The following interview is part of our ongoing Expert Series that asks C-level professionals, team presidents, league executives, athletic directors and other sports influencers about their latest thoughts and insights on new technologies impacting the sports industry.
Name: Andrew Paradise
Company: Skillz
Position: Chief Executive Officer/Founder
Andrew Paradise is the Chief Executive Officer and founder of Skillz, a leader in mobile eSports. Prior to Skillz, Paradise founded AisleBuyer, which was sold to Intuit in April 2012 as well as Photrade, which was sold in 2009 to MPA Inc. He has also worked in venture capital and private equity investing for Fort Washington Capital Partners and The Watermill Group. Paradise founded Skillz in 2012 because he believes in making mobile games more fun for players while making game creation more lucrative for developers.
1) What is the current state of online mobile eSports competition, and how does Skillz fit into that online and social ecosystem?
eSports are on pace to generate $696 million in revenue this year, and by 2020 eSports are projected to become a $5 billion business. As the eSports provider for over 3,000 game studios, Skillz accounted for more than 30 percent of all eSports prizes awarded in 2016.
The rise of mobile has pushed eSports further into the mainstream through creating opportunities for the world’s 2.6 billion mobile gamers.
Many people narrowly define eSports as professional gamers who travel to big, televised competitions for games like League of Legends or CS:GO. In reality, that’s only the top one percent of eSports players.
We can draw an important comparison here between eSports and offline sports like basketball. For example, there are 450 people in the NBA, but 450 million people who play basketball worldwide. All of these people call themselves basketball players, but the same hasn’t been true for eSports players of varying skill levels.
Skillz is the world’s leading mobile eSports platform. We provide mobile developers with free technology to turn their games into eSports and allow their players to compete against one another in tournaments. Skillz is truly eSports for the 99%, making competitive gaming accessible to players at all levels.
2) If you had to invest in one technology that would change the eSports landscape, what would it be and why?
On a personal level, I’m always excited by new game launches and devices. However, if I had to pick one aspect of eSports to invest in it would be core infrastructure, since that’s the essential technology that will propel all the games, devices and other aspects of the industry into the future.
3) As a sports fan, what sports-related service, app, product, etc., could you not live without and why?
I’m actually not a huge offline sports fan. Growing up, I was always more interested in gaming – I learned to program as a child by hacking a video game with a hex editor and later wrote my first game in Pascal. Between my love of gaming and competitive spirit, eSports became a natural hobby for me. As a lifelong gamer, it would be pretty hard to live without the App Store or Steam. I use Battle.net to play Starcraft II pretty much every day, and would be very sad if I had to live without it. Losing that part of my routine would probably ruin my week…or maybe even my month.
4) Over the past 18 months, there have been NBA and NFL players — current and former — getting involved in gaming. Sports team owners like Ted Leonsis, Magic Johnson and Peter Guber have also entered the space. What’s your take on all of the heightened interest around eSports? What’s the value proposition with getting involved now?
We’ve definitely seen this interest in eSports from offline sports players (and team owners) firsthand at Skillz. Luol Deng, a small forward for the LA Lakers, was part of our Series B funding round. We’ve also received investments from the owners of major professional sports teams across the NFL, MLB and NBA (specifically the New England Patriots, New York Mets and Milwaukee Bucks).
I think that there’s been a heightened interest in eSports recently because we are just now hitting critical mass. It takes about 50 years for a game to become a sport, and we’re around 50 years into the invention of video games, which started in the 1970s.
For example, when American football was invented in 1869, it was considered a game. It wasn’t until 1920 when the NFL was founded that the game of football was officially considered a sport. The same trend can be seen with basketball; the game was invented in 1891 but the NBA wasn’t formed until 55 years later in 1946. The presence of competition, tournaments and spectatorship helped grow these games into full-fledged sports, which are also essential aspects of eSports.
Since we’re at this 50-year inflection point with the video gaming industry, parents who played Pong and Frogger are now watching their kids play League of Legends and Call of Duty. We’re seeing the same pattern in eSports that we witnessed with the growth of American football and basketball.
5) If you had to project 20 years into the future, how will most gamers compete around their favorite titles?
With 2.6 billion gamers, mobile is the most popular gaming platform in history — and it will only continue to grow and thrive as we progress into the future. In an increasingly mobile world, the accessibility of these devices will make them the de facto gaming systems for all consumers around the world.
As more content is created and additional developers enter the space, I think players will increasingly specialize and compete according to game genre (FPS, RTS, MOBA, etc.) rather than primarily focusing on the handful of popular PC and console titles featured in the most widely broadcasted tournaments today.
This is similar to how I think about the future of offline sports. Upcoming generations will help dictate what the most popular games will be, but I feel fairly certain that the genres we’re familiar with today (i.e. ball and stick sports like baseball, hockey and cricket) will still exist 20 years down the line.
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6) Give us your bold prediction about a form of technology that will be integral to mobile eSports in general over the next 12 months and why?
In order for any industry to reach its maximum potential, infrastructure needs to be built first in order to create a solid foundation for all the players in the space to build upon. I think the technology that will be vital to mobile eSports over the next year is tournament infrastructure platforms, such as Skillz, GSN’s Sparcade and a growing number of companies entering this burgeoning area.