Alex Igelman Founder, Millennial Esports Corp
Alex Igelman is a lawyer with over 28 years of experience in technology, entertainment and gaming. In 1996, he was the first lawyer to focus on Internet gaming and was instrumental in the early success of both PartyGaming and PokerStars. In 2004, he was involved in the creation and formation of GVC. Since 2014, Alex has been focused on esports. He began a strategic advisory role to Pro Gaming League, an early esports company that was later acquired by Millennial Esports Corp.
In 2016, Millennial Esports debuted on the TSX-V under the symbol GAME – with Alex taking the helm as CEO. In August 2018, he transitioned from his role as CEO to executive chairman. During his overall tenure at Millennial, Igelman raised in excess of U$25m and acquired three companies, including mobile developer Eden Games and streaming analytics company, Streamhatchet.
In 2019, Alex founded Esports Capital Corp, a new undertaking that he leads as managing director. ECC is focused on facilitating and curating relevant opportunities in esports and gaming through its network of experts and advisors. Esports Capital was established by a core group of esports professionals and executives with the intended goal of sharing its specialised expertise and industry knowledge with both the private and public sectors.
How is the current crisis affecting esports? Are more people taking part in esports at home and watching esports due to the crisis? Could you give us your insights into the latest trends in the esports space?
Tere is no question that the content distribution networks like Twitch, Mixer, Douyu, and others, are seeing tremendous growth in viewership (+24 per cent) and corresponding revenue. In terms of play, obviously the active players and play time are way up but this is harder to gauge. However, we know that many cable companies and telcos are seeing a huge increase in bandwidth usage associated with gaming. Anything that increases play or viewership will positively impact the gaming industry and the broader esports market.
When you ask if more people are “playing esports” at home, I think it is important to remember that esports is a marketing offshoot of the 135 billion video gaming industry. People are playing more video games for certain but not necessarily the competitive side of gaming that we now call
“esports”. In terms of trends, as I have been quoted numerous times before, esports wagering is the single greatest opportunity in esports, dwarfing any other by a factor of twenty. Te growth of esports wagering and its sudden rise as a result of the pandemic, has opened the door to the international growth of regulated esports betting.
Now that viewership of traditional sports is pretty much impossible are esports filling the gap while the lockdown continues?
For those that watched esports only, they obviously have more time to view live or recorded esports. For those that had an interest in both, obviously they do not have much choice now and are watching more esports. For those that had no interest before the pandemic, it depends on the esport.
In general, the punter that is going to be betting on the horses or the EFL, is not suddenly going to watch League of Legends. However, I think my former CMO and now CEO, (UK based) Darren Cox, and his company Torque Esports have done a
P52 NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE / MARKET DATA
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