Millennial Esports is one of a number of companies that has heavily invested in esports in the past 18 months, but it’s one of far fewer which have built a diverse portfolio across the industry.
Alex Igelman, Millennial Esport CEO, will be attending this year’s Esports BAR in Cannes to discuss one element of the business; blockchain. There has been considerable noise made in regards to esports focused ICOs in the past six months, and Igelman will be giving a talk on this for attendees to the second iteration of the event in February.
Esports Insider: Firstly, why did you decide to establish a blockchain division? How do you see it making an impact in esports and gaming?
Alex Igelman: Blockchain technology unleashes functionalities that were previously not possible, from the actual ownership of digital assets to the provably fair bookeeping of events. The world of esports will benefit greatly from the numerous applications and platforms that are being developed using this technology.
As one of the leading brands in esports today, Millennial has decided to be part of this disruptive change in the way players all around the world enjoy gaming.
ESI: We’ve seen a number of esports focused ICOs emerge in the past six months. Do you expect 2018 to see more of these appear, or for there to be a period of consolidation in this regard?
Alex: Initial Coin Offerings, or ICOs, have been exploding in the past year indeed. This is particularly true in the world of esports for two main reasons:
1) Esport users, players, and viewers are more likely to own cryptocurrencies and use cryptocurrencies than in most industries.
2) Esports is a world of digital assets by construction, and as a result is one of the best use cases for blockchain integration.
Without judging the merit of each individual project, we have observed very strong ones that will add massive value to the esports ecosystem, as well as other projects that don’t seem to use blockchain to its full potential but merely ride on the hype of the rise in cryptocurrency adoption. It’s our expectation that many more decentralized protocols will be built in esports, that some will fail to gain adoption while some will revolutionise and completely disrupt the whole esports economy.
ESI: What can attendees of the Esports BAR expect from your talk?
Alex: We think it is useful and enjoyable to describe and imagine together all the possibilities that esports on blockchain offers to users: seamless in-game payments, market place for various in game assets, recording of past achievements, truly shared economy for game developers and users, just to name a few.
ESI: Millennial now has a fairly diverse portfolio across esports and gaming, from a production studio, to a venue in Las Vegas, a simracing tournament operator and developer, and a data analytics firm. Is the plan now to make more investments and acquisitions or to focus all efforts to growing these?
Alex: I strongly believe that with the acquisition of Eden Games, we are extremely well positioned in the esports ecosystem.
We are involved in almost every known current vertical, save and except for team ownership- an area we have purposely avoided. While future acquisitions and tuck-ins are always possible, we will now focus on building our publishing arm and growing the user base of Gear.Club while leveraging and utilising all our other amazing assets to do so.
Disclaimer: We are an official content partner of the Esports BAR in Cannes