eSports Recap

 You're listening to the Radcast.
 If it's radical, we cover it.
 Here's your host, Ryan Alford.
 Hey guys, what's up?
 It's Ryan Alford and Riley Clark.
 Welcome to the latest episode of the Radcast.
 It's a summary day here for us, summarizing the eSports series, which we've just kind of
 wound down, feeling good about it.
 Yeah, I feel like the whole series actually went really well.
 And there was obviously a lot of different types of guests that I think we had.
 We had players, we had people who were basically a founder of eSports in North America.
 And then we had people that were in charge of a lot of in-gave advertisements.
 So I think we really hit as many tips of the iceberg of the ecosystem.
 That we could have.
 Exactly.
 It's been eye-opening for me just the scale and scope of eSports and what's happening.
 Obviously separating video gaming as a whole with the competitive side, which is what makes
 up eSports and kind of finding that fine line for me was important.
 And then from a marketing perspective, just really during the series, like some contracts
 got closed, like with Verizon and others getting involved or even more involved in the
 art of war.
 So understanding just the impact that you're going to see with brands and marketing in the
 space over the next five to 10 years, I think we are literally, as we talked about with
 some of our guests, it's not a new thing.
 I mean, they've been playing tournaments for 15 years.
 Right.
 Probably longer than someone's going to go.
 They've been playing for 19.4 years, actually, don't hold me to that, but been playing
 for a number of years.
 This isn't new, but the adoption rate, the scale, the awareness with brands, the technologies,
 all of those things are kind of coming full tilt right now.
 And then as we talked with our guests about, everything's had gas port on the fire from
 COVID, with being at home and so much more gaming happening, maybe less obviously in person
 competitive tournaments, but I think you're just seeing more and more people brands, entities
 coming to the space.
 Yeah.
 Well, I think even with that, I know we don't like talking about COVID necessarily in the
 sense of all the negativity that it's brought, but I think if anything, especially in the
 esport space, I mean, everyone, all the guests have been saying, if anything, it accelerated.
 All of the things they have been working on, and so things they have been planning for
 like the next two to five years had to happen in like three months, you know?
 But I think everything happened a lot.
 I think they all had a surprising success though, you know?
 It's not like there was a catastrophic hit to the esport space, if anything, it, I mean
 to your point, it grew even more.
 Exactly.
 Yeah.
 And so, hopefully you've followed along, you've listened to each episode.
 This will definitely be the summary of, you know, some of our guests and the key takeaways,
 but definitely if you're listening to the first time, take some time, you know, in your
 workout, whatever, and however you listen to the podcast, you're wanting to kind of just
 start to, you know, unpeel everything that there is in esports.
 I do think we did a admirable job of kind of covering a lot of gametes, but at the same
 time, I think we could do a year long, you know, we kept fighting, we were like, oh my
 gosh, we can just keep going and going and going and then it's just, yeah, man, we might,
 we might.
 I think we could probably come back to around to it.
 Exactly.
 So, um, who, who want to start down our list of guests, maybe, and now we'll go from the
 top.
 So we'll start with Magnus.
 He was our first guest in this series that was episode 55 and he works, I feel like
 I'm always going to say their company name wrong, but V, I hope I'm saying that right.
 But they want it, they want to be the place that you go to to bet on games in game betting,
 legal legends, those kinds of games.
 And then again, just kind of like what we were talking about earlier with the COVID stuff,
 traditional sports, people wanting to bet on something and a lot more people started
 transitioning into games they knew, which was an interesting point that he had made because
 you already knew you have basketball works, how football works or whatever.
 So when you're transitioning to that kind of betting, you already know what you're doing.
 My biggest takeaway from this is we have a lot of degenerate gamblers in the world because
 they need to get another place to gamble.
 Look, you get that side of it now, you know, seriousness, it's fascinating just to think
 you go from the space, you know, Twitch the last 10 years has brought about watching other
 people play games, whether competitive league tournaments or just actual gameplay itself.
 And now we've reached this point where people are betting on who's going to win these tournaments
 or matches and it's fascinating to me the dynamics because if you think about how complex
 for someone like watching American football the first time, we take it for granted because
 we've been watching in a whole lives growing up, it's America's number one football sport.
 It's pretty complex playing offense defense, all the rules, all those things for someone
 not watching esports and the number of different games and the level of expertise needed to kind
 of understand what's happening and betting on that gameplay is fascinating to me.
 And just what it takes for them to set the odds and set the everything that goes into it is
 crazy and but it's not surprising how far everything else has come along that we're at this stage.
 No, I agree. I think he made another interesting point in his episode when he was just talking about
 the people that bet on non-traditional games like the Counter-Strike objective or legal legends.
 They're not the kinds of people that are betting on the traditional games.
 Which I thought was kind of in, I don't know why I just thought that was so interesting to me but
 I think it's back to you know you have, the people that know these games that have played these
 games that may not be compelling competitively, this is another way for them to kind of keep the
 competitors just going and stay involved in it and they understand the game and the average person
 that plays Counter-Strike isn't playing NBA 2K. No, exactly but I think that's the...
 I don't watch soccer. I'm a football fan. And soccer fans are like, you aren't into that.
 But like, I'd be like, I'm not into that. You're not. Each one has their own person has their own
 thing. But Magnus was great and a really great guest really gave good insight and you know we'll
 link to, you can obviously look inside each episode to find some links and different things but
 we'll put in the show notes for this as I look at Raleigh too, I say. Yes, I will be doing it.
 I will be doing it. We'll remind us to get some links to every guest, both their profile and or
 their... I'll break it down on the episode notes. So yeah, we'll just kind of move along. Charles
 is in Charles Conroy. He was in episode 56. He was one of our founding fathers of Esports in America
 which is, I don't know why this makes me just like, you know, you kind of want to put your hand
 over your heart like... Can we produce this episode and add some like a patriotic music on top of this?
 I just want like a little flag like waving in the wind with this part of Charles.
 No, but Charles was awesome. I mean, his episode was actually very, very, very full because he
 kind of talked about complexity in the beginning of that league with Jason Lake and everything
 and then how it went into the Dallas Cowboys and then he went into all the things that he works
 now with Switch with the Switch. Sorry, the Switch. Which is the world's largest transmission
 broadcaster. Yes, they're helping... Charles is one of the business development sales VPs for the
 Switch. They help with the transmission of all of these games. So you think about linear TV,
 traditionally how it gets there and all that. They're digitizing all that. I'm summarizing, you know,
 for all of us nascent digital video watchers, but they essentially help it get to wherever it's
 going to go, whatever that feed is. They are feeding that one transmission of it's being recorded here
 or videoed here. They're getting it everywhere else digitally. I'm sure Charles wasn't this
 or someone, but that's really dumbing it down. But I think that is the most simple way to discuss
 that, but they are the market leader in helping nearly all of the pro leagues with doing this.
 And some of that plays into not using necessarily their service, but back to when we get to
 Matt's episode with the NBA. Some of the transmission with NBA 2K and everything's going on there.
 Not saying the Switch is involved with that because no one devotes that to us, but it's the
 similar type of technology that's going on that's making that happen with the broadcast of
 multiple signals for multiple places and kind of getting them all boiled down to where they need to go.
 Yeah, but Charles was great. Well, I did want to say before I move on from Charles, there was one
 more thing I wanted to say about him because I think because I think this is when we really started
 to get into Twitch was his episode because another point I felt like he kind of made was just
 Twitch's involvement in like, what's the word I'm looking for? Just like illuminating, I guess,
 like how intense eSports is because it forced like so much more outside money to come into eSports
 because they realized, oh my gosh, Twitch. Okay. How many eyeballs are on it? Exactly. Yeah.
 And but I think, you know, and then we'll get into the rest of them later, but it starts to shift how
 you're targeting your advertisement. Yeah, exactly. But what Charles, I think, as much as like we
 talked about the capability and everything, but he talked a lot about complexity. What it did for me
 was putting the context, the power and the legitimacy that these clubs, slash teams, slash
 gaming leagues have. Yeah. And just the pop culture, nature of each player having, you know,
 huge Instagram followings, the league itself, having Instagram followings and the personality within
 them, all of those dynamics and, you know, no different than probably, you know, an NBA team,
 you know, the Miami Heat, if you're a huge heat fan, you've got 14 players on the team, whatever
 that roster looks like and everyone has their following, but they're all underneath the Miami Heat.
 But within the leagues, there's multiple gangs, multiple players, multiple sponsors.
 There's just as much complexity there as any other thing and kind of wrapping your head around
 that ecosystem is huge. And Charles kind of put a fine point with that and the power, you know,
 with the Dallas Cowboys, purchasing their league and group, just again, how mainstream it is and
 how the big players are recognizing the power that these groups hold. We didn't necessarily talk
 about this in Charles episode. This is just a side note, I guess, for you and I. Do you feel like
 more teams are going to start doing that? You know, it makes sense for the Dallas Cowboys,
 their America's team. And you think Dallas Cowboys is America's team. That's their nickname.
 America's team. It's literally the largest NFL franchise in the country. Why do I think the
 Patriots were the largest franchise? Maybe one more, the Patriots, but winning doesn't
 necessarily translate to all the fans and where, you know, the Dallas Cowboys were always on TV
 back in the 70s, 80s. And so a lot of killers. That's even pretty dating me to some degree.
 But it and they became, you know, known as America's team because the kids and everybody that didn't
 maybe have a team in their market, they became the national team. So to speak, like the most well
 known broad team, you know, like if you're in Greenville, South Carolina, you may have before,
 obviously if you're NFL so huge now, but 30, 40 years ago, you may have known and heard of
 players on the Dallas Cowboys, but the Oakland Raiders, you had no idea, you know, because they
 weren't in your media market. And the Dallas Cowboys, though, would get shown in your media market
 as kind of the default team. You know, this is before the Atlanta Falcons and the Dallas Cowboys
 and all that, maybe not the Falcons, but at least the Carolina Panthers because that franchises
 only like 20 years old. And so maybe a little more than that, but not much. So again,
 it's not surprising that the Dallas Cowboys bought it, whether or not the Green Bay Patriots
 are going to buy or, you know, be involved. Maybe it could make sense, but it's more,
 I think you'll start to see, I can see Verizon, you know, I can see Verizon obviously is partnering
 with these big leagues and big teams and being the overall, you know, 5G carrier for certain teams.
 And I could see Verizon absolutely having their own team. You think so?
 Oh, yeah. Like in the next five years, I wouldn't be surprised if it's on their roadmap.
 Does it defend it? Does it make definitive sense that they're going to do it? Maybe not,
 you know, because they won't, they might want, you know, a broader coverage in just
 our own, but I could totally see it happening. Yeah. Yeah. And so I could see any large
 brand or entity getting involved in owning their own leagues. Not just necessarily traditional sports
 taking on their own. Exactly. Okay. I see that. Yeah. I could see it. I could see that too.
 Especially when the technology is kind of aligned, you know, with Verizon, just make some sense that
 you've got internet and the bandwidth that it takes. And no people aren't necessarily going to be
 playing eSports over their 5G connection. We're probably not quite there with the latency and
 ping and everything that goes into the streaming. You still need like a land to make that happen.
 But we're inching closer and then you, but you do have all of the other content that goes on with
 it, the live streaming, the Twitch aspect, the stuff that you might would use, the alternative
 uses for content and sharing and all those things that you would use your phone, whether it's your
 friend watching and filming you video and he's sending it off or, you know, all the other things
 where content is being distributed, having that 5G connection and that authority makes absolute
 sense for someone like a Verizon. And again, not getting down too maintained, it's here. I know.
 Summarizing Charles open my eyes. But Charles really opened my eyes to the leverage points,
 the opportunities and just the overall scope of the teams and leagues.
 No, I, yeah. That was, I think, I remember after the first two, the first couple episodes,
 we were definitely like, oh wow, like this is like way much bigger than we even gave it like
 whole credit for. We'll move right along here. So Sean was next episode 57.
 Like I feel like the biggest thing I felt like he was so passionate about is just making sure
 everyone had an opportunity in esports to be involved in esports. But it wasn't just necessarily
 being a gamer in esports. Yeah. You know, absolutely. So Sean Barry,
 um, one of, was he third or second? We kind of got into the order, but he was third. Yeah. Yeah.
 But big, you know, has arenas opened up some technology arenas where both the gaming aspect kind
 of combining both the opportunities to be of space where gaming happens, but also opening up
 opportunities for the broader ecosystem of gaming and getting kids involved with the possibilities
 will have, hey, you know, how could you get involved with esports? It might be through
 coding or, you know, an avenue that's not necessarily as the player, but started through those
 arenas that were unfortunately, you know, in a hiatus as he was just getting off the ground.
 And I'll link, I'll link to hit Metro esports as well, his, his, uh, company. But I think,
 I think a lot of the stuff he was doing, just making sure, um, anyone really, I mean,
 because I think his point too was like, there's more females in this than actually males,
 you know, like he was like making all these like statistics and, um, we have a lot of those on
 that episode linked there, um, but I'll link them again when I, we produce this. Yeah. And, um,
 I also think, you know, it's timely and, you know, Sean wasn't harping on it, but, you know,
 the minority aspect, the underserved aspect of, of minorities while they actually overindex in,
 playing amongst younger kids and stuff and the opportunity to kind of open up those channels.
 And I know that he's been sponsoring games and other ways for this to happen while he hopefully
 is reopening soon, Sean. I hope you are. Um, I don't know what the timing is for all of those
 things, but I do shining, shining a light on the minority opportunity was important. And I think
 it's something that, um, we can all get behind is you think about the underserved potential
 of this market. Absolutely. Yeah. I have all the, you know, respect to the world for him. He's
 giving back to the community like over and over again. So I just, you know, have all the parts of that.
 But in a way, your pit pants, your pit football teams going to have some trouble this year at the
 show. So I'm going to play it running back at Pittsburgh again. So, uh, we'll see how they
 figure out the ACC this year. Hopefully they don't, they don't run into Clemson again in the
 championship game. I can't talk about it. I'm a WWE girl. I can't talk about it.
 All right. Moving along, Tyler, episode 58, uh, Tyler, Andreas, he as the esports arena, um,
 uh, what's the good word? I feel like he was the idea behind this, right? He and his
 group of friends, Halo two guys, you know, and they were coming in and realizing, you know,
 you can create a space and a design and arena fit for the community that gamers were lacking.
 Yeah. He's got a number of arenas throughout the country started in California,
 one in Las Vegas, actually one, and then signed the kind of Walmart agreement where they
 took that concept and kind of scaled it down into Walmart. So not a franchise yet, but more of a
 licensing agreement where they own most of the locations or have a license agreement with Walmart,
 to really, and really the first, as I understood it, the first really arenas in the country for
 e-sports. That's all I understood it as well. Um, I remember on this episode, all I can think about
 is the hockey. It was, Tyler had like hockey gear in the background and he brought out a hockey jersey
 that was like, I think it was a target or, uh, knows, uh, it was a brand I can't remember, but we'll
 look back, uh, and, uh, but, uh, yes. No, he, yeah, that was a fun episode. Um, I liked all the,
 how they, how he designed the space. Yeah. But I liked the point of using, not that he's like
 taking advantage of Walmart. I think it's brilliant, though. He took that risk, even though he,
 I remember he was like, you know, this was like oil and water to me. Like there's no way that
 that was going to work. But you have a captive audience. You have mom shopping around. You have
 kids or, you know, even, you know, 25 year olds walking around shopping. Oh, I can say her
 game for 30 minutes or whatever. And he even made the point to like, you know, Walmart's location
 just finished the rest of it. The free parking. There's normally a Starbucks or something in a
 Walmart or a subway, you know, whatever you get food. You can just chill and hang out. And then
 you can play video games. I mean, gosh, I wish there was one in Greenville. Tyler, get on it.
 No, just kidding. I was actually Walmart the other day. And, uh, Nicole was back to school shopping.
 Yeah. I was like, disappearing down a few different hours and I was like, I ran out of stuff. And
 I'm like, I would have definitely gone and got on some, uh, some call of duty or something.
 Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Let's get on at Walmart. We need every location with a gaming center
 and any sports arena. These sports arenas need to come this way. Yeah, but huge community.
 Absolutely. Huge again, back to how many big brands that we talked about so far, Walmart,
 you know, I'm up for eyes and we talked about Dallas Cowboys. Um, brands are all over this.
 Oh, yeah. Secrets out. It's been out. And it is, look, you have, you have a growing demographic
 of players that are not consuming television. They're not consuming traditional terrestrial radio.
 That's such an important point. If you are, if you want to get in front of this audience,
 the future of America, the future business owners, leaders and all that, if you want to have your
 brand in front of them, you've got to go to where they are and where they are is playing video games.
 And it's just reality and the brands that are getting behind this are going to win. And the
 ones that don't are going to get loved behind. No, I agree. Cheers to you, Walmart.
 All right, episode 60 is in Marvinity. Um, he was our CEO and founder of Anzoo.io. And these
 was our in-game advertisement group. And this to me was honestly such a cool episode because I
 loved how he described what they do. So taking, um, basically branded content and making it a part
 of the game. It's like when you're seeing, you know, you're playing Fortnite or whatever,
 and they have those billboards or even an apex, and you have those billboards. And, you know,
 then you see an advertisement for the MasterCard, the New MasterCard debit card or whatever it is.
 Like, that's all stuff that they do. And that's, I just, it's smart advertising. And to your point,
 my generation and all of us, we are watching TV, we're watching Netflix, we're watching
 who, you know what I mean? Or we're playing video games. And so it's just, we're on our phone.
 So it's just like anything else. I feel like you have to, you have to change how you're targeting
 your audience. Yep. Absolutely. And this look, when I was playing, I don't remember when it was,
 I was, it might have been, I don't know if it was at the arcade or, I don't want to date myself
 too much here, but either the arcade or playing a game once, I remember literally, I think it was
 like, do it ratter dot, it's on the do or die or like a skateboarding game. And like it was skating
 around the town. Yeah. And I remember going, you know, I guess I was just meant to be an advertising
 marketing, because I don't know how old I was, but I remember thinking, I'm surprised there's
 not a bill, like a real billboard, because they had made up companies. You know, you'd be like,
 always acme company, you know, whatever. So it was always a matter of time, because these
 locations were there. Oh, absolutely. And now they're, you know, synchronizing within it,
 you've got the platform, you have programmatic advertising for anyone listening that is essentially
 any of the ads that you see in the internet, the display ads to most of them revolve programmatically
 now, which is just a way of automating the real time auction and the cost of those ads. And
 right. We'll have a course on programmatic and other time. But the point being they are, and this
 is Anzu.io saying that right. Yes. Again, links will be in the, a lot of terminology in this
 that need linking when we will do it. But again, they are bringing that programmatic opportunity
 within the game experiences, both mobile and console gaming and PC gaming, I'm sure eventually.
 And they are citing some big deals. It's only going to grow. You're going to see a more organic
 blending of brands and content within these gaming platforms. Think about all the, the,
 the avenues within them, because you've got all these, you've got, yes, you've got the
 battle royal games and the fighting games and the racing games and you can kind of figure in
 your head how that fits. But think about all the other content that comes with the games and places
 where these brands can get involved, the pre-release videos, the, the pre game. And like I think of
 like the madden thing you do training camp and you do these kind of things like you're becoming the
 player. And yes, it's all part of the game, but there's just so many different places where brands
 might could be naturally interjected. And you're going to see companies like Idemars bringing in
 that advertising opportunity in a scalable way for companies. No, I agree. I think one of his
 the biggest things I took away from that was that larger brands have to adapt the influence
 that's coming from this younger audience. And so to that point, I mean, like, you know, if you're
 being your, you know, if you're your player or whatever, and Adidas is your, is your sponsor versus
 like Nike, you might actually be a little bit more biased in real life. You know what I mean,
 depending on like what you're doing in the game, it's going to change like what you're doing in
 life, to a degree. Exactly. And so this one was probably the most down the center of the marketing
 opportunity for medium-sized brands to kind of get their get their cells into the game. Literally.
 All right. And then we had episode 61, Matt Arden. And this episode was, I mean, oh gosh,
 all these episodes are really good, but this episode was very well done. There was a lot covered
 in this episode as far as what the NBA 2K League is working on currently. And really just,
 it was comical to hear just like the transition they had from going in office to then producing on
 couches and distributing all those packages, but then somehow managing every week they were
 doing what they were supposed to be doing. And it was just like, again, that surprise success.
 Exactly. Matt ever sees content and media for NBA 2K League. If you watch ESPN at all, ESPN 2,
 there are almost every Matt corrected me, not every, but almost every Tuesday night hosted
 and one of the play-by-play is my good friend Scott Cole. Scott, if you're listening to the
 shout out to you, the interesting thing here, it was on multiple levels. One, getting a very
 specific look into one specific game and the dynamics of what it's taken. You had the aspect
 that Matt talked about of, literally, because, you know, they were thinking about doing this type
 of broadcast and doing what they were doing remotely and doing all of that in like a two to three
 year window. Right. And what eventually turned into a, I think he said, two week window.
 Oh, yeah, I was about to say what from he was like two to three years to two to two weeks.
 You know, being in media and production for a long time, I, it's hard for anyone if you're not
 in into it. Anyone knows that it's got to be complex and you can kind of go, yeah, that was probably
 hard. You have no idea what it takes and like how complex and how amazing it was that they were
 able to turn that around and make all that happen. And it's been seamless because I've watched the
 broadcast had been like, there's no blips. There's not like it's everything feels like it was
 produced weeks ago and they got to tinker with it and all that. But let's say quasi-live
 broadcast of leagues and games going on from multiple locations. Yeah. Really fantastic
 job by him and his team, but just the dynamic nature of what they've pulled off is quite fascinating.
 Oh, I agree. And I love just the he was storyteller and you could tell he was a storyteller.
 Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just I love listening to just everything that he and his team are working on
 and just how they're getting into the heart of creating the storyline. That's so interesting.
 Like I feel like some people were wanting just episodes. I'm like, how did you do this story?
 You know, just like just things like that, which is where, you know, I know we've been talking about
 maybe doing more esports things, but that would definitely be something to come back to.
 I think they're their whole YouTube series. Again, the impact and what they've been doing to
 make that happen with COVID going on, the remote broadcasting. And to tell those stories and
 them to feel so seamless, you know, with using smartphone footage and other footage and you know,
 Matt and I tangled a little bit on, you know, how beautiful the content necessarily has to be.
 You would have no idea most of that. And that's cute as to their team making it look that way.
 But the ability to tell those stories, to bring the players to life, to do all of that,
 all sponsored by AT&T. Matt, I'll give you another drop for AT&T on that one. We get fries on some
 love. You know, we're not sponsored by either one yet. So we'll give you both some love. So AT&T,
 helping them bring that YouTube series to life. And again, even if you have no other interest in this
 or any of the content or you're just not into esports, go watch some of those episodes and watch,
 you know, the passion and everything. What they put in to bring the the players are putting in
 to win these leagues, to win the games and the, you know, they all have families that you're all
 traveling. They're all dealing with COVID and other things. So it's a great story, no matter what
 your interest levels are. Oh, I agree. And it's exciting. Yeah. Like you can't watch any of the
 videos about a tournament or anything like that and not feel a sense of like, yes, you know, like,
 oh, I'm going to root for you or like, whatever, you know, it's just like, it's like an exciting thing,
 which I guess leads us to our last guy. Yep. Joseph Iquinto, also known as Fatal Strike,
 episode 63. And Joe was our guy who 30 time local or 31 time local regional champion,
 three time coaching and managing champion as well. Yeah. Super, super, super smart guy.
 Really smart, really good. You know, like sometimes we have guests and luckily,
 none of them on the esports series, but just occasionally you'll have guests where you really
 have to draw it out of them. Joe's a natural like he's he's been a commentator. Natural,
 storyteller, natural knows how to talk about the topics and kind of relay that in a meaningful way.
 Oh, yeah. And fascinating just to hear the player perspective, the growth and Joe's been in long,
 it's kind of seen the the front end of it, you know, being, you know, having played for 12, 14
 years, you know, longer than that, but on the pro side of things. And hearing his story
 from childhood to professional to now commentator manager, you know, was really an interesting
 dynamic when you kind of close off the series, we talked about all these business things and the
 leagues and the games and the sponsors and the advertising and then to get the player perspective
 was really great. Right. No, I agree. I agree. Yeah, I'll link all his stuff to he has a
 Twitch account and everything that you can live stream. And this is where, you know, you also just
 kind of wish you could just grow up. So you can do this. You can be his bearded gamer. Yeah,
 he has bearded. I don't know. He'll play Rocket League. Yeah, that's not all I think I could play.
 I would add some maddened, but these these gears of war, which he's won,
 numerous tournaments and managed national champions and been involved with the best of the best
 of the world. I can't even wrap my head around, but I'm just thinking back to my days and we
 talked about this as a street fighter and I'm not, but I just be mashing buttons hoping for
 certain things and these guys would be like, they know exactly like what to do, but they change
 the controller setting so they can do what they need to do quicker and like, you know, all that stuff,
 you're like, what's happening? Exactly. But Joe, fatal strike, we're still working on my
 gamer name. I don't know what it is. Oh, yeah. No, I need it. It's not what we said last time.
 Which just to keep the e from appearing on our episode will not say that since we have a
 sending curse words on this episode. I know actually we have natural, I guess we'll keep the e
 since we have it. We'll keep the office episode. We can call it backslap.
 Thanks. There we go. There we go. There we go. I'll think about it. I'll think about it for
 you as your brand manager. Yeah, exactly. But okay, but where do you see this all going as like it's
 as we're all finishing out the series and everything like where did you feel like
 I guess like where did your head go? Okay, this is my head went. I asked every guest if my kids
 would be able to make a career out of this. And so what I think is going to happen is you're
 going to see I think colleges and universities are going to have whether it's programs or leagues
 or things. I think those exist now. I think they'll become more mainstream. I think you're going
 to see potentially even in grade school, some adoption or realization that these are legitimate
 that video games aren't just wasting time. That this is part of it's it's been part of culture
 for kids for I mean, I was doing it when I was a kid and that was a long long time ago. But and
 so it's not that it's new. And that's why I don't want to frame this is like well, yeah,
 they've been doing that. What it's grown into is new though. Like this concept of like what it's
 become is is different because it's bringing in like what's traditionally been a in-person sport
 like one-on-one kind of game aspect to just virtual. Yeah. And I mean, and I think you're going to see
 I think we're just scratching the service for whatever mainstream like again back to the schools
 back to the arenas back to Wal-Mart back to the intersection of mainstream with these sports
 game gaming in general. I think we are just scratching the surface for where all that's going
 in the legitimization of it. And the reality it comes back to this you know bring it full circle
 back to the marketing. You have to have your brand and your message and what you stand for
 in front of customers. It's about region frequency. It's about and the reality is the places with which
 that's happening. I don't think televisions completely dead because you still have a lot of TV
 being watched and there's still audience for it. So I'm not like overstating that. But the
 12 year old to 30 you know 12 to 28 these guys are not watching television. They are not listening
 to mainstream radio. They their eyeballs are elsewhere and a large percentage of them a very
 affluent percentage of them are in to game. And into e-sports and other things. And so from
 marketing perspective brands and businesses will no longer be able to ignore this as a channel
 with which they need to be thinking about and learning how to get involved organically. And not
 a forced fake their way through it. Or let me throw up my logo at a local event. It's got to be
 more than that as a lot of our guests said. I was about to say almost every guest said like
 we'll keep it. We'll keep it. No, but there was a word that was explicitly used. But you know
 like just having like they they will they can sense out if you're not being honest with them.
 And if you're doing it for the wrong reasons and everyone's saying you have to come in organically
 you have to come in with a purpose that's for who you're trying to sell it. Or you know whatever
 whoever you're trying to engage with. It has to be beneficial to them. Exactly. It can't be your
 benefit. You know and it can't really be your benefit. You have to come in there with a completely
 different mindset. I really want to thank all of our guests that we had on during this series.
 Again it won't be the last we're going to stay connected. So I hope you enjoyed this series.
 Lots to take away. We're going to have links to everything. We'll continue to post. We've got
 a ton of content from all of these things. So again, follow along at theradcast.com. Follow along
 v.rad.cast on Instagram and on Facebook. You can get all the links to our content.
 Everything else in the final world, Riley. No, I think that's it. Thanks for watching us live,
 by the way. Yep, had a few people in the live broadcast. Hopefully you heard us.
 I hope you've had what we boomed enough. But thank you so much for continuing to listen. We
 appreciate all of you and we'll see you next time. To listen to full episodes or to contact us,
 visit us on the web at theradcast.com. Or follow our host at Ryan Alford on Instagram. Thanks for tuning in.