How Esports can grow beyond the Olympics

Ninjas in Pyjamas Group co-CEOs Hicham Chahine and Mario Ho join TheStreet to discuss.

Transcript

00:00Esports, going into the Olympics, what does that mean for your business and what does

00:06that mean for the industry?

00:09Everything that pushes the industry to mainstream adaptation is great for us, right?

00:14It's back to that we are addressing a Gen Z millennial audience, which is the generations

00:20of the future.

00:21Those generations are very interested in what we do.

00:25One thing is that it got approved, but I think that this trend is to continue.

00:29The Asian Games adapted it this year, where you had the first Asian Games, which included

00:33esports for the first time.

00:34Now the Olympics is doing that.

00:36And obviously it brings us the recognition, the eyeballs, the credibility, but I don't

00:40see that trend slowing down anytime soon.

00:44Esports should be, and has now officially been recognized as a sport globally.

00:49And with that, you'll start to see local governments, you'll see big companies pouring in further

00:54investments to build up esports ecosystems, because now they have to send their athletes

00:59to the Olympics.

01:00So for our company, we have multiple different forms of business in esports, and of course,

01:06a center part of that is the esports teams.

01:09We run a lot of esports teams across many gaming franchises, and we're hoping for as

01:16many of those games to get listed into the Olympics, so we can send our players there.

01:21That in itself will really prove the worth of our academy system, our coaching system,

01:27what we have been able to do for players.

01:29We've sent a few players to the Asian Games last year in Hangzhou, but the Olympics is

01:36a bigger stage than the Asian Games.