A League of Our Own, Part 1

Andy Reif, who has held senior positions with International Creative Management and Paramount Pictures, left his position as COO of the AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour earlier this year to join the Championship Gaming Series.

In just a few short months, the CGS has established teams across the globe and, as we interviewed Reif, is in the middle of its first world championship. We spoke to him about the organisation's accomplishments, its long-term goals, and whether or not gaming can truly become a spectator sport.

Andy Reif: Incredibly well. Looking back, I'm amazed what we took on for this year and how much we've accomplished.

I actually joined in April. Since then, in addition to holding a full...A bunch of events in the US, online, a live tournament, then a US combine, then a US draft, a whole US season, and then a playoff and championship...That alone would have been a huge undertaking in a sixth month period.

With that, we launched a global league, we created a league Web site, and 16 team websites and we launched a total of 18 teams throughout the whole world and had to create names and logos that were relevant for the cities and countries that they were in.

All that is a pretty unbelievable amount to accomplish in one year - in addition to putting on events in Seoul, Shanghai, Dubai, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Mexico City, London, Birmingham - so it has been an unbelievable amount of stuff.

I think we've managed to launch this global brand in a really powerful way, so I'm really pleased. And now it is all kind of culminating in the first-ever world's final, and there's a million dollars in prize money up for grabs.

Our top 12 teams are competing...Or 11, unfortunately, because our team from China could not get in. I feel bad for the kids from China who can't compete, but I'm thrilled with where we're at.

The answer is both, I think.

Part of it is the nature of the world we live in today. I was reading last week... I don't know if you follow baseball at all, but there is this Mitchell report that is going to come out where they are going to talk about steroid use in baseball. One of the parts of the article was that they are going to name names, like the McCarthy hearings.

A very substantial number of players in baseball are foreign born. Any player that will be named in that report, even though they haven't committed a crime, is likely to have their visa denied for playing baseball next year. It's a real risk there for baseball.

There was an article I read - I think it may have been in the Wall Street Journal - over the summer, that a lot of concert tours in this country were cancelled because performers, mostly from the United Kingdom, were getting their visas denied. They weren't the Rolling Stones - they were acts that had been around for a year or two and had one hit. And that didn't meet the requirements for visas for coming into this country for touring.

So, I do think as the Championship Gaming Series grows and pro gaming becomes more recognised as a major sport, that problem may be lessened, but I think it is kind of the nature of what we are doing that there could be problems.

It was not a surprise to us. We had been working on it for a few months with immigration counsel... Multiple immigration counsel... We were hoping we could come out with a favourable result, and unfortunately we didn't. The people I feel the worst for are the players. Not only don't they get to compete for USD 500,000 in prize money, which would be a life-altering experience for them, but they don't even get to show that they are the very best in the world at what they do, which I think is probably as important to them as the money, frankly. So, I feel bad for them, which is a shame.

You know, it's a possibility. I don't know, going forward, if we'll always hold the world championships in the United States or elsewhere. I would like to find a solution.

I think we made a lot of headway. Some of the players did get visas. Some, but not all of them. Not enough to field a team.

I'm hopeful that we'll be able to use the experience... Because we are still going to invite the players that got visas to come here and just be guests to experience the world final, even though they won't be able to compete. That alone is showing that they'll be able to go back to their country and they are not at risk of not coming back to China. That will show the State Department that they really are professional athletes. Their job is actually based in China. They come here, or wherever they are going for another event, but there is not a concern that they won't return.

I was told that the vast majority of people from China who apply for visas, well over 50 per cent, get those visas denied. We kind of take it for granted here, because it is pretty easy as an American to travel everywhere, but over there it is more difficult.

Last night was our opening broadcast. We should hopefully have something next week. I do know that, as for DirecTV, they were thrilled. For the 18 to 34 male demographic, it was the highest rated show. I think they're very happy.

To me, this is an evolution. We've accomplished so much in a seven month period. It is kind of hard to remember that we've only been around for seven months. So, for me, when I came on board this was always looking very long term. Not looking at how we are doing a year from now, but two, three, four, five, seven, ten years from now. Because I really think over time we are going to be building this audience. It is always one fan at a time. This is a long marathon to make this into what I really believe will be the next major sports property.

Just like "action sports," which have been around for a really long time. In fact, they weren't called "action sports," it was called skateboarding, or inline skating, or BMX biking... And Tony Hawk wasn't known back in the 80's. He was competing for USD 500 or less. You know, all of the sudden it grew, but it was a subculture of just kids who skateboarded or skated or whatever. Then it kind of got a little bigger and ESPN heard about it and decided they wanted to create some programming so they created something called the X Games, and that blew it up. It went from being this subculture of participants to a very mainstream sports entertainment property.

And I really believe that pro gaming is in that same place. It has been around seven or eight years, there are some few names... Fatal1ty actually kind of broke out beyond that core gamer to a mainstream gaming community. But, except for that, there was this subculture of people who participated in pro gaming at its highest level. But it grew a little bit and grew a little bit. Newscorp in particular had been monitoring the gaming space and said, 'You know what? We really think this could be the next big thing.' And they came up with the idea of a Championship Gaming Series - particularly a guy named David Hills who, in addition to being president of DirecTV was CEO of Fox Sports - and that's how it came to fruition. I really believe the same thing is going to happen to pro gaming which happened to action sports.

The creation of Championship Gaming Series, and the fact that we are distributed to over 350 million viewers throughout the world, is going to be the transitional event to take it to mainstream entertainment.

You know, it is still a very young space. One of the good things about a young space is that there are a lot of opportunities in it. One of the bad things about a young space is that there are a lot of opportunities in it and there are no barriers to entry.

So anyone can try to make it work, and a lot of times they will have either half-baked business plans or be underfunded. It didn't surprise me that World Series of Video Games went out of business. They had launched and tried to make a big name, they bought some time on CBS, and it was like they were...I think it was to make a name, show proof of concept, and get bought. And when it didn't happen, then they decided 'You know what? Let's shift our business and let's focus on online now.'

For us, first of all... There are other organisations out there, but we are the first and only ever professional global league. We're also the only league that has teams, and teams are made up of specialists in different types of games, and those teams compete in an organised league.

And that's a much bigger undertaking than putting on four or five tournaments throughout a six or a seven month period in different cities and calling it a league. We are a true sports league modeled after the NFL or the NBA, or if you live overseas, the English Premiere League. That's what we're based on. It's a much bigger undertaking. Obviously it requires more capital to do it because you are forming teams that are franchises that have team logos and names and websites...it's just a much bigger undertaking.

But for us we thought it was the only way that programming could really go from being this small, sort of niche, very interesting area to a bigger opportunity. That alone is one thing that distinguishes us.

The other is our distribution. I don't know of any sport that has launched globally around the world at one time. Usually it starts in one country and gradually grows out there. We saw an opportunity to do it globally, number one, because videogames really transcend all cultures and all regions of the world. It was already popular everywhere. So that was the opportunity, and we had the means to exploit that opportunity because we had three huge partners with DirecTV, BSkyB, and Star, and when we flipped the switch we had distribution to over 350 million people. So, we were able to launch it globally, effectively, at one time.

I would say all those things distinguish us from the other attempts out there. Again, for us this is a very long-term play. We're not a VC-backed venture. Our media partners are also our owners. Most media companies take a longer-term view with how to grow out a property, and so there's not this pressure to either make it work right away, to flip it, or to shut it down.

If you look at any sports property, it takes a while.

I have some experience with this. I was part of a group that bought the AVP Pro Beach Volleyball tour in 2001. The AVP has been around since 1983, had some success in the 80's and 90's, fell on hard times, and we bought it. It was really down and out. There weren't any fans, there weren't any sponsors, and it wasn't covered on television. That was a property that had a brand behind it and some fan base, at least, and that took six years to really turn it around. It takes a while.

And I think, one of the things that was so attractive to me, and the only reason I left the AVP...What sold me on it, when I met with David Hill and Steven Roberts, who's a senior VP at DirecTV and Eric Shanks, who is an executive VP, and they're the ones who have been leading this charge for a while, was their long-term vision for this property. And their understanding that you don't make an NFL or an NBA in a day. Or a NASCAR, for that matter. NASCAR, apart from the NFL, is by far the biggest sport in this country. It's been around for 40 years or so. Only in the last 10 years or so did it really explode.

We're really lucky because a lot more people play videogames than drive stock cars. So we have a real opportunity to blow this up a lot quicker, but it is not going to happen in a day. I think we've done unbelievably well in seven months. But, to be honest, as much as we have accomplished in seven months, the amount of what I think we're going to accomplish in the next two or three year period will make what we've done this year pale in comparison.