On Thursday, we shared with our community that Riot Games' first global tournament of the 2024 #esports season, the VALORANT Masters Madrid in March, reached a record-setting peak audience of 3.1 million and an Average Minute Audience (AMA) for the Final of 2.4 million. Our President of Esports, John Needham, recently spoke with Spain's Expansión (a daily newspaper among economic journals with a 58% market share and 22.2 million monthly online visitors) about Riot Games' objectives, his career path, and other topics. Some highlights from the interview:
* "Esports is a very efficient way to reach millennials, Generation Z, and Generation Alpha. This audience is valuable and difficult to reach through traditional communication channels. These generations spend hours watching streamers. Therefore, our events and broadcasts reach these audiences," he specifies. Moreover, major multinationals have already focused on this industry. "Mastercard, Mercedes-Benz AG, Amazon Web Services (AWS), HP, and other premium partners have teamed up with Riot Games because of the potential of this sector," adds Needham.
* For Needham, "the most important leadership principles are honesty and integrity, protecting your team when bad things happen, optimism, an inspiring vision, and fostering a culture of creative risk-taking." His [leadership] team, he says, "has remained the same for the past seven years—despite ups and downs—so I believe these principles are solid."
* His staff's motivation comes "from serving the players, seeing their reaction to our broadcasts and events, and being in stadiums filled with them cheering." Likewise, successful performance is achieved "by setting simple and clear goals."
* The American executive began his career when the industry was "relatively niche." His early steps among the pixels took place at Sony Online Entertainment in early 2001 when a video game titled Everquest had just 250,000 subscribers. "When Everquest reached 500,000 players, it was unprecedented. It's incredible and humbling to contrast those figures with those of League of Legends, which has had over 650 million players worldwide and whose professional competition reaches more than 150 million viewers... it makes me very proud," emphasizes the executive now responsible for directing all international events of the company's titles.
Link to Spanish article (behind paywall):
https://lnkd.in/gmEs2x6M
If you want to check out yesterday's announcement (including plans for our upcoming VALORANT Masters Shanghai, where I'll be in a couple of weeks), go: https://lnkd.in/gmitjMYR
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