abelard
Player Valuation: £35m
Did anybody read this?
Hashtag United, Wimbly Womblys and the virtual gamers striking it rich
https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...united-virtual-gamers-striking-rich-sport-2-0
Some interesting stuff in here. This has been well established and televised in Asia for at least a decade.
Some excerpts:
"Even more astonishing than the concept is the fact that it has taken off. And how. Hashtag’s recent tour of America was sponsored by Coca-Cola. Owen insists Hashtag is not making a profit because the costs for each match (hiring the stadium, six cameramen, touring etc) are so high and at the moment they are investing all the revenue back into the club, but he admits that some of the sponsorship deals run into six figures.
Like many football fans, Owen became disillusioned with the elite game. “I have fallen out of love with it in recent years, on the back of the Fifa scandals and Qatar getting the World Cup and Russia getting it and keeping it despite their civil rights violations and homophobic behaviour. I feel the people in charge of our game should be standing up for us more and they don’t.”
Even Owen struggles to explain Hashtag’s success. At the beginning of each video he addresses the viewer: “Hello mate!” Perhaps this is the secret. It feels that the show is individually tailored for each of us out there. He tells me a story about when he was interviewing the Real Madrid and Wales star Gareth Bale.
“It was the day after Wales secured qualification for the Euros so Gareth Bale was the king of Wales at this point, everybody wanted to see him. They had invited a few 15- and 16-year-old lads to come down and they came running on to the pitch and I thought: ‘Oh God, Gareth is going to get swamped,’ and they ran straight past Gareth and came to me. This isn’t me telling you this to boast, I was seriously embarrassed by it...
Hashtag United are not the only successful YouTube team. Last month, a charity match between Sidemen FC (a team made up of video-gamers) and YouTube Allstars sold out Charlton Athletic’s 27,000-capacity Valley Stadium. Its usual occupants had barely managed to attract half that figure all season in the EFL.
* * *
But some professionals see e-sports as a threat. When the Premier League’s executive chairman, Richard Scudamore, was asked which league or sport he saw as the main competitor to the Premier League he replied digital gaming. He wondered aloud whether traditional sport could continue to engage young people in the same way interactive e-sports were doing.
While Hashtag United have been attracting more than half a million to their matches on YouTube, figures for live football on pay per view have fallen – the numbers watching Premier League matches on Sky Sports were down 11% at the halfway mark of 2016-17 compared with the previous season, and Sky’s figures have fallen 25% since 2010.
Sure, the digital options are having an impact. But there is something else at play, too. Disenchantment – the working man’s game that is no longer accessible to the working man or woman, the cheapest Arsenal season ticket costing £891 (actually a cut of £123 because the club failed to qualify for the Champions League), Paul Pogba being transferred to Manchester United for £93.2m four years after being given a free transfer, Lionel Messi not paying his taxes. As digital technology has given us a voice, the world of elite football has become ever more alien. Football was formed and codified in the 19th century. And it still works on the 19th/20th-century model of giving (a product) and taking (our money). But that does not work for the young generation.
Unsurprisingly, young people do not relate to the lives of footballers. More worrying, many young people do not even relate to the lives of traditional fans who go to football matches. The idea of shelling out a minimum of £30 to watch a Premier League match is every bit as alien as Pogba’s transfer fee. Who needs to go to football or invest in Sky and BT Sport when we can live-stream matches for free, catch up on highlights in real time on our iPhones, and play more interesting simulacres of the real thing on our computers?
* * *
Now the big boys are trying to get in on the act. Many of Europe’s biggest football teams have started to invest in digital teams. Schalke, Ajax and Wolfsburg are a few of the teams who have signed up their own e-footballers. The French Professional Football League, in partnership with EA Sports, announced the first European e-sports football league last year — e-Ligue 1. Paris Saint-Germain are leading the way, having signed up a whole squad of e-footballers.
Manchester City, by contrast, have just started to dip a little toe into the world of e-sports, with a single signing, Kez Brown. But they are still ahead of the game compared with most other Premier League clubs. Apart from City, only West Ham United have signed an e-footballer.
British football clubs, in particular, are worried about the ageing profile of active supporters. In 2014-15, the average age of adult fans attending a Premier League match was 41. To put this in context, the average age of supporters on the Stretford End at Manchester United’s Old Trafford was 17 in 1968. Not surprisingly, there is a direct correlation between the age of fans attending matches and the astronomical rise in prices. In 1992, the last season of the old First Division, the average ticket price was £7.56, while the average cost of the cheapest Premier League ticket in 2015 was £30.95 (inflation of 401% while the cumulative inflation rate in the UK for the 23 years is 91%).
* * *
One of the interesting things about the top Fifa players is that they tend to be media friendly – many like Brown have their own YouTube channels and are more relaxed talking to the public than real footballers. Not surprisingly, they also tend to be more accessible than top Premier League players.
But I have been trying to talk to Brown for months, and each time I ask Manchester City come up with another excuse – he lives in York, he is shy, he is young, he doesn’t like doing media.
I say to Gigliani that it is easier to get an interview with Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola than their e-sports star, and ask why this is so. Gigliani is about to answer when the press officer steps in and insists we change the subject.
So I do change the subject – and ask whether Brown would be expected to use Manchester City players when representing City. No, Gigliani says, he is free to use whichever players he likes. In Fifa Ultimate, the players with most value tend to be the great legends such as Pelé. How does he think fans would react if Brown were to sign, say, George Best and Bobby Charlton to head up the attack? Gigliani laughs. “Mmmm. Difficult question …”
Again the press officer intervenes. I appear to have hit a nerve. “This isn’t how the game works right,” he says. But it is exactly how the game works, I say. “He plays in a Manchester City kit as Manchester City. Can we move on?”
Now I am truly bewildered. We are talking about the possibility of avatars of veteran Manchester United players representing Manchester City in a digital game, and I am being closed down because the question is too sensitive. Manchester City is my club, I have enjoyed the success money has brought, but surely this is the kind of corporate control that is driving fans away from elite football?
* * *
This is a high-pressured world where you can fall from grace with a single defeat. In May’s Fifa 17 Ultimate Team Championship Final in Berlin, where the top prize rose to $120,000, Tass was beaten in the semi-final. He had one last chance last weekend to qualify for the Fifa Interactive World Cup on home territory in London this August and secured a place, earning an opportunity to win a top prize of $200,000 – the biggest ever prize. Hashtag United get 15% of his winnings.
Watching him, I begin to realise why e-sports is considered by many to be a regular sport – it is all about hand-eye coordination. The speed of his game is astonishing as is the number of things he has to think about simultaneously. Tas, who is 22, says he probably peaked in terms of reaction time at 17 or 18, but his experience gives him the edge over most other players. He gives his life to the game, and is exhausted. “For the past four years I’ve been putting the hours in, trying to be the best and it takes a mental toll on you. It’s a 24/7 mental worry.” Does he get bored? “Yes, I honestly do. Maybe I do miss out on things in life.”
* * *
In February it was announced that Fifa matches would be shown on television for the first time, and in April BT Sport began to broadcast the Fifa Ultimate Team Championship Series. Last month Tottenham Hotspur announced that they were investing in e-sports – not players this time, facilities. The new Spurs stadium will host major e-sports events (everything from Fifa to the regular shoot-em-up events), with the hope that they will attract capacity crowds and earn up to £3m per event.
Simon Chadwick, professor of Sport Enterprise at Salford University, thinks it is inevitable that digital football is going to become a massive spectator sport. “As the 21st century progresses I think the digital version of tournaments is going to be as big as if not bigger than the physical version of the tournaments.”
* * *
This new football world is messing with my head – the mix of the real and the virtual, the Sunday League players with the lucrative Coca-Cola sponsorship, the generation of Fifa stars playing for huge sums who never leave their chairs, the Premier League clubs scared to answer questions about the potential lineup of their digital team, the real team funded by their virtual avatars, the young kids who can replicate the best of Messi but have never played in a park themselves.
There is something so refreshing about watching these kids encourage each other even if they know that ultimately only one of them can win the prize. As an alternative to the cut-throat world of the Premier League, it could not be more appealing.
And yet at the same time there is something else going on – something more knowing. Yes Spencer Owen is reclaiming football’s grassroots, but he is also repackaging it for the digital age. In its own way, the Hashtag brand is every bit as sophisticated as that of Manchester City. Just go to the website to look at the club’s merchandising. Indeed, Owen is often the man the big clubs go to for advice on how to conquer the digital world.
Owen’s brother, Seb Carmichael-Brown, plays in midfield for Hashtag and is the club’s commercial director. He knows exactly why Hashtag has attracted sponsors such as Coca-Cola. “Eyeballs, simple. People are now consuming video format. They are switching off from television. The Wall Street Journal shows even over 18-year-olds are dropping 30% year-by-year on hours watching television. So it would be eyewatering what those figures would be for under-18s. If a brand is looking to target 16-25 year-old males in the UK that’s our core demographic. We have about 15m of them watch the channel every month. Coke gets much better returns investing in people like us than traditional TV.”
The irony is that grassroots revolutionaries Hashtag United already appear to be trying to emulate the top-flight clubs against which they are reacting. Perhaps there is an inevitability to it as boundaries between the digital and real worlds of football become ever more blurred.
Hashtag United, Wimbly Womblys and the virtual gamers striking it rich
https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...united-virtual-gamers-striking-rich-sport-2-0
Some interesting stuff in here. This has been well established and televised in Asia for at least a decade.
Some excerpts:
"Even more astonishing than the concept is the fact that it has taken off. And how. Hashtag’s recent tour of America was sponsored by Coca-Cola. Owen insists Hashtag is not making a profit because the costs for each match (hiring the stadium, six cameramen, touring etc) are so high and at the moment they are investing all the revenue back into the club, but he admits that some of the sponsorship deals run into six figures.
Like many football fans, Owen became disillusioned with the elite game. “I have fallen out of love with it in recent years, on the back of the Fifa scandals and Qatar getting the World Cup and Russia getting it and keeping it despite their civil rights violations and homophobic behaviour. I feel the people in charge of our game should be standing up for us more and they don’t.”
Even Owen struggles to explain Hashtag’s success. At the beginning of each video he addresses the viewer: “Hello mate!” Perhaps this is the secret. It feels that the show is individually tailored for each of us out there. He tells me a story about when he was interviewing the Real Madrid and Wales star Gareth Bale.
“It was the day after Wales secured qualification for the Euros so Gareth Bale was the king of Wales at this point, everybody wanted to see him. They had invited a few 15- and 16-year-old lads to come down and they came running on to the pitch and I thought: ‘Oh God, Gareth is going to get swamped,’ and they ran straight past Gareth and came to me. This isn’t me telling you this to boast, I was seriously embarrassed by it...
Hashtag United are not the only successful YouTube team. Last month, a charity match between Sidemen FC (a team made up of video-gamers) and YouTube Allstars sold out Charlton Athletic’s 27,000-capacity Valley Stadium. Its usual occupants had barely managed to attract half that figure all season in the EFL.
* * *
But some professionals see e-sports as a threat. When the Premier League’s executive chairman, Richard Scudamore, was asked which league or sport he saw as the main competitor to the Premier League he replied digital gaming. He wondered aloud whether traditional sport could continue to engage young people in the same way interactive e-sports were doing.
While Hashtag United have been attracting more than half a million to their matches on YouTube, figures for live football on pay per view have fallen – the numbers watching Premier League matches on Sky Sports were down 11% at the halfway mark of 2016-17 compared with the previous season, and Sky’s figures have fallen 25% since 2010.
Sure, the digital options are having an impact. But there is something else at play, too. Disenchantment – the working man’s game that is no longer accessible to the working man or woman, the cheapest Arsenal season ticket costing £891 (actually a cut of £123 because the club failed to qualify for the Champions League), Paul Pogba being transferred to Manchester United for £93.2m four years after being given a free transfer, Lionel Messi not paying his taxes. As digital technology has given us a voice, the world of elite football has become ever more alien. Football was formed and codified in the 19th century. And it still works on the 19th/20th-century model of giving (a product) and taking (our money). But that does not work for the young generation.
Unsurprisingly, young people do not relate to the lives of footballers. More worrying, many young people do not even relate to the lives of traditional fans who go to football matches. The idea of shelling out a minimum of £30 to watch a Premier League match is every bit as alien as Pogba’s transfer fee. Who needs to go to football or invest in Sky and BT Sport when we can live-stream matches for free, catch up on highlights in real time on our iPhones, and play more interesting simulacres of the real thing on our computers?
* * *
Now the big boys are trying to get in on the act. Many of Europe’s biggest football teams have started to invest in digital teams. Schalke, Ajax and Wolfsburg are a few of the teams who have signed up their own e-footballers. The French Professional Football League, in partnership with EA Sports, announced the first European e-sports football league last year — e-Ligue 1. Paris Saint-Germain are leading the way, having signed up a whole squad of e-footballers.
Manchester City, by contrast, have just started to dip a little toe into the world of e-sports, with a single signing, Kez Brown. But they are still ahead of the game compared with most other Premier League clubs. Apart from City, only West Ham United have signed an e-footballer.
British football clubs, in particular, are worried about the ageing profile of active supporters. In 2014-15, the average age of adult fans attending a Premier League match was 41. To put this in context, the average age of supporters on the Stretford End at Manchester United’s Old Trafford was 17 in 1968. Not surprisingly, there is a direct correlation between the age of fans attending matches and the astronomical rise in prices. In 1992, the last season of the old First Division, the average ticket price was £7.56, while the average cost of the cheapest Premier League ticket in 2015 was £30.95 (inflation of 401% while the cumulative inflation rate in the UK for the 23 years is 91%).
* * *
One of the interesting things about the top Fifa players is that they tend to be media friendly – many like Brown have their own YouTube channels and are more relaxed talking to the public than real footballers. Not surprisingly, they also tend to be more accessible than top Premier League players.
But I have been trying to talk to Brown for months, and each time I ask Manchester City come up with another excuse – he lives in York, he is shy, he is young, he doesn’t like doing media.
I say to Gigliani that it is easier to get an interview with Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola than their e-sports star, and ask why this is so. Gigliani is about to answer when the press officer steps in and insists we change the subject.
So I do change the subject – and ask whether Brown would be expected to use Manchester City players when representing City. No, Gigliani says, he is free to use whichever players he likes. In Fifa Ultimate, the players with most value tend to be the great legends such as Pelé. How does he think fans would react if Brown were to sign, say, George Best and Bobby Charlton to head up the attack? Gigliani laughs. “Mmmm. Difficult question …”
Again the press officer intervenes. I appear to have hit a nerve. “This isn’t how the game works right,” he says. But it is exactly how the game works, I say. “He plays in a Manchester City kit as Manchester City. Can we move on?”
Now I am truly bewildered. We are talking about the possibility of avatars of veteran Manchester United players representing Manchester City in a digital game, and I am being closed down because the question is too sensitive. Manchester City is my club, I have enjoyed the success money has brought, but surely this is the kind of corporate control that is driving fans away from elite football?
* * *
This is a high-pressured world where you can fall from grace with a single defeat. In May’s Fifa 17 Ultimate Team Championship Final in Berlin, where the top prize rose to $120,000, Tass was beaten in the semi-final. He had one last chance last weekend to qualify for the Fifa Interactive World Cup on home territory in London this August and secured a place, earning an opportunity to win a top prize of $200,000 – the biggest ever prize. Hashtag United get 15% of his winnings.
Watching him, I begin to realise why e-sports is considered by many to be a regular sport – it is all about hand-eye coordination. The speed of his game is astonishing as is the number of things he has to think about simultaneously. Tas, who is 22, says he probably peaked in terms of reaction time at 17 or 18, but his experience gives him the edge over most other players. He gives his life to the game, and is exhausted. “For the past four years I’ve been putting the hours in, trying to be the best and it takes a mental toll on you. It’s a 24/7 mental worry.” Does he get bored? “Yes, I honestly do. Maybe I do miss out on things in life.”
* * *
In February it was announced that Fifa matches would be shown on television for the first time, and in April BT Sport began to broadcast the Fifa Ultimate Team Championship Series. Last month Tottenham Hotspur announced that they were investing in e-sports – not players this time, facilities. The new Spurs stadium will host major e-sports events (everything from Fifa to the regular shoot-em-up events), with the hope that they will attract capacity crowds and earn up to £3m per event.
Simon Chadwick, professor of Sport Enterprise at Salford University, thinks it is inevitable that digital football is going to become a massive spectator sport. “As the 21st century progresses I think the digital version of tournaments is going to be as big as if not bigger than the physical version of the tournaments.”
* * *
This new football world is messing with my head – the mix of the real and the virtual, the Sunday League players with the lucrative Coca-Cola sponsorship, the generation of Fifa stars playing for huge sums who never leave their chairs, the Premier League clubs scared to answer questions about the potential lineup of their digital team, the real team funded by their virtual avatars, the young kids who can replicate the best of Messi but have never played in a park themselves.
There is something so refreshing about watching these kids encourage each other even if they know that ultimately only one of them can win the prize. As an alternative to the cut-throat world of the Premier League, it could not be more appealing.
And yet at the same time there is something else going on – something more knowing. Yes Spencer Owen is reclaiming football’s grassroots, but he is also repackaging it for the digital age. In its own way, the Hashtag brand is every bit as sophisticated as that of Manchester City. Just go to the website to look at the club’s merchandising. Indeed, Owen is often the man the big clubs go to for advice on how to conquer the digital world.
Owen’s brother, Seb Carmichael-Brown, plays in midfield for Hashtag and is the club’s commercial director. He knows exactly why Hashtag has attracted sponsors such as Coca-Cola. “Eyeballs, simple. People are now consuming video format. They are switching off from television. The Wall Street Journal shows even over 18-year-olds are dropping 30% year-by-year on hours watching television. So it would be eyewatering what those figures would be for under-18s. If a brand is looking to target 16-25 year-old males in the UK that’s our core demographic. We have about 15m of them watch the channel every month. Coke gets much better returns investing in people like us than traditional TV.”
The irony is that grassroots revolutionaries Hashtag United already appear to be trying to emulate the top-flight clubs against which they are reacting. Perhaps there is an inevitability to it as boundaries between the digital and real worlds of football become ever more blurred.
