Manager B however focuses on the fact that his team obtained an interview during those events which was read by 50 000 people, he focuses on the fact that he can promise the company’s logo on the team outfits and gives the potential sponsor number of visitors for these events. He tells him they will give the company detailed update reports and that they focus hard on media presence.
Guess who the company will sponsor? Catching my drift here? That’s right, manager B will have a bigger shot at taking the sponsorship.
Second mistake I would also like to add: the hard part is getting the sponsorship
Let’s face it, most of you are now thinking "why is this a mistake, it’s true isn’t it?". Well in my honest opinion, you couldn’t be more wrong. The hardest part and the part that takes the most work, is not gaining a sponsor, but keeping them! A mistake often made that also hurts eSports as a whole is when managers sign a sponsor they neglect them. If you have a sponsor you must treat him/her like they are one of your children, that they really mean the world to you. Satisfy them, pamper them and do everything for them. Remember, these guys are sponsoring you, you need to work to keep them happy. Many teams’ sign sponsors but end up losing them again after a couple of months. Biggest reason: no upkeep! Change that and you won’t have to change sponsors too often.
There are still loads of mistakes made by eSports managers and I don’t claim to be the prophet will all the answers here. In fact, I make mistakes every day, and I’m not afraid to admit that. But there is a big difference between making mistakes and learning from mistakes. Failure is a relative word and it’s different to everyone. For me failure is making a mistake and failing to learn from that mistake. If you learn from your mistake then I wouldn’t even call it a mistake. If you always try your best and have no regrets, then you got nothing to blame yourself. Let’s finish the mistakes made right here before I’ll have to publish a book about it.
Solutions
Once again I would like to stress out I’m not mr solution with all the answers just waiting to be typed here. What follows is an subjective view on how we could improve things (my view on things).
First of all, let’s cut the crap and start thinking professional. I’m seeing eSports as a perfect learning school for later life, and eSports management as my step ahead in future life. But the main thing managers need to learn is stop the short term thinking and start planning. Read, learn, try and probably fail, but do it all over again. Stop the promises is one big step in this process.
What you need to understand is that when you make a fake promise you are not hurting your own team’s future, but the entire eSports scene. Your failure to be honest leads to more scepticism of companies and potential sponsors and who would blame them? Once we all realise that eSports is a growing market and that players, teams and companies need to be treated with great respect, the world will be a lot easier for everyone. Of course this is utopian but who said aiming for something that is utopian is the wrong goal? I’d even say I prefer aiming for (utopian) perfection then for secondary goals. If you always put the bar at something you already know you can reach then where is the success and personal satisfaction in that. Therefore, as a closing note (and believe me, I had to cut myself short here since I could have written 15 more pages on this) I would like to spread the word: Let’s cut the crap! Let’s start working together and let’s start acting professional.
Conclusion
It’s up to YOU to make this work! Like I said in my previous articles, this is my opinion and you are free to contest it. Any kind of feedback is more than welcome and you can do that by replying here in a comment, by sending me an email or by contacting me on IRC. I’ll even go further, if you had the time to read through the entire article I ask you kindly to respond and give feedback. I want to know YOUR opinion on this so let me know what you think!
Kind Regards,
Steven "dfb" Leunens
CEO Tek-9 Networks Ltd.
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| #1 |
 SCOTTZEH |
2008-09-08 16:00:28 |
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If you would have made a book of it, i'd buy it for sure =) |
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| The biggest mistakes in eSports management |
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| page 1: Article |
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