In this episode, with special guest Martin Kim (Chief Revenue Officer of Gen.G Esports), we discuss Gen.G's approach to creating new partnerships, how esports companies are able to thrive, transitioning from traditional sports to esports, how working with Major League Baseball and the Dodgers prepared Martin for his current job, and so much more!

Welcome to the business of esports podcast, the

official podcast of esports. We explore the intersection of

business and esports, one of the fastest growing industries in

the world and the future of fine. Please welcome your host

Paul esports. Prophet Dawalibi. The business of esports podcast

begins now.

From the keyboard to the boardroom. This is the

business of esports podcast. I am Paul the Prophet Dawalibi.

I'm joined today by my friend and co host, The Honorable Judge

Jimmy burrata, for those of you who are new here, welcome to the

official podcast of esports. What we do is we cover the most

pressing gaming and esports topics, news of the week, we

look at all of it through a business and C suite lens, we

dissect, we analyze the business implications of everything

happening in this industry. For our regular listeners. Thank you

guys for tuning in every week. Thank you, for all the love the

five star ratings and reviews, I promise we read all of them. I'm

humbled by all of them. It's so appreciated when you guys take

the time to leave a five star rating and review on the

podcast. So please do it if you haven't already. And maybe even

more importantly, share your favorite podcast episode with a

friend send it to a colleague, Spread the Love. This is how the

podcast has continued to grow. And we thank you for it. Jimmy,

how you doing this week?

I'm doing great, Paul. And actually, I wanted to

jump on that about sharing the podcast with a friend. You know,

last week, guys, if you're unaware, we just started a new

program called BOE classics. So many of our great guests, so

many of our great episodes from years past that we wanted to

reshare with you guys. So it's a separate playlist, hopefully not

too intrusive, but we wanted to re air some of our favorite old

episodes. That may be if you're a recent listener, or even

myself who I've been listening for two, three years now, but I

didn't, you know, hear this one or that one. It's a great

opportunity to catch up on some really amazing guests that we've

had over the years. It's a

good reminder that we're like 400 Plus

episodes. Jimmy, so I'm sure people have missed a few. One or

two. Correct me if I'm wrong. I think the first one we put out

was the fantastic interview with Pete Hines from Bethesda.

That's right. The secret to success, I believe is

what we call that because Pete was sharing some some of their

secret sauce over there. And it's definitely not to be

missed. And it's cool, because I think he was just recently

promoted. Also shout out Pete congratulations, SVP of Global

Marketing and Communications at Bethesda. So yeah, so yeah, I

think that's that's the new title for him. So yeah, again,

big congrats to Pete.

And he's a he's a big gamer a big you know, like

someone who really understands and loves gaming to its core,

which is always fun, right? When you get people who are working

in the in the industry and truly love truly love the games. Also,

Jimmy I wanted to say also, you know, we have really big

announcements coming up, we have more content coming up because

I've been speaking at a million conferences. So I would love

feedback, by the way on the interviews we've been putting up

last week by the way, Lachlan power, who very famous youtuber

fortnight YouTuber, yeah, esports. Org owner, great

interview with him last week that I did live in Saudi Arabia

at the next World Forum, curious what our audience thinks about

the live interviews, because those have been fun to do at the

conferences I've been going to. And I just sent you today, a

couple more panels I was on. So we'll keep putting up this

content. If you guys are enjoying it. It's like you're

able to be at all these conferences with us

part of the fun, I think, right? You get to hear

the profit off the cuff live in a room full of people. And the

Laughlin one actually was where we pulled them aside, guys, and

we did a quick one on one I think it's, it's more snackable

for you, I think about 10 minutes or so. And for those

that are unfamiliar, apologists, given a little background on

Lachlan, he also has I think, 15 million followers or subscribers

on his YouTube, so you know not? Yes, it's it's pretty insane

following I think, and really awesome insight too, because I

don't think you get to be that successful or have a following

of that size. Without like, you mentioned being a game, not just

the gamer at heart, but understanding I think the gaming

culture, what audiences want, and then obviously providing

that to them. So number one, not to be missed, I'd say that about

all of our episodes, but I truly feel that way.

And I love being a tease. And so this Friday,

Jimmy, you know, this, I'm going to be in a studio filming

something very brand new. I can't say more than that. But

I'm super excited about what our audience has in store for them,

because I'm just excited about this specific project. And we

have another big announcement coming in one month from today.

So I'll just switch. But like, on my own

show, as the company lawyer, I'm going to

tell you that. Yeah, we'll wait a little longer

to say these things. But you may hear things

so you know, I want people to at least get the tease for me

first, as long as you're okay with that. Jimmy, of course, as

the company lawyer,

teasing is okay, well, let's use our guest for

today and maybe bring him in. He's been very patiently waiting

backstage for us. We Yeah,

I mean, speaking of esports teams and esports,

orgs, we have, you know, I think I've said this on a previous

podcast, I think Genji is really leading the way in terms of

thinking, leading the way in terms of partnerships, how

they're thinking about revenue, how they're thinking about all

these things. And so we're extremely lucky. We have Gen G's

chief revenue officer on the podcast today, Martin Kim

Martin, welcome to the business of esports podcast.

Thank you guys so much. It's awesome to be here. I was

just giggling to myself hearing you guys talk. Because I can't I

can't zoning out like I'm listening to the podcast right

now. And then I'll come after them by getting together,

Martin. But no, it's good to be on the show. Thank you guys. And

more importantly, just for owning this voice in the market,

you know, it is really helpful. And I know a lot of people tune

in a lot of people use it as a resource. It's also about

sharing with friends. But I've shared your podcasts with dozens

of people that ask stuff like, Hey, can you tell me more about

the, you know, esports? And the commercial side of it? I'm like,

actually, why don't you just check this out for a little bit,

you get a real sense of what it's at. So yeah, just thank you

guys for responsibly owning this, this pillar of the

marketplace. And it's really important, so great to be on

here.

Martin, I really appreciate you saying that. It's

very humbling when you say that, but it's people having people

like you on the podcast that I think is the the power of the

show. It's, you know, how do we get the insight and the

knowledge out of your head to our audience? And I'd love for

you to give our audience a bit of a background on you just on

Martin, right. Like, how did where did you start your career?

How did you get into gaming? And why did you get into gaming? I

guess,

yeah. Happy to do that. And I always start this

introduction by saying, I was never a gamer. I was actually

never even a fan of the gaming industry. I was a kid climbing

the tree instead of you know, playing Nintendo at home. But

and then, you know, for this fast forward, like 20 years, my

background is in traditional sports. So I worked in the

professional baseball field for almost a decade. And when I was

a Major League Baseball, my big, big boss at the time, he was

like, he oversaw all international, and he was like

the EVP of marketing and growth for Major League Baseball. We

have dinner one time in LA, and he goes, Hey, I'm leaving Major

League Baseball, and I'm like, why will you do that? This guy

was like, at one point, he was like, a think tank behind the

commissioner, you know, just a really, really intelligent dude.

He goes, I'm gonna go be the CEO of esports gaming company, and

I'm thinking he's laughing. I'm laughing. I'm like, Yeah, okay,

this is this good one. He goes, No, really, I am. And he's like,

why don't you join me. And I almost like, coughed up my foot

at the time. He knew that. That's not really my thing. And

I'm passionate about traditional sports. I didn't I still am. I

started doing a lot of homework. And coincidentally, the last

project I had at major league baseball, was running a

incognito esports event with a mobile baseball game in Korea to

see what the future could be. And this is when it blew my

mind. So locally in Korea, it was an event we did with a

mobile with a top mobile baseball game. And we had about

200 registrants to compete in the in the mobile game. And the

final live component was at a studio and we had like 90 people

show up and engage on the on the broadcast. And I don't know what

the numbers are for the actual live stream in Korea, all

parties involved were like, yeah, that that wasn't very

good. But when I read have that, and reported it to Major League

Baseball, they were like, Oh, my God, that was amazing. And I'm

like, what, what's, what's the truth here? Right. And I started

to doubt those interesting and the curiosity that I started

pulling on, and I started learning about men. This is this

is quite a world. And you know, one thing about traditional

sports, the biggest one of the biggest topics in every

boardroom right now, especially in the more traditional ones,

like golf and baseball, it's about, hey, we're aging up. But

there's there is the backbone of the marketplace, right? A

healthy cycle for anything is like when you're aging up, you

have a backfill of that younger generation coming in, and both

the viewers and the end and the engagements in the more

traditional sports. It's not there. This isn't breaking news,

right? Everyone knows, certain engagements are going down, and

everything is going towards digital and gaming. That's where

the 15 to 25 year olds right now are paying attention to. So when

I told myself, hey, if for me to be relevant in what I do for the

next 1020 years, I need to learn this big movement. And three

years ago, myself included, there was sort of an exodus of

traditional sports guys coming over to esports and gaming,

right? And so I was one of them, but more importantly, I followed

Chris Oh, his name was Chris. You know, I'm a bit believer

that any job that you have, you have to really be able to

respect that vertical, right? Like when you look up, you look

at your boss's unit investors, like if you don't if you're not

challenged by them, it's not going to be a fun job, right? If

I always whenever I speak in colleges and stuff, I always

say, if you're ever at a job and you feel like you can do your

boss's job better, that's actually not a good place to be,

right? Because you really limit your growth. And I really do

believe that. So when I, when I saw the changes sort of

upbringing, it was it was at its infancy, then. It didn't take

long for me to say, you know, I can probably be in the same ship

with these guys. And no, I'm never gonna sink. So I made that

I made that crossover, then it's been almost four years, no

regrets. I'm still not an avid gamer. And I realized that for

my part of the job, I really don't have to be because I have

resources like you guys to be able to learn sort of the

Cliff's Notes version of things. Now, I definitely know it a lot

more and to a really deep level than I did before. It just so

happens that I'm not good at games. So I can't go on stuff

looking at long winded introduction, but that's how I

got to be where I am.

Martin, I'm curious. You know, the

background in traditional sports is always interesting. We always

talk about the connection between we lovingly call the

meat sports here. Between meat sports and esports. And there's

a sort of a this long standing debate we've been having on the

show, which maybe you've heard, maybe you haven't, which is, are

the traditional sports teams owners playing offense or

defense when it comes to esports. In your mind, in other

words, are they looking at esports? Going, here's this

massive opportunity to reach a younger crowd, we have to go

after this. We see, you know, huge growth in this part of the

market and we want to go after or is it we're scared of this?

We don't really know what's going to happen here. Our

business is aging. And I think we had talked on previous

podcasts, I think Major League Baseball, the average viewer is

like 55 years old now. And is it fear that's making them jump

into esports? sort of as a hedge, right, as a defensive

play, just in case this thing takes off? Just in case their

business ages too much? How would you categorize the way

meat sports owners look at esports? Is it offense? Is it

offensive? Or is it defensive?

And you you're not gonna like this answer, but it's

really split. When you look at, you know, the dozens and dozens

of traditional sports esports owners in every sport, and it's

really telling you about how they run their organization,

right? Some sort of family owned teams, you can just look at the

entire business apps, they're very conservative, and they just

like the cruise right? For them. It's like we've only seen you as

part of the family, we don't plan on making a ton of money,

because we're already super rich. Like why why touch that is

like having a restaurant down the street that gets packed

every Thursday, Friday, Saturday, the interior is not so

good. But why touch it when it's still it's a cash cow for you,

right? But then when you look at the orgs that have like the more

venture back, right, the ones that no business to a different

dimension, they're already there, whether it's through

their sports org, or through a site investment, they're already

in this somehow in some way. But you know, three and a half, four

years ago when this big investment will happen in gaming

and esports. That's when you read all those headlines, right?

Like so. And so this NBA player that that celebrity, this org,

they all put money in it. And they're the more forward

thinking ones. And if you were to do a comparison, the

organizations they represent are usually the more forward

thinking organizations already, they're the ones that are doing

things with NF T's. And they're the ones that are doing doing

challenging the league. And they're the ones that are have

different programming within their organ, they've sort of

leverage their IP differently. So it really comes down to the

DNA of that individual ownership group. And then now if you

trickle down to the league, it comes down to which in that

boardroom, right in that boardroom with the 20 to 30

owners, which ones are winning, right? So when you look at like

the NBA, the 2k League, I applaud the hell out of them for

even doing this thing, right? Granted, you know, we can talk

for hours about the pros and cons of the 2k League, but the

fact that they launched that and they are experimenting that with

real money and real moves. I love that they're doing that

right. But then some other leagues are they've been talking

about it for three, four years now. And who knows, who knows

how this unfolds? But, you know, it really comes down to a few

internal champions and how loud they can be.

Is there anything Martin that you took from your

your life in traditional sports that has applied directly to

esports? Or if you had to sort of do a complete rethink of how

you approach you know, bizdev, doing partnerships, etc. Like,

I'm curious how much of your old life has transferred over

initially. So when I talked about that big exodus of

a lot of traditional sports people coming over to gaming and

esports if you look at them now Have all in one bag, and half of

them are doing really well. I think the ones that adapt and

quickly realized. So it's less of a thing now. But when I came

on back in 2000, I don't know nine 2019 18. Remember the whole

classic esports of sports, like that was still a thing, like,

people were still talking about that and discussing that. And

you know, and I thought my first homework was asked to come and

take a side. And then my side was, who cares? Right? That was

my conclusion, who cares is two very different things. So I feel

like the ones who are adapted quickly and said, Oh, esports is

actually really different than traditional sport, you can't

take a template and put it on here and be successful.

Therefore, let's quickly pivot and find our own business

models. Those survived. And those people are doing really

well, the ones who couldn't adapt, went back and said, Oh,

man, esports is so weird and so different. So so that's sort of

the decision making that had to take place. So for me

personally, there was a bit of a learning curve, especially

coming from baseball, because baseball is a little old school.

So though, if you came from Saturno, the NBA is always a

little edgier, they're probably a little more quick to adapt.

But for me, there were a few differences that hit me in the

face. As soon as I understood, and I made them part of this

business, it was easy for me to adjust. So what do I take from

the My past job is probably the way I treat the clients, that

still has been unchanged. That's part of my characteristics, you

know, because at the end of the day, the ones who are making the

decision on the client side, they're the same people. So you

can't be different just because the platform is different,

right? So I am very, very traditional in that sense,

right, I still sometimes like to dress up and go to a meeting and

I still do the fancy handshakes and do all that. Because I feel

like, you know what, our industry is kind of unique.

There not a lot of them still make the decisions, and they

reporting to the same boardroom and the same C level that need

to have to every budget. So I think that side of me hasn't

changed much.

I just think it's super insightful. And I don't

want that lost on our audience, right? business sales, bizdev.

It's still business at its core, even if it's esports, and still

human to human, and all of those soft skills, all of that stuff

that you would have done, you know, what major league baseball

definitely still apply here. Sorry, Jimmy. Go ahead.

No, no, worth restating for sure. And I wanted

to follow that train of thought a little further, Martin,

because, you know, for our listeners, I wanted to get more

of an understanding of what those responsibilities and how

that's applied, like how those skills are applied in your day

to day what the responsibilities of a chief revenue officer are,

the successes that you're having, through Genji or through

again, applying I think those core characteristics of your own

business background, but we'd love to hear more about I think,

the job itself,

God revenue officer, what does it really mean? Like,

is it one of those jobs that really what the job title says,

basically, what I tell people is, it's a fancy title for

pretty much saying, Martin, go out there and find us some

money, that's what it is right? Go out there. Leverage Genji

leverage, or esports teams, leverage our other business sort

of units, and then try to find partnerships are people that are

willing to say, Oh, that's a good idea, here's some money,

let's make it better. And I think that's what it comes down

to. Right, you can boil every business decision down to the

core, it's very simple. Marketing is very simple. It's

just you need more people to pay attention. That's what it is,

right? revenue comes down to, you need to put yourself out

there so that someone else is willing to pay for some of the

stuff you want to do. It's just kind of like you boil it down.

So my job title I mean, in some ways, it's like a fancy title,

but it really comes down to the creativity and and how much do I

want to put myself out there and put ng out there and make bold

decisions together. At the end of the day, it's a win win

situation, sometimes a win win win situation, that's what a

strategic partnership becomes is all part of the verb have to

walk walk away with something saying that added value to my

business. So that's what it is at its core if you want to look

under the hood a little bit. Genji you know, one thing that

makes us unique is that we do a lot of different things. And the

IP of Genji means three different things in three

different markets. Like in Korea, we are one of the top

esports brands. So we treat things a lot more like a

traditional sponsorship right like our League of Legends team.

I don't know when this is airing but knock on wood, you know, we

have one of the most dominant Liga legends teams in the back

in the last 10 years. And therefore and because the market

is more mature in Korea, we're able to go out there and treat

it like a traditional asset and say hey, you know we have this

awesome team competitive. A lot of followers a lot of fans

people watch us people's listen to us. So you know logically

your brain somewhere around that Halo, and you'll get some

visibility. That's a really easy transaction right? In North

America, we're not the same, we don't have those sexy big teams

that compete at the highest levels. But what we have here is

a really mature and established collegian education business

that a lot of us don't know about. We also have this I call

it like, like a digital agency of gaming business that most

people don't know about, which is we go to, you know, a lot of

the top brands and we together, say, hey, what do you want to do

in esports? in gaming, and let us be your solution for you? And

we've been really successful at that. But again, it's really

behind the scenes stuff, which is okay, right? Because at the

end of the day, what matters is how healthy is our business? How

much revenue can we really generate? And how much of that

can we use to do what we want to do, right? As a business,

sometimes you got to do things that you're not comfortable

with, to pay for things you really want to do. So that's

sort of what we've been doing for the past three, four years,

and it's worked. We're not maybe as big and as sexy as some of

the bigger esports orgs in North America. But when you when you

kind of peel things back, we're extremely healthy right now.

Yeah,

Martin just such another great insight that I

talked about all the time to like, wouldn't be entrepreneurs

is just people get religious right about their product. No,

we're an esports team, right? We're not going to, we're not

going to do consulting, we're not going to do agency. I'm not

like your business, right? Like your business, the survival and

viability of your business is what should matter, not religion

around what exactly your product is. And I think that's really

smart, and something that people need to take more to heart.

And don't get me wrong, we're not gonna we're not gonna

sell our soul for something, right. But I think something

that our currency or our north and you know, Kevin, CIO or

chairman, something that they're really good at is they give us

really fun parameters, right? They're why they're big

parameters. They say, here's a sandbox, throw it, as long as

you're within those target lines, be as creative as you

can. And if the output is revenue, if the output is strong

marketing, that's, that's cool. To your point, Paul, we have to

at the end of the day, someone's got to pay the bills.

Well, I wanna I do want to give a shout out to

Arnold her he was on the episode or on on our podcast, Episode

251 did share a little bit of this insight more, and I love

that we're getting deeper explanation I think with just

because of the, you know, added time that we have together, so

if you haven't listened to that yet, guys, Episode 251, with

Arnold, her, who Martin just mentioned, CEO of Gen. G. You

know, Martin, you had mentioned again, just trying to find

money, right? And doing what it takes consulting, collegiate,

etc. Where do you spend most of your time I mean, apart from the

competitive element of Genji, right, winning that winner

mentality and competing at the highest level? Where are you

spending most of your time in hunting down, or creating and

growing new revenue streams for the business, whether it's

through one of those two verticals that you just

mentioned, or something that we haven't yet discussed?

Yeah. To touch on your earlier point of the sentence, I

don't touch anything competitive. I'm the one

furthest away from it like they don't they don't let don't let

me anywhere near those decisions. Because I'm not I'm

not the guy. I'm not the guy. I find some moves that we made

from like, through public portals and stuff, because I

just I shouldn't be anywhere near that. I just as if they

win, it's great for business. That's that's what I focus on.

But I spend most of my time honestly, looking at a bird's

eye view of the gaming industry, not esports. Okay, I think one

thing that I credit, a lot of the folks in our side is that we

quickly said, hey, it's not about esports is about gaming

esports, sort of the flag that we fly under, but the tip of the

iceberg is esports, that much larger communities underneath.

And so one of the stats, I remember when I first joined, I

think it was page five of our deck, there was somebody I think

I don't know which source it was, but there was a big

headline of esports will be a $1 billion industry by 2020. There

was this thing, right? And if you keep reading underneath that

it says gaming is $170 billion industry. So I'm like, hey,

well, how come? No one's talking about this? This is this is a

little bigger than 1 billion right now. Yeah, it is attacking

the 2020 article. The baseline right, that the audience of

gamers is what feeds into esports. So how, why are we not

talking about that? And so to answer your question, Jimmy, I

spend a lot of my time seeing just overall creative, cool

things that are happening in the gaming industry. And my question

is always can we do that? Can we try that? How would we do it

right? And then once we bake it out a little bit, and it becomes

a plausible idea, we go to a brand and we say, hey, look,

take this out, look what look what they did. I think we can

make it better, cooler or different if we do it this way.

And a lot of times those ideas have sold

Martin is the implication of that statement

that you sort of and maybe this is a too callous way of saying

it because I know you care, but like you saw don't care if Genji

esports teams win or lose, as the chief revenue officer,

you're selling something much bigger than just the

competitive, right? Is that fair to say that or you do genuinely?

Do you find winning genuinely has an impact on the bottom

line?

It totally does when winning people like winning,

right? No one likes losers, right? So when I mean even,

like, let's just go back to my baseball days, that the teams

that win revenue are, you know, five times more than the teams

that lose. And that's because brands, the whole basis of

sports sponsorships, right. The sports marketing is the

association of that feels good when that's the reason why you

know, like a Coca Cola will go to the total winning team and

say, We want to give you this much money because we want to

associate our brand with winning. So at the core winning

wins, this is the honest no one, no one likes to put their name

next to a losing org. So of course, that helps us and it

helps me open up more doors. When we say, Hey, we've been top

10 League of Legends team for the past decade, that gets us a

lot more street cred than not so of course, I'm always rooting

for them. All I'm saying is I just trust that there's a much

smarter people making the better decisions than me coming in

there and daring to have a voice there. But yeah, of course, it

helps us overall, if our team is performing because you get more

headlines that way too.

Yeah, I'm just I'm trying to suss out what are

the levers on sort of what has the biggest impact on revenue

for an org like Genji, right? Like, if one of the team starts

like goes on this huge winning streak? Is that more important

than maybe losing but you have a player on your team who has 20

million followers, and he's a big superstar and, you know,

draws a lot of headlines just to himself. Even if Genji as a team

is maybe not winning? I'm just trying to suss out what are the

you know, the, in your mind the levers that have an impact on

your side of the business, the revenue generation side that you

have no control over? Right? Obviously, you're you're not

playing, but that have an impact on your business?

Yeah, and you may not like this answer too well, but

it really comes down to what the client is looking for the brands

that want eyeballs in this industry, they're already

partnered with the big boys right? The ones that get the

millions of views right for in Korea, for example, T one and

Genji right, we're like this one two punch. And a lot of the

brands that want the the just the logo play right, the ones

that want a we want as many eyeballs to see US and EU as

well. Don't just stop and then somewhere near failure. And

let's be honest, he he's done that for brands, and that's what

you want. Is that successful? Right? For us? It really can

World World been more strategic with our partners, and we kind

of have have deeper discussions upfront as to hey, let's What's

your end goal here? What are you trying to achieve within this

gaming space, and see if we can deliver that. So all of our

sponsors have nothing to do with Genji. Right. I mean, Can I Can

I mention something? Am I allowed to do that? Okay.

McDonald's is one of our biggest partners, right? And you won't

see them anywhere near their logos are nowhere near our

teams. But what we do for them, is we operate McDonald's

employee esports think, right? No, no one knows that. Right.

But we operate the where the engine behind it. So during

COVID, they had some severe they have an issue with with staff

retention, right, because a lot of a lot of younger folks that

work at different regions of McDonald's, they wouldn't last

more than you know, three or four months. So they did some

homework. Oh, our demographic of our staff, a lot of them love to

game. So why don't we take a page out of like, you know, back

in those school softball the right, why don't we take a page

out of that. So we presented it to them, they love this. So we

started in Southern California now I think we run it in like 10

Different regions around around the country that keeps going, no

one knows about it. And we will offer an award last year for it

because it's one of those that instead of public facing, you

know, like a headline grabbing activation or sponsorship from

McDonald's is serving their employees. And it's doing its

healthy. I mean, some of the things customers that we get

from from from some of the regions is pretty cool. But like

so that has nothing to do with whether Genji does well whether

we want to have a team or not. They don't care about that. It's

more about do we have the ability to deliver what they

want to achieve?

It's super smart. I know that that's actually

really cool. For the McDonald's employees also, you know, when

we had Arnold on the show, one of the things he talked about,

he talked a little bit about, and this was his word, not mine

and esports winter wear, I think the way he categorized it was

teams having to rethink how they generate revenue, how they

succeed and how they become viable, sustainable businesses.

Right. And I, I think what I loved about that discussion is

he had real ideas about where some of these, you know, revenue

generating opportunities for esports teams should go like

revenue shares with publishers around digital assets, for

example. And I'm curious, you know, how much of your time are

you spending thinking, you know, maybe the McDonald's was a

great, perfect example of an answer to this question, you

know, thinking outside the box of not just the sponsor logo on

the Jersey, right? How much time? Are you thinking about?

What is the future of esports? from a revenue standpoint? And

how do you solve some of the problems, a lot of teams other

than Genji Our hands are having, frankly, right, like, Genji, I

think, is in the minority of having figured out a lot of

interesting ways of generating revenue. And I'm curious,

Martin, how much of your time you spend on this sort of

outside the box thinking? Do you maybe not agree with his?

No, no, I, I laugh, I laugh because he coined that.

And he brought it to us actually, months, many months

ago, then we've been talking about it for as long as I can

remember. But yeah, to your point, I think, you know, we're

fortunate enough that we had that foresight, and we were

always creative about a listener vision or something to one

revenue stream or one vertical, where if that hits, though, it's

a hurdle, we're in trouble. So I think we've prepared a while for

that. For me, personally, thinking outside the box is what

I do. That's all I wanted to do. And when it first came over, and

again, wearing the MLB, baseball hat and trying to make things

fit into to the template, and I keep getting jammed. And that's

when I really made the pivot of saying, You know what, I gotta

start from scratch, I gotta realize that it's really not.

That's why, you know, when people talk about esports, or

sport, I don't care it cuz it's different. But it's just what

does it even matter? Right? And the biggest thing I always talk

about is, like in baseball, or in the NBA, for example, like,

you say that, like, you know, we have a bunch of friends that

were playing baseball in a park, Major League Baseball can come

and say, Hey, stop playing. I own this game. Nobody owns the

IP of that sport, right. But in gaming, technically, they could,

right, technically, if we're doing a tournament and not that

they would, and we're playing League, for example,

technically, right? Could be like a guy stopped doing that,

because you're commercializing our game ticking down like that.

And I was like, that was for me the biggest lightbulb it was

like, Yeah, but this third dimension that no one's talking

about. So you have to think outside the box. Otherwise, you

know, they can they can shut anything down. So that's just

one of those epiphanies that I have. So thinking outside the

box, on how we go to brands and how we have these conversations

with potential partners. It's the very bread and butter of

where we start with.

So what do you what is your take then on? Like,

because this we talked about recently on the podcast, what's

your take on like, 100, thieves launching an energy drink? And,

you know, we don't have to make a targeted 100 Thieves

specifically, we could make it more general. But you know, are

these in your mind outside the box revenue streams? Or revenue

opportunities for esports? Teams? Or do you think this is

not the right line of thinking in general,

like I said earlier about how given Genji means

three different things in three different markets, right? We

have offices in Korea, China, in North America, and people know

as three different things. What I love about esports community

right now is that every big brand, right? The the phases and

the T's and TSM liquids, we also mean 10 different things to the

market. And we've carved out sort of that identity. And I

feel like, as long as we are honest to ourselves what our

community wants from us, then it's going to work, right?

There's so many smart people over there. And I'm sure it

wasn't on a whim, I'm sure it wasn't like a lot of energy

during this just trying to, I'm sure there were hours and hours

and meetings and meetings to say, Hey, would this work? Is it

worth a try, right? Is it worth the squeeze. And that's probably

why they're doing it even then creating a game. And like it's

so outside the box thinking but I'm sure they did the proper

analytics to say, this may make sense for us. And that's why

they're doing it. And I hope everything works for them. In

the same way, as long as we know what we're good at. Right. And

they're still while we compete on the stage. I always saw this

and when I went out toward the clients, while as an esports

community, we compete on the stage. For the business side,

we're all kind of rooting for each other because we need this

thing to work, right? We want every big move the guys make, we

want them to be successful. And if by chance some of them don't

work out we love we all together learn from that right? In Korea,

the RLC K li we're very close. We're very close. And we learn

from each other and we help each other like whenever you want and

Genji meet in the finals, we are so happy for each other because

everybody wins. Like the viewership goes or riot is super

thrilled about it. Our sponsors love it. And we intentionally

sometimes even do like, Hey, we're gonna talk some smack talk

back, okay. Like we kind of engineer those things. Because,

you know, like, we all have to win as a business community

before otherwise that competitive thing might not even

be there a couple of years from now, right. So, so, you know, we

are all trying to carve out our individual plot of land and And

I just want all of us to be really

good at it. It kind of ties back, Martin to

what you began our episode with mentioning, you know, a mobile

game and a baseball activation and trying something new and

seeing if that helps grow the community cultivate an audience.

I'm curious on what you can share, maybe along the lines of

the McDonald's partnership, you know that, like you said, no one

had any idea to what other forward thinking trials, can we

expect that a Genji, something that maybe is, again, not top

secret, but perhaps not public knowledge? But that's okay to

share with us if there is anything, whether it's exploring

your IP in new ways, exploring web three and NF T's. I'm just

curious, you know, what, if you can share something fun that we

can expect that a Genji over the next next year to two things?

One is, and I think this isn't any top suka. But

we've always been really bullish on the intersection of gaming

and education. In Korea, we have a full on Academy this past

semester, we had 13 graduates from our academy, go to US

universities, and one of them got even offered a full ride to

be a esports student athlete at the US university. So that was a

thesis that we try to prove for three, four years ago. And we're

going all in on that, right. And our motto is not making gamers

that are gamers rather making gamers better students and, and

we're going to hang our entire head on that, because we do

believe globally, man, the more you peel back, like every

student coming up, I mean, between 13 and 15, to high

school level, like they're all playing some kind of game.

Usually gamers have a generally a high IQ, let's take this

passion of theirs and not say, hey, label them as, quote

unquote nerds or like you're playing PS five in the mom's

basement, not that they were dealing with a very different

kind of student that that's extremely brilliant, and take

that passion and see, hey, how can you leverage this, right?

And then the jokingly, we called it, like, Let's become the Legos

of the 80s and 90s, right? Like, we all thought Legos was a toy,

but that actually fuel the creativity and sort of the

engineering mind of that generation. You know, so in the

same way, let's take their passion for gaming and convert

it into something else, make them better people become better

students. And that's why we're carving out that part of the

ecosystem. And again, it's big enough. I mean, I'm sharing this

because we're not like, secretive about it. It's out

there, it's out there. And then we're just trying to create

something really good for the community. The second thing is

we just launched this crazy partnership with with mobile one

to interocular. Right. So the start of that conversation was

the same as everything else. Okay, you guys are interested in

esports? What do you want to achieve there? And what can we

provide? And as we head into this, I don't want to see the

esports winter, but you know, we are sort of a downturn economy,

right? Marketers are going to be a little more conservative and

only doing things that really pay off for them. I you know, I

feel like maybe we hit something there with what can we do more

as a joint partnership, not so much like, hey, we go first, and

then you put your brand on there instead is, hey, what can we do

together? And if we when we hit a home run, I feel like that

creative thinking might get us to through this I call it the

winter. It's the one that I went through anyway, kind of getting

us to the next stage of our industry. But you know, outside

the box thinking for us has worked.

Martin, I just have one last question for you

before I pass it back to Jimmy here. But what is your view on

the future? Like, give me the five year outlook for Gen G,

specifically, obviously, but also, where are we going in

terms of like, what is the industry look like five years

from now, from a revenue mix standpoint? Right? Will? Will

media rights sort of come up to the point where it's significant

for esports? Teams? Or do you think that's not going to

happen? Is it digital assets that are going to you know,

generate way more revenue? Is it? You know, merchandise and

energy drinks and things like what is the revenue mix look

like five years from now industry wide? And maybe

specifically for Genji in your mind?

I don't know. I guess this answer might get edited

out? Because I don't know how that answer. I don't know.

Your best guess you're closer to this than

anyone else. The big industry trend in your mind.

I think I think the big industry trend is that this

couldn't be less doing more sort of how this valorant thing is

sort of developing, right? It's sort of now we you know, before

we didn't really have a roadmap, we didn't know what was it was a

lot of it was by chance, but just seeing how now you can

almost cry, because I'm not gonna name names. But let's look

at some of the big esports that were around three years ago that

are nowhere to be found now. Like that can't that's not good.

That's not good for business, right? You can't have this up

and down by title. So rather, we have to start creating a more

established ecosystem or more established infrastructure,

because brands don't want to be a trend. You know, brands don't

want to be like, Oh, it was good while I was there up to that is

going now, right? Like, as a brand, you don't want that. So

you want to you want to establish yourself with this

community, especially because they're so young, the idea is

join them young and write it out. Right. That's, that's the

entire picture. So I feel like the in terms of the competitive

side, the infrastructure has to be a little more solidified, so

that it's not really riding the waves of a popularity of a

certain game. And on the revenue side, I feel like, because even

the in the past four years, I've been here, a lot of the brands

that were really heavy in esports, then or they're not

around now, they kind of got burned, right? So I feel like

the certain brands that are going to be more long term

minded are going to be doing bigger things than then like the

one stop shop, kind of kind of a partnership. But, again, if you

want to cut this out, that's fine. Because I know, it's

really good to

know, is the implication that, that the big

names in esports today, right like Genji will attract a

greater percentage of the dollars five years from now,

like, Do you think there's consolidation? And, and sort of

there's there's maybe fewer big winners as opposed to sort of

money being spread everywhere?

Yeah, that that I can, I can probably say, within five

years, I think it'd be a little more structured. I don't want to

use the word a league, but it's going to be probably Max 10 to

15, more solid, larger organizations that are play in

all of the relevant games, it was to figure out how to move or

how to get this thing going for just because I think now, you

know, there's a reason why a lot of these hard pivots are

happening is that, you know, always are realizing that just

being in one title, or I mean, the east, the competitive

esports itself is not a profitable model. I mean, that's

not rocket science, like, that's, it's a fact, right. So

that's why unless you have more of them, it's kind of like, you

know, one of my buddies owns owns a Subway franchise, and

he's gonna make a lot of money until he owned five, it's almost

like that, like, you know, if you if you are gonna go on and

on one shot, it's gonna be hard, and then you're highly dependent

and entitled, The success of that title. And what happens if

the title for some reason doesn't is the teaser turn,

right. So I do feel like a lot of the orgs that are able to

field and sort of hedge the market are going to have much

longer vision and longer, longer term

success. And the education thing is such a, I

think, a competitive advantage for you guys, that, that if you

can crack that sort of at massive scale, I think is such a

huge opportunity, right? There's obviously challenges there. But

I think that's such a massive nut to crack and, you know,

access to millions and millions of students who are gamers to me

is is really the Holy Grail. So I think that's, that's a very

interesting piece of the business. This brings us to

everyone's favorite new segment, guys. It's not so new anymore,

but it's judge Jimmy's cross examination if you're new here

the way it works. Judge Jimmy's gonna ask a few rapid fire

questions. They're they're easy questions, Martin. That's the

idea is to get to know you a bit better as a person and the rapid

fire so they're quick and easy. Judge Jimmy take it away.

All right, Martin, out of respect for your

time. I'm going to keep it I think to two questions but one

overarching insight, World Series, Phillies are Astros who

you got how many games? Give us some insight here to your old

life as a Philly Phillies and six Phillies and six you heard

it here first. Martin Kim Genji Phillies and six.

Well, I don't even know I grew up. I grew up in Philly.

So it's a really, it's a bias.

It's totally biased.

I grew up I grew up in Philadelphia. So I mean, and I

also I worked for the Dodgers when they lost to Houston, so

definitely a sore spot for sure. Yes. Well,

Martin, thanks so much for joining us today. I think this

was the type of interview that we could have made into three or

four interviews. So we're gonna have to have you back. But back

to you, Paul. Martin,

how do you like to be followed found? How can

people find you follow you what you're doing reach out to you

one beautiful thing about the gaming industry,

everyone's so damn tech savvy that whoever wants to find me

they always do. But usually, nowadays, like LinkedIn is

probably the easiest thing. I'm not very active on Twitter

again, because I think it's time to pick gamer but I never really

caught on to the busyness of sort of LinkedIn might be the

easiest way since we are talking to more of a business audience

here. But if you need to find me, I'm sure you can track me

down.

Martin really appreciate it so much insight.

Like Jimmy said we could have easily made three hour episode

here and really appreciate having you on Jimmy. Thank you.

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