iGB North America magazine IGBNA Aug/Sep | Page 38

Feature

“eSports is a lot harder to do than traditional
sports, because there’s no mature leagues
and data sources.”

that. In the meantime, we restrict our paid
users to North America, or to countries that
have not regulated this and do not require
a license. For the UK and other European
countries, most of our activity is coming from
free users.
This is really one of the things we have
really innovated on and what sets us
apart from the traditional DFS model, is in
traditional DFS, you play with money or you
don’t play much at all. There’s nothing else to
do on those sites, it’s fantasy, it’s one format,
and you play with money. But we saw that
90% of the people who come to our sites, not
just our site, but other DFS sites - Fan Duel,
DraftKings and others - register but don’t
play with money. So as a business it’s pretty
stupid to bring 100 people to your door, and
then turn away 90 of them right?
So, our solution was to provide a lot of free
stuff, so you can play all sorts of mini games
for free on the site in virtual currencies, and
win virtual prizes.
So how do these virtual currency
games operate alongside the realmoney fantasy product? Do you
eventually see these working as
an acquisition stream for the daily
fantasy games?
The interesting thing is because these are
gamers, they care a lot about virtual, in-game
items, so if they are playing a particular
game, and they want a virtual badge, they
want a new gun in their game, or they want
a new skin for their character, these are all
virtual items. They don’t have any real-money
value, but you can come to Vulcun, play for
free, win some of these items in your game.
So, there no cash involved, but it creates a

lot of engagement, and gives the other 90%
something to do, so that is where most of the
activity in Europe is focused on.
As for it being a potential acquisition
stream, it’s too early to know for sure, as we
only just started doing it this month, and
we are a pretty young company, only six
months old. However, I believe it will. On the
internet, time is always money, and if you can

significant margin, say 10-30% of the overall
eSports fan base.
Search is not an effective way to reach
these people. There is almost no search
volume around these terms. So we’ve
partnered with a bunch of professional
teams and done a lot of organic grass roots
marketing, reaching out to these people in
places where they hang out, which is typically

“We’ve done a lot of organic grass roots marketing,
reaching out to these people in places where they
hang out, which is typically Twitch.”
get people to spend time with your product,
really have fun and be engaged, whether it’s
for money or without money, they will be a
customer for years, they will refer friends, they
will talk about you, it’s always a good thing.
The holy grail for companies such
as yours is obviously converting the
huge and growing numbers of eSports
players and fans into fantasy league
players. How will you be going about
more widely popularising the concept
and business?
I think the fantasy market is always a subset
of the broader sports market, so even in the
US, you find the DFS market becoming pretty
mature with FanDuel and DraftKings, and
Yahoo getting into it, launching a DFS mobile
app this year.
Overall, fantasy is about a third of the
overall market for, say, American football.
It’s a smaller market, because this doesn’t
appeal to everyone. For eSports, the same
trends are going to apply. It’s going to be
smaller than the overall eSports market by a

38 | iGamingBusiness North America | Issue 20 | August/September 2015

Twitch. There’s not too many other places,
there’s YouTube, there’s Azubu, there’s Hitbox,
so you can probably count on one hand the
places you can watch eSports. They are like
the new age TV channels. Instead of being on
air, they are just online, so you open up a web
browser, you punch in an address, and you
can watch the game from either a computer
or a phone. It makes a lot of sense for people
interested in eSports, whatever product and
service you are selling, to be involved there.
How do the demographics of your
average player compare with other
online gaming verticals, such as
traditional DFS/fantasy sports
and iGaming?
The average age for eSports is pretty young,
I think the median age is 20, 21, so it is a
relatively young audience compared to the
general population for traditional sports.
They are predominantly male, north of
80%, maybe 85%, and tend to skew young,
younger than their sports, and they just
watch online, so rarely switch on the TV.