SAP. For people from corporations, these three letters will say a lot and, if you look for associations, the first three will be “giant”, “technology” and “expensive”. Last year, SAP entered esports by signing a contract with an American esports organization Team Liquid, introducing a solution for esports statistical data and much more. We explored the “much more” with Federico Winer, Head of Entertainment Industries at SAP, who interpreted many issues of the esports sphere on a different, more philosophical, level.
— In April 2018, we were in awe of the arrival of SAP in esports. Tell us why the giant, developing corporate software, is generally thinking about eSports?
— Globalization process that characterized the planet in the last decades brought diverse changes in the most industrialized societies. These changes of economic paradigms, together with the evolution of the technologies and media, changed the structures of the cultural scenes. Esports emerge as an expression of this new wave, combining elements of different industries such as entertainment and sports inside an appealing digital community: studies reveals that these members and fans are digital natives, early adopters of new technologies and big fans of artificial intelligence. When such a cultural movement occurs, it is clear that companies of all kinds try to get involved in the scene to connect with the new community on the block. For a technological company like SAP, esports is a clear path to continue growing.
— What are the future plans of SAP for esports business? Products, partnerships, monetization? What role will SAP play after 5 years in esports? What solutions will it provide?
— Lately, I have been working with various industry players on innovation projects for medium and long term challenges. The vision is that esports are no longer games, but digital communities where individuals act as members of a social network with their own codes, values and language.
This implies a series of developments that go beyond the logic of the game: publishers and tournament organizers have to think and redesign the processes in which fans have contact with the game. The underlying idea is that these people stay within the proposed entertainment ecosystem. Thus, the profiling of the user has to go beyond the development of the character of its user. At what time and from where does it connect? What devices do you use? What types of products do you consume in the digital environment? These questions need new answers to increase monetization per fan.
The great thing about this industry is that the vast majority of its consumers are digital natives (13-40 years of age), of the ABC1 segment of the societies and without the hassles of trusting the digital consumer system. The microtransactions that led Fortnite to have two million dollars revenue per day are common for most of the gamers. This opens up a range of possibilities in products and services and in a short time, the marketplace of your favourite game will offer many more add-on services. There will be delivery products, food, clothing, new media subscriptions. It is a whole revolution of our digital imaginary.
— What do you think about the new digital "infotainment" that surrounds the world of esports: live broadcasts, games from the cloud, etc. How does SAP see this new wondrous world and itself in it?
— The fact that there more than 4.3 billion (56% of the global population) users are online globally is a unique event in history because it breaks with the previous communicative paradigms, principles of interconnection, virtual communities and collective intelligence that philosophers discussed for ages. It opens a new spiritual perspective of the individuals, as it is practically impossible to stay away of hypertextual contexts because it requires a lot of efforts to take refuge from the cybercultural movement. The result is that human experiences are transferred to the virtual world, generating a new series of flowing datasets. Google and any social networks are good examples of this phenomena.
Video games are linking many people together. Game developers and esports stakeholders have identified different verticals of data assets related to each community. For SAP, this is a great opportunity as we provide software to run such data and businesses better. As an example, Glu Mobile (San Francisco) is one of our partners and a growing company that exemplifies this trend. Glu develops and publishes free-to-play games: using big data services from us, they analyse 2 billion user logs per day, processing up to 30,000 user events per second. Most of the companies are on the way to develop similar models to track, analyse and gain insights of their users during the interaction with the service or product.
— Are there any special plans for Russia? For example, a partnership with a Russian team by analogy with Team Liquid?
— Russia is always on the agenda of SAP Entertainment because of the great number of opportunities offered by the country, particularly after the legalisation of sports betting that opened a whole new range of markets and opportunities. Currently, we work with several bookmakers and lotteries, which led to one of our best performance regions.
— Emotions. What are your feelings on esports? Is it work with small children or work in a real big industry?
— Video games are a form of art and esports a way of linking human communities. The titles that today lead the viewing rankings on Twitch or YouTube Gaming may change. But gamification is a social phenomenon that has no return. The dream of esports is a global revolution of communities of people. And we are only at the beginning of this path.
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