Once you are working in esports, consuming changes. Especially what you are watching. As with everyone that is working in an industry they have a certain passion for, I realized my consuming behavior change after I started working full time in the esports industry. Let’s specifically look at esports professionals as event or tournament viewers.
Before I started working full-time, I used to watch every event that was live. To be fair though, back in the days there were not as many popular titles and events as today. The esport titles I watched the most were Starcraft 2, League of Legends and Counter-Strike. Some of them are still around today. In the early 2010s, it was perfectly normal for me to just have a stream live nonstop on the TV while playing a game myself, studying or cooking. I would watch as many events as I could.
After entering mousesports in 2014 and switching to Fnatic in 2016, my viewing behavior changed a lot. For one, I was concentrating mostly on the game I was playing and working with every day: Heroes of the Storm. When you’re trying to get better at a game there isn’t a lot of room for other games. But when there was, I wasn’t watching as actively as I was before, if there was no one from my own organization competing in the tournament. Even after hanging up the mouse myself and working purely on management, I would only watch when it would concern my own team or organization.
After I quit Fnatic in 2020, I realized that I wasn’t watching as much League of Legends or Counter-Strike anymore as before. Sure, being on the ground in Berlin and watching most of the LEC games backstage in the studio was a big contributing factor that I didn’t really miss a lot of Fnatic LoL games between 2018 and 2020, but I noticed my interest going down after I exited the organization. Holding a little grudge or wanting the former team and employer to lose (especially against a new employer) is something very common I guess. A little bit of Schadenfreude towards the old companions never hurt anyone. With the years I noticed more and more though that, If my organization didn’t have a team competing in the sport, I wouldn’t care as much anymore.
Everyone working in esports and having the passion for it will still check the results and standings. But they often are no longer able to follow every match of every team in every game they used to follow. They revert to follow their own team as it is their job anyway, and even then, with meetings, travel and regular business taking more priority, it even gets harder and harder to watch every match of their team. The exception are maybe staff members working in social media and taking care of match coverage or video editors, putting together highlight reels.
In 2021, during my tenure as COO and CEO of Rix.GG, I used to watch every game of the players, that played for the org. Rocket League, Valorant, Wild Rift, the stream was usually always on. Now working with Nigma, I barely follow Rocket League and Valorant anymore, as we’re not fielding teams in these titles. The few times I get to watch are big international events (I am currently following how the EMEA teams are performing at VCT Masters Tokyo) or when I am evaluating one of the titles and if there is an interesting team that could be worth picking up.
Did the passion go away? No definitely not, but with other priorities, we just get more and more selective of what we are consuming, as it means spending time on something else than the really important bits. It means to keep the business running and making sure everyone is following the vision and mission of the company. It means being there for the family and choosing to take a break from the screen. The VODs are not running away, and if the passion for a game or team is there, we will find the time… sooner or later!