Matthieu Dallon: 'There is no independence'

By giving the community flashback videos from former ESWC grand finals (2003-2006 already published, if I see that right), you're in my mind trying to regain the positive momentum of the best times ESWC had seen. How is the ESWC 2012 going to feel like? Will it actually feel like a revival event, or which new ideas will you bring in?

Matthieu Dallon: The ESWC will soon be celebrating its 10th birthday, and it's true that the event has always been marked by its social, festive and community atmosphere. Each week we take a look back in photos at previous editions, above all wanting to give a tip of the hat to everyone who has participated in the experience and each of its steps from the beginning. I'm thinking above all of the staff and the champions. For 2012, we want to maintain this spirit of friendship and the pleasure of getting together, while guaranteeing the champions have the best conditions for the competition and the audience gets the show they're expecting. I would say that 2011 marked the return of the ESWC. I was called on to produce the event. Nearly 80,000 people attended the matches over 5 days. Probably a world record. Of course new elements will be introduced in 2012, but the important thing is to consolidate our status as a major international tournament.

You announced your re-entry as the owner of ESWC (through Oxent) in May, three years after the bankruptcy of Games-Services…

To repeat the article of David 'R0cK3r' Donschen, which we both have in mind, in 2009 I finished with: "So even if it is hard, and even if I have a handicap now, I don't want to do anything else". Just after that, I was lucky enough to meet Antoine Frankart, then to create Oxent with him in December. For nearly 2 years I had no more contact with the ESWC, and we worked with Antoine to develop online activities. In June 2011, Jean-Marie Coutant, who had acquired the ESWC in 2009, contacted me and asked me to produce the event at Paris Games Week. In June 2012, we merged our interests and Oxent took over the entire ESWC project, in particular by settling all the prize money that still had to be paid out. We also gave ourselves the objective for 2013 of settling the debts Games-Services had towards players. Even though Oxent doesn't have to do this, I always felt that anyone taking over the project should do the same.

How are you trying to avoid losing money with Oxent in the 2010's just as you did with Games-Services in the 2000's? If, as it looks for now, you try to host the same style and structure of event with Oxent, why do you think it will work now, if it wasn't quite profitable in the 2000's? As you said in the 2009 interview, "Games-Services had almost always lost money".

Without wanting to give away too much, I feel that all of the eSport organisations in the world lost a lot of money in the 2000s, and are still losing money in the current decade. I'm talking about both those who haven't survived and those who are at the top today. Compared with subsidiaries of groups like Newscorp or Samsung, or American start-ups with tens of millions of dollars backing, we are players on a modest scale, and I would say that we have lost far less money than the rest.

The real question is what is this investment for? Who gets something out of it? In my opinion; It's essentially for educating a market, brands, agencies and the media, and to increase the audience, so that one day there will be a regular and growing profit which will be shared with the players, clubs, organisations and games publishers.

I think that eSport is in it for the long run, an adventure that is even more complex than that of sport in the 20th century. It took both FIFA and the Olympics nearly 100 years to become the institutions we know today. After just 10 years, we are at an early technological and economic crossroads that may let world eSport organisations take a place in the model described above.

Are we, industry-wise, in a totally different situation these days? Are Twitch/own3D/Dailymotion the reason for that? Or do you blame your unintentional three-year-pause on the miserable situation of 2009's general economy and still believe the original product was and still is the best way to handle it?

I have always believed in two fundamental things, which were behind the creation of the ESWC and my commitment to eSport: video game champions are true athletes, and watching them play is a real show that goes beyond the interest you might have in a game. My point of view hasn’t changed. Everything we have tried to set up, year after year, from the federation of tournaments on every continent and the relationships we've developed with the studios and publishers, to staging the video game matches and broadcasting them live, is finally coming together now. Streaming platforms really are THE technical aspect that was missing over the almost 10 years of eSport. But beyond the technical aspects, the possibility to use them to market the content is a new and positive factor in the development of eSport.

The crisis in 2008 and 2009 was really very hard for everyone involved in eSport. The ones who came through it were clever enough to develop service activities alongside their purely sporting or media business. For Oxent, the orientation is technological. We work on web and mobile products, which generate their own revenue, and their objective is to add long-term stability to our business in the case of a shortfall in sponsoring revenue.

Back in 2009, you specifically stressed the threefold business model with licensing rights (which you did well on), marketing rights (which you did OK on, depending on the general economic situation) and media rights (which you couldn't do at all). How does this business model look like today?

I think it's the ideal model if we indeed hold all of the rights, in particular to market the games’ content.




Your words: "The relation between games owners and eSports organizations is the most important question of all for the future. And I think it is even more important for the champions than for leagues producers." Riot Games and S2Games massively subsidizes 3rd party tournaments, Valve hosts its own 1-Million-Dollar tournament, Blizzard hosts its very own WCS with partners. How independent are the teams and the league producers in 2012?

There's no independence; but it's a necessary phase. Let's just say that for 10 years, nobody was interested in these issues – the number of times I even had to explain what eSport means to games publishers... Today we're starting a period where publishers are reconquering a potential engine for growth. So they're investing to the hilt, probably in a way that's inversely proportional to their past indifference.

My long-term vision is simple: the players should hold the property rights to their performances, meaning in real terms to their match replays and demos. It's the product of their intelligence. Without this part, the true "beauty" of a game, it is just a series of more or less logical binary situations. Just like in chess, what makes a game worthwhile are not the pieces of the chessboard, but the strategic dimension, the surprise, the more or less conscious mistakes, the anticipation, the clash of forces. In short, it's the essence of humanity reflected in the game. And what actually makes a good game for eSport is the way it can offer a balance of forces, or a perfect physique; that means the ability to remove everything else, leaving just what the player brings to the game.

Today all pictures or sequences generated by the game, are controlled and owned by the game publisher. Every form of game performance is owned by the game publisher, who grants more or fewer benefits to eSports organisations.

To build eSport up for the long-term, this question of rights will have to be genuinely dealt with one day, and settled on the side of the player. My personal project is to develop this idea. The day the players truly hold the rights to their performance, they will be able to transfer it to an organisation, like a singer with a record label or promoter; like an athlete with a club, league or association.




How independent are you, if you pick up three Nadeo games and list Blizzard as official partner, compared to other event producers?

My previous answer couldn't be more transparent. We are at a level of eSport maturity which dictates that the publishers license and control use of their game. It's legitimate, we have to deal with it.

As far as our relationship with Nadeo goes, I'd go a bit further. I generally share their vision and I admire the sincerity of their approach. It's a small team, and with them, we talk over all the questions we've dealt with during this interview. Nadeo was the first publisher in the world to develop and distribute a Free-to-play for eSport with Trackmania Nations ESWC. Shootmania Beta has only been around for a few months; I'm confident the final game will bring something new to eSport.

Finally, I'd like to say that everyone involved in eSport - players, clubs, leagues, publishers, the media - is in fact interdependent. And it's maybe a stroke of luck that today eSport is backed by a worldwide content and global media, everyone knows each other, and no one can get ahead without the others.