Dreamteam: Reinventing: Esports
While I am not an avid gamer today, I was one when I was 15. I spent hours playing games like Duke Nukem, and Doom when I wasn’t learning Turbo Pascal 7 (TP7) trying to program fractals. I fondly remember these days in the computer lab and certainly recognize the true enjoyment and addiction I had around the games I was playing. This was just the beginning for the computer gaming industry far before multi-player, multi-location games even existed. The 15 to 35 years olds of today are living in a world where you can make a legitimate income playing games online, and it’s all commonly referred to as, eSports.
What is eSports? People all over the world, mostly males between the age of 16 and 36, connect and play each other on teams, competing for huge prize money, with close to 100 Million in prizes awarded in 2017. While most people play amateur level, many aspire to become professionals. And millions who aren’t playing are watching in droves. Ten million more people watched the World Championship of League of Legends finals than watched the Stanley Cup Finals; that has to say something about the market potential! There are even projections that eSports will be included in the Olympic Games, and the NBA has announced that 17 of their teams will participate in their eSports platform in 2018.
So what does this all have to do with the blockchain? Once again, it comes back to security, and transparency. Because these eSports are played in teams, teams have to be built and managed, like any traditional team. And, like any conventional team, this requires contractual agreements around team membership and payments. For example, when a player joins a team, they expect to be paid if their team wins a championship and the coaches of the team trust that the player in question isn’t playing for the competition as well. With the advent of the blockchain and smart contracts, all of this is possible in a very secure and transparent fashion. Players and teams can enter agreements that bind them to specific rules of play, and facilitate instant and low-cost prize payouts.
Enter, DreamTeam.
They hope to have professional teams but also be to facilitate amateur players who want to form and coach teams. Using their tokens created on the Ethereum (EC20) blockchain platform, users will be able to receive prize payments, pay and receive player salaries, run crowdfunding and donation campaigns with fans, and more. All using the blockchain to transact with little to no transaction cost.
Let’s look at an example of how a smart contract would work to facilitate an eSports situation:
The team owner sets a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for the team. The owner and the manager, have an agreed upon bonus in place if the team meets specific KPI’s. The manager has the same type of agreement with the players. Let’s say there are ten players, and the team meets their KPI. (Note: Because we are speaking of eSports, all performance indicators are obviously available instantly via the game data (API), which can be read by the smart contracts.) The smart contracts trigger the payments to the manager and players based on the agreement. All of this happens automatically.
One of the other significant hurdles Dreamteam hopes to achieve is player and team recruitment. There are millions of players wanting to join teams who cannot because a secure and organized recruitment platform does not exist.This strikes me as a great opportunity and very smart for them to use blockchain to achieve it. This opportunity, combined with the security and contractual functionality of the blockchain presents a great chance for it to become a key player in the eSports landscape in the coming years.
We will see eSports catch up with traditional sports clubs, and it will be exciting to see how the ownership and management of those teams exists. I predict we will see blockchain tech at it’s core. I wish Dreamteam the best of luck with their venture, and encourage you to learn more about by reading their whitepaper or visiting their website.
Another example of how blockchain is reinventing business and changing the world.
This article is part of a new series of articles I am writing profiling businesses reinventing existing industries using the Blockchain.
It’s not just a solution for The Esports Market, it has the potential to become the new backbone of the internet. Watch, and you will see more and more companies emerging with solutions to existing markets with solutions based on the Blockchain. It’s early days, and the best is yet to come. Follow me here as I will continue to write about great examples of the “Blockchain reinventing business.” If you have or know of a company I can review and potentially profile, please submit your idea to me at reinvent.biz.
Need to know more about Blockchain?
because it would take up the entire article to explain how blockchain works, I assume you have a basic understanding of the core concepts. If you don’t, I recommend watching this quick 3 minute video. Have more time/interest? I recommend this slightly more in depth course.
Disclaimer: I make the best effort to select companies I feel are the best fit for the markets I profile, and in some cases I work directly with PR firms to promote their clients, who are the leaders emerging in the space. While I am not directly affiliated or invested in the companies I profile here, I do own Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. I hold investment positions in the coins, but do not engage in short-term or day-trading. When mentioning an ICO or TGE, it is not intended to be investment advice. You should seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice. (I recommend Abacus Wealth Partners, for their philosophy of sustainable investing.)
Thanks for reading, and tune in again next time by following me @jesseseaver.