Talking eSports
November 8th

Or Preiss
I’m 25. I’m passionate about growth and gaming. Founded Zengaming 2 years ago.
We reached 2.5M users and raised $3.8M. I’m now struggling with the development of
the company’s culture and refining the value we offer to the world.
1

Disclaimer
There is no “right” or “wrong”. The materials in this lecture represents the best knowledge (meta knowledge)
we gained so far. This is our perspective and I recommend all of you to doubt and question everything.
Always..

What am I going to cover
A eSports background
B Market structure
C Market growth
D The opportunity
E Some philosophy
F GLHF

eSports background
A

eSports is Electronic sports
eSports background

eSports is mostly team-play based and
played on PC or console
eSports background

There are 7-8 main titles
eSports background
Counter Strike
Global Offensive
League Of Legends Dota 2 Overwatch Hearthstone

Just like traditional sports
eSports background

MAIN CATEGORIES ARE
MOBA FPS CARDS
eSports background
Multiplayer online
battle arena
First person
shooter

Dota tournament in Seattle this year
$24M prize pool, 5M CC peak 16M, unique viewers
eSports background

More people watched League Of Legends
than the NBA finals
eSports background

- Media rights in 2017 sold to TV for
almost $0.3B
- Huge clubs opened an eSports team
- Top players reported $2.5M annually
revenues from prize pool only
- Including Israeli Dota player - Tal
Aizik in the top 20 with $1M
eSports background

Today: Pro teams and players with a huge budget,
salaries, gaming house and high contracts
eSports background

eSports background
eSports history
1980 - First ever local
eSports competition of
Atari
1997 - First worldwide
competition with 2000
participants and prize
pool of $15K
2000 - Going global with
organizations like WCG and
MLG running worldwide
tournaments with 800K
participants from 78 countries
and prize pool of $170K
2011 - Twitch go live
allowing streaming
(Future - YT gaming)
Today - 250M eSports
enthusiasts and $0.7B
total revenues

eSports grew from the bottom up
Started from local communities of gamers
eSports background

Market structure
B

Market structure
The market structure
Teams Tournaments Publishers 3rd party Viewership News

Market structure
The users
Gamers
800M
eSports enthusiasts
250M
Hungry +
10M
Players in teams
200K
Tier 3 players
Semi pro players
50K
Pro Players
5K

Market growth
C

Market growth
Growth in viewership

Market growth
Growth in revenues

Market growth
Revenues per enthusiast getting closer to
traditional sports

Market growth
Recent investments in eSports
$100M Oct 2015 $15M Oct 2017
$2.8M April 2016 $70M during
2016-17
Teams
VCs involved
Startups

The opportunity
D

The opportunity
Why does it grow so fast?
a. It’s still decentralized
Like in every emerging market - The consciousness evolves first, then the
manifestation. Things like business models, pricing and structure shaped as we speak

The opportunity
Why does it grow so fast?
B. More people are attracted to gaming than ever before

The opportunity
The challenges of the market
a. A major percent of the money still flows to game publishers
No one owns “Football” Owned by RIOT games

Implies on a broken market
Teams Tournaments Publishers 3rd party Viewership News
The opportunity
Apx 90%
Of the money

The opportunity
The challenges of the market
B. Lack of stability
Raises questions like:
If RIot wants to grow and release a new
game that gains hype, what does it mean
for a pro player or for a startup relying on
League of Legends?
The risk holds the market back

Some philosophy
E

The opportunity
The current ‘meta’ of the world

The opportunity
No child ever dreams of that:

The opportunity
Should be done by
ROBOTS

The opportunity
The current meta of startups is:
Enabling people to do what they love and
get paid for it

The opportunity
And it happens all over
Entrepreneurship
Artists
SMBs
Gaming
Content creators

F

Why I invested my time here?
I love gaming & eSports
I love the current ‘Meta’ of the world
GLHF

Appendix

ZENGAMING’s story
Our mission:
1. To fund the emerging eSport teams class
2. Create a company where teammates build fulfilling lives

Why?
● We believe GAMERS should be able to make a
living doing what they love.

Increase your
fan base
The endless loop holding back gamers
Participate in top
leagues and
tournaments
Find sponsors to
fund the team
It’s damn hard to reach those leagues and
tournaments with a low budget (would
say 1% success rate)
It’s also nearly impossible to find a sponsor
without having a massive fan base
Cultivating a massive fanbase doesn’t make
sense without participating in big events