Minnesota Twins pitcher Trevor May knows he spends his offseason differently than most of his teammates. By his count, he has logged some 100 hours playing the esports game Fortnite in the past fortnight, with some Overwatch and Clash Royale as well. He’s been deeply immersed in Twitch and its unique culture and shorthand vernacular.
“I found myself saying them out loud when I feel a certain way, and there’s not a person on my team that’s going to know what I’m talking about,” May said Friday with a laugh while appearing on an esports panel hosted by Sports Innovation Lab at the annual Consumer Electronics Show.
As an esports entrepreneur and brand ambassador for Luminosity Gaming who also has logged three years in the big leagues, May sits at the growing intersection of people interested in both esports and traditional sports. One study from a year ago found that 52 percent of esports fans also identified as NFL fans, not to mention 39 percent for both the NBA and Major League Baseball.
On a whim, he tweeted about live-streaming one of his pitching training sessions in the bullpen and found a receptive audience.
What if I threw a bullpen on @twitch. That’d be nutty.
— Trevor “Lurch” May (@trevmay65) January 10, 2018
“One thing that I think is universal is competition and fandom developing around competition,” May said.
Major media partners are certainly noticing, with ESPN, TBS and NBC among the channels to have broadcast tournaments.
“We absolutely believe there’s a huge overlap,” NBC Sports senior vice president Rob Simmelkjaer said, noting the demographic similarity of video game players and sports fans often centers on young men.
“If you want to call it a niche, the esports audience, it’s a pretty big niche. It’s a niche I’d like to own because it’s getting too big to be called a niche at this point.”
While sitting on the panel, Simmelkjaer relayed recent comments from NBA commissioner Adam Silver, who indicated that he’d like to see the presentation of basketball games resemble esports on Twitch for the chat functionality and community experience. Simmelkjaer took it one step further, saying there’s something for NBA players to learn from how esports gamers interact directly with the public.
“That is, natively, where esports come from, not so much where offline sports come from,” Simmelkjaer said. “I think, if you’re that next-generation football player, basketball player, baseball player and you want to create a brand for yourself, you can learn a lot from the way esports athletes are doing that.”
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To do that, however, there is an inherent need for some additional professionalization of esports. May said he spoke at a summit for Overwatch players that included media training. Those gamers grew up with direct access to others following on Twitch and other streaming platforms, yet their actual experience was often solitary, alone in a room with a console. Some friends of his in the new Overwatch League felt the need to apologize to fans after losing their first match after not being accustomed to the immediacy of spectators in the same venue.
“There is a distinct difference between embarrassing yourself in-person in front of people or online in front of people,” May said.“Fully grasping what happened is much easier in person. It’s just how we are.
“There needs to be some sort of social training where you learn sportsmanship. You learn how to win, you learn how to lose. You learn your processes for getting better and play in a team structure.”
May, the founder and CEO of Esports Lab, indicated an interest in helping create a path for aspiring pro esports players to learn the necessary skills involved in becoming a professional teammate as well as a skilled gamer.
Another panelist, MIT comparative media professor TL Taylor, said the onus should not be entirely on the competitors but also on the world creators.
“Game developers who are interested in working in esports have to realize they are creating digital playing fields,” Taylor said. “They are creating mini-stadiums, and they need to think about their accountabilities and responsibilities in facilitating what’s happening in those spaces. In the absence of coaches, it’s the community that’s socializing those 10-year-olds.”