According to Mário Sousa, Head of Sales and Marketing at Mediapro, owners of the eSports platform Ubeats and the LLP tournament, eSports are one of the big pillars of entertainment. “We invest increasingly more in this vertical and in its development that has a much bigger range of games and players. For us, content is very important. Rights still do not represent a relevant value. The main value has to do with advertising and for the other event organizers and players. Sponsors are what feed the ecosystem,” he detailed.
Sousa was part of the panel ¿Cómo Integrar eSports, los Reyes del Distanciamiento Social, Dentro del Negocio de TV Paga? (How to integrate eSports, the Kings of Social Distancing, in the Pay TV Business?), held by Dataxis.
Sousa mentioned that Mediapro tries to be in as many parts of the eSports value chain as possible: producing content, spreading the Ubeats platform, a linear channel, or contents designed to enter in time slots or distributing specific sports channels or OTTs.
Other panelists were Leo De Biase, CRO from BBL; Jonatan Cisterna, General Director of Temporada de Juegos; Damian Szafirsztein, team owner of Infinity Esports Latam and Jorge Sobenes, Regional Sales Manager for Latin America at Ross Video. The chairman was Pablo Monti, Chief Content Officer -Gaming and Esports at TyC Sports.
According to several of the panelists, eSports will not take long to enter TV. Di Blase mentioned that big streamers are talking with the content creators. “We are already in touch with streamers from Russia, Canada, and Argentina. I see value in a product like this because I am going to win with advertisements and visibility”.
Sousa believes it is important to manage to have eSports measurements to show the huge audience they have.
They remembered that TyC Sports have already been making eSports content for seven years.