A League of Our Own - Part 2

Andy Reif left his position as COO of the AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour earlier this year to join the Championship Gaming Series, which recently concluded its first world final. Before the action concluded, we talked to him about the inaugural year, what makes the CGS unique, and its potential for the future.

This is the second part of our interview. The first part can be read here.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out. Our focus really is on creating a professional league. I don't think that's the focus of anyone else out there. So, there may be opportunities for others to have other business models, but for us it's about creating the ultimate aspirational form of pro gaming.

If you play basketball, your goal around the whole world right now is to play in the NBA. One of things the NBA has been successful in is not necessarily expanding the NBA to everywhere in the world, but getting every basketball player in the world to want to play in the NBA.

For us, it is a dual goal. We're global, truly global. It's not like we're a US league who just shows our programming around the rest of the world. We have teams around the whole world and anyone who is a gamer and really aspires to play at the highest level, or watch the very best in the world play - watch it on television, watch it online, or eventually watch it on your mobile phone or whatever else device comes along - we really are positioning ourselves to be the ultimate aspirational form and the pro version of the league.

There may be others out there that do tournaments or have grass roots organisations or amateur organisations, and that's fine. The gaming space is a very big space.

I passionately believe that Championship Gaming Series was the right thing at the right time to really transform pro gaming into a much more mainstream sports entertainment property.

I think it has been the truth because the way it was filmed for television was horrible. It was a handheld camera or a stationary camera leaning over a gamer's shoulder to capture a video screen to watch them play. And then cutting together, several months after the tournament took place, a 30 minute or a 60 minute summary or highlight or lifestyle show...And not very well done at that.

That was interesting entertainment to a very small portion of the audience. Frankly, the only people interested in it were the people playing in the tournament.

The approach that DirecTV and David Hill, who is really a legendary figure in sports entertainment, had was 'I think this can really be true sports programming, but we need to film it in a way that has never even been conceptualised before.' First of all, let's do teams, people root for teams, so it is not about a tournament that takes place. It is about following a team, or the players on a team. I think that's a big difference.

One of the things I always thought we struggled with at the AVP was, except for Kerri Walsh and Misty May who won the gold medal in 2004, no one really cared who played. They would either watch it on television or go to the tournaments which are really fun, but there would be polite clapping for points. Not really rooting for somebody, or some times rooting against somebody.

I think when you have a team concept, and you start building the teams into brands that people care for, or care against, it becomes about rooting. So, that alone, makes it better entertainment.

But that alone wouldn't be enough. We needed to film it in a way that was really compelling. So we brought in top television sports producers and directors. Our producer is a guy named Mike Burkes, who has won 11 Emmys for sports programming. He does the NBA, he does the NFL, he's done NASCAR...We've brought in people who have done the Olympics who are directors. We film it in a way that's never been filmed before.

We do it in high-def. One of the biggest things we did is we figured out how to film it live. So it became true sports programming, because anything that's not live I find very difficult to make compelling entertainment as sport. Because then the results you are watching are not live and interesting.

And then we figured out technology and tools to use so that you are not watching a gamer playing a videogame, you are watching the game itself unfold before your eyes.

That's what has been a huge breakthrough for us...That it is really fun entertainment. It can work.

If you look at Korea...Starcraft probably doesn't work for audiences everywhere, but at least in that country it has been able to transform itself from a game of participants into part of pop culture in South Korea. This is obviously a response to 24-hour cable channels on it, and they have big events where they get 60,000 plus people to watch the hot gamers play, and these gamers really are pop culture celebrities in Korea.

So, I think it shows the possibilities for it, if you can tap into what the young audiences want out there, and I think we have tapped into it. It is going to take time. Seven months is not enough time to fully realise its potential.

Absolutely. Again, I think we are in the right space at the right time. If we tried to do it two or three years ago, we wouldn't have had the tools to make it entertainment. Clearly, it's all about timing. Ideally, you want to have a great concept at the right time, and that's what we have with Championship Gaming.

Every year we are going to analyze the games we have, as well as the games that are coming out or that have come out, and see what works best for the league to help it maximize its potential.

We look at several factors. One, is it a game that is popular, and it is popular globally? Two, does it really highlight competition and skills at its highest level? So, the people that are by far the best at the game, is it because their skills levels are higher, so that it is true competition? Three, is it conducive to filming for television and other audiovisual distribution methods, whether it is online or mobile?

We've created a matrix to help us analyse games using 20 plus factors that we look at and put a score against for each game to see how they meet the general factors I gave you. It's really difficult. I don't think any one game we have scores off the charts in everything.

Counter-Strike, as you know, has an incredible following....Very rabid. Depending upon who you talk to, eight figures... Ten million or more people who play. It is a global game, but it is challenging to film it for television. Doing a live first-person shooter game with ten different perspectives, if you don't really understand the maps, it becomes difficult to follow.

We've spent a lot of time, and I think we've made incredible strides in cracking the code to how to film that in a way that you can really enjoy watching it even if you don't play Counter-Strike. But it is certainly more problematic than a game like Dead or Alive 4, where you don't even have to have ever played a videogame or seen a videogame in your life. You watch it on television - you get it instantly. It is very fast-paced. It is fun and it is exciting. It's a first to five knockouts, so it is quick. I think that's a game that scores really high on the television-friendly meter, but because it is not played globally, it is not played everywhere in the world, it is low on that level.

It is very hard. That's one of the most challenging things we do, deciding what games to play. I think we did a pretty good job of selecting the games, and over time we are going to analyse the games and make changes.

Certainly I think the Nintendo Wii has caught the world by storm, and probably by surprise, and it is something we need to look at and figure out when is the right time, if ever, to incorporate it into the league. But it is something we are looking at, just as we are looking at all other games as well.

I say it all the time - I wish we had one that was a no-brainer that met all the factors one hundred per cent. It's huge globally, everybody plays it. It's incredible for television. The best of the best are phenomenal - you can never touch them unless you are at the highest skill level. And there's really no game like that.

Halo 3, for its huge launch, and how great it did in the US and a few other places, most of its popularity has been in the US. It's not a game that is incredibly television-friendly at all.

There's no perfect game yet, but I think we did a good job with the games we have. I think it's a good mixture, but again it is one we are going to definitely monitor over time. You certainly can't please everyone. And one thing I've learned is that the gaming world will definitely tell you when they are not pleased.

You know what, we are starting to get those calls. We're so new that I don't think that the game developers have really caught on or focused on us yet. In general, if you think about it, we are the best thing that could ever happen for the game publishers.

We could help launch a game, obviously, but more importantly, we could give a game a much longer shelf life than it would otherwise have. That's going to be one of the interesting things to talk about with publishers as we go forward. Not just for our official games that are part of our team, but also creating other opportunities for games to tap into our audience and our global reach.

World of Warcraft is a prime example of that. This year we worked with Blizzard and we created this 2v2, private round in the arena format. We had this competition where the top 16 teams came to Blizzcon and participated in a tournament, and now the top 8 2v2 teams are battling it out for the first-ever championship of WoW 2v2.

That's a great way to work with a title that may not necessarily be conducive to television right now, but has a big audience that is a rabid audience that cares about it and wants to watch the best play at it.

That's a really good question. We have started thinking about it.

A top-line videogame takes years to develop and huge amounts of capital and expertise. The landscape is littered with people who've failed.

We would never have a game be part of our league, even if we created it, unless it really represented competition at its highest level and the level of quality that I think CGS has come to represent.

Can I see some point in the future where we do have a CGS game becoming part of the league, part of the competition? Absolutely, but I don't think we would do until we made sure we could do it right.

Funny you would say that, because I talk about it here all the time.

At some point, the publishers are going to throw huge sums of cash at us, and unfortunately I don't think we'll be able to take it. Because if we really want to be seen as a legitimate sports league... One of the things that separates us from a traditional sport is that you can switch the game, which changes the nature of it.

I think there are ways to support other games and generate revenue, but not as part of the official league. For decisions on our official games for the league, money needs to stay out of it. It needs to be what is best for competition.

And we'll do that! [laughs] That I don't mind doing!

But I think when it comes to the competition itself, you can't destroy the property. Even with the AVP, when it grew and we really blew it up, we certainly got approached about using different volleyballs or different things. Certainly there were opportunities to go with different companies who throw money at you, but you can't mess with the competition.

It's funny. If you look at sports, very rarely do they change the balls or the bats. Usually they go with the same company for 50, 60, 70 years. Obviously, part of it is tradition, but part of it is you don't jeopardise the competition itself.

For us, it is a more complicated issue because the competition itself can change to a different sport almost by the game you select.

We haven't done an official announcement yet, but Creative Labs we just signed and we are really excited about it. Obviously they are a dominant player in the sound and audio area of videogaming. They are the premiere brand, and we are thrilled to be in business with them.

I think if we establish ourselves, there are going to be a ton of companies who will want to get involved, because we really reach that hard to reach 18 to 34 male demographic.

There are companies that talk about trying to integrate consumer brands into videogames themselves, and the challenge for that is most videogames live in a fantasy world. To put an actual consumer brand into that fantasy world is pretty jarring, and a lot of the time will be perceived in a negative fashion by the consumer.

People are used to sports having sponsors and advertising support the sport. So we are able to offer a pretty unique way to tap into the videogaming audience without risking alienating the very consumer you are trying to reach.