#MarketingEventsAwards 2021 spills: The FIGHT is on in the esports arena

According to Insider Intelligence, there will be 29.6 million monthly esports viewers in 2022, up 11.5% from 2021. This has resulted in the explosion of esports, propelled further by the social component of live-streaming and gaming. Capitalising on this increasingly popular trend is FIGHT.

FIGHT is a global esports and gaming entertainment platform that aims to connect and grow gaming communities. From regional tournaments to local scrims, live-streams to video content, and digitising grassroots to urbanites give FIGHT’s ever-growing fans something to look forward to when your game lags.

The company was founded in 2019 and has spread across 7 countries, holding more than 80 tournaments. Some of its partners include Tencent, Garena, TikTok, EVOS Esports, Axis, and NYK, among others.

Despite the challenges it faced during the early stages in building up a presence in different markets, FIGHT Esports has since grown rapidly – with more players signing up for tournaments, and its viewership doubling since 2020.

The firm also came in as a finalist at Marketing Events Awards 2021, amid incredibly tight competition. We speak to Matthew Ho, head of FIGHT Esports, on the company’s 2022 plans.

This interview is done as part of MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s winners and finalists’ interview series for Marketing Events Awards 2021. To find out more about the awards, click here. 

Tell us a little bit about how the past two years have been for you, and the steps you’ve taken to survive and thrive in a tough industry?

Lockdown measures imposed globally during the early period of the outbreak contributed to the gaming industry’s spike in both revenue and engagement. The number of people that turned to gaming as a form of entertainment increased significantly, including those that spectated esports live-streams.

Like all other organisations in the industry, we shifted our focus from on-ground events to fully online set-ups. Despite the challenges we faced during the early stages as we were trying to build our presence in different markets, FIGHT Esports has since grown rapidly – more players are signing up for our tournaments, and our viewership has doubled since 2020.

As a global esports and entertainment platform, FIGHT Esports is always pushing ahead with our initiatives to not only build and grow gaming communities around the world, but also create value for partners such as non-endemic brands and products as well as government agencies.

In the past two years, we have collaborated closely with game publishers and partners from various industries to organise events and tournaments in our effort to celebrate the modern gaming culture and empower grassroots esports communities.

With markets slowly opening up, what do you think 2022 will be like for you?

As businesses resume gradually this year, we remain optimistic of what’s coming our way. 2022 is going to be even busier for us at FIGHT Esports as our partners and clients are raring to make up for the lost time and opportunities in this space. From our end, we have expanded our service portfolio this year beyond organising events and tournaments to meet market demands.

FIGHT Esports first started out as a community tournament operator in 2019. Today, we are stepping up the game, heading in the direction of becoming a fully fledged esports agency that offers game marketing, esports public relations, merchandising, community building, short and long form gaming content production, content and broadcast localisation, and regional tournaments in the region.

FIGHT Esports also currently serves as the official agency for one of the world’s biggest mobile game publishers, and we are looking to expand our clientele across all regions.

What are some of the new challenges you are preparing yourself for and looking to counter?

Many studies predict the industry will continue to grow in the coming few years, and now, there’s huge talk about the convergence of cryptos, NFTs (non-fungible tokens), esports, and gaming.

While play-to-earn crypto games such as Axie Infinity and Gods Unchained were already in the market for a while, they were not as popular as competitive gaming titles we usually saw in esports tournaments such as PUBG Mobile and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang – at least, not until recently.

As part of the huge digital evolution, blockchain is now the common conversation go-to among people these days. The key stakeholders in the industry such as gamers, esports teams, tournament organisers, and publishers have started to make sense of this blockchain technology and its impact on esports and gaming.

NFTs in gaming, on the other hand, are being positioned as a way to prove the originality and ownership of digital assets such as in-game purchases, skins, highlights, achievements, tournaments, and trophies. This simply means that NFTs could help substantiate and allow trade and transfer of these items with other players outside of the virtual world of games.

Despite these advantages, NFTs are still considered high-risk by many, and there are concerns the convergence of NFTs with esports has the potential to expose the community to scams, frauds, and hacks.

As a key leader in the industry, while this convergence presents greater opportunities for higher engagement from fans and reaching new audiences, we will continue to work closely with our partners to figure out ways to incorporate this relatively new technology into our events safely and securely.

In this new world we are living in, what do you think a great event really looks like?

One thing most of us have learned these past few years is that virtual events proved to be feasible and are here to stay.

It is also worth noting that, recently, more and more organisers are exploring the hybrid option with today’s ever-changing pandemic landscape. We are also seeing that reverse hybrid events are fast becoming a crowd favourite, where the main VIPs or speakers attend the event physically, but the guests are at home. Imagine attending a physical event in your town while your friends in other countries could participate virtually in real-time!

In the context of esports, I believe the elements of a successful event heavily rely on the quality of its content curation, engagement, viewership, as well as live-streaming capabilities.

The main goals of any esports event have always remained the same – to create a healthy and competitive ecosystem where players are able to showcase and sharpen their skills, and at the same time, keep like-minded gamers connected within the communities.

What will be the role of events in the world of marketing in the future?

Events will continue to be one of the most crucial contributing factors to successful marketing and growth strategies. The importance boils down to building your credibility through networking opportunities, allowing brands to interact with key players in the industry, and acquiring warm leads that can potentially turn them into loyal customers.

With the massive growth of esports, we have started to see more businesses from all niches, including brands outside the industry such as Mercedes-Benz and Coca-Cola, looking for ways to understand how they can exponentially grow their total addressable audiences by tapping into the thriving gaming communities through esports events and getting in on the action.