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這篇大致上是談EG簽約的幕後故事
原本想翻完再貼上來的，
可是翻了一些之後才發現這篇翻起來對我的英文程度來說太過吃力
就先貼上來分享給大家，看有沒有朋友願意認領翻譯吧XD
如果真的沒人翻........或許我明天下午會再嘗試一次看看QQ
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原文：http://tinyurl.com/cpxg64s

Evil League of Evil Geniuses: How Alex Garfield and Stephen Ellis brought EG
into League of Legends

Evil Geniuses CEO Alex Garfield wasn’t posturing when he talked about his
disinterest in taking the Evil Geniuses eSports team into League of Legends. He
was so unengaged with League that when he received an email from Stephen “
Snoopeh” Ellis last summer, he didn’t really know who Ellis was, or why Evil
Geniuses should be interested in his League of Legends team.

A few minutes with Google not only told Garfield that Ellis was the squad
captain for one of the best and most prominent western League of Legends teams,
but that suddenly he had a “very attractive opportunity” to bring EG into
League on terms he could be happy with.

Roughly six months later, Ellis and his squad are wearing EG blue and fighting
for the lead of the European division of Riot’s League of Legends Championship
Series. But the story of how EG overcame their reluctance towards League, and
why EG made the most sense for Ellis and his team is one that reveals a great
deal about what deal-making looks like at the elite level of eSports. We
recently had a long chat with both Garfield and Ellis about their negotiations,
and the reservations they had to overcome before they could join forces.


Outgrowing CLG

Counter Logic Gaming is one of the biggest names League of Legends, and last
year they operated both a highly-regarded North American squad and adopted a
new European team comprised of Ellis (Jungle), Henrik “Froggen” Hansen (AP),
Mike “Wickd” Petersen (Top), Peter “Yellowpete” Wüppen (AD), and Mitch “
Krepo” Voorspoels (support).

But in no time at all, the European squad began outperforming its sister team
and, more importantly, Ellis began to feel that two major League squads might
be too much for one team.

“We [were] actively looking for someone else to join because CLG was
struggling to support essentially two of the biggest teams in LoL,” Ellis
explained. “We caught wind that EG was looking at a LoL team, and I just made
the introduction.”

His approach to EG CEO Alex Garfield stood out for its professionalism and
maturity. They were the two traits, Garfield admitted, that he found most
lacking in the League professional community.

“When I was scouting potential players and teams for EG League of Legends, I
felt like I saw a lot of shock value behind some of the more popular guys.
Especially like a year or more ago,” Garfield said. “So for me it’s not just
about is there popularity behind this particular guy or this particular team,
but what kind of identity is there? It takes time for a playerbase and
community to mature before there can be massive popularity behind a team that
doesn’t need any shock value or hook.”

Garfield stressed that he doesn’t look down on the LoL community or its
players. He cites SoloMid as an example of a strong team that has a different
approach from EG.

He said, “I have had a lot of respect for the SoloMid team for awhile. They
were never the right fit for me, [but] I feel like it’s a very casual kind of
identity. I can totally see what someone watching Dyrus stream, for example,
can connect with him. But at the same time, I think behind EG, behind our
signings, there’s a lot of prestige. A little bit of gravitas, I would like to
think.”


Courtship and sponsorship

Evil Geniuses were just one of a few options Ellis and his team were
considering during 2012, including independence. Ellis been allowed a lot of
freedom at CLG and had gotten to know a number of sponsors and partner
organizations. He thought that if his team struck out on their own, he might be
able to manage them successfully without being involved with another
organization. But he didn’t like the risk, and he didn’t feel completely
confident that he was ready to navigate those waters.

But as he considered his options and conducted preliminary conversations with
Garfield, the two sides were pushed closer together by Razer and its director
of eSports, Chris Mitchell.

Razer are one of the most prolific sponsors in eSports, and their equipment is
some of the most recognizable high-performance gear in PC gaming. As part of
their eSports program, Razer also do significant player outreach and support.
When you’re a Razer-sponsored player at a foreign tournament, Ellis explained,
and you discover vital equipment has been left behind somewhere along the line,
you can usually trust that someone from Razer is going to show up on short
notice with an exact replacement.

The personal touch mattered to Ellis and his team. Razer named the CLG EU squad
its team of the year in 2012, and Ellis had gotten to know Mitchell a bit
during his time with CLG. He noticed the difference between them and some of
the other sponsor representatives he’d dealt with: Mitchell and Razer were
personable and passionate, less guarded than other reps. They were people Ellis
felt he could trust.

At the same time, Razer and Evil Geniuses were also in their own negotiations,
and Razer urged Garfield to take a close look at Ellis and his team.

“It’s not like the kind of thing where we needed this to happen to get the
deal, but they really pushed us to consider it,” Garfield said. “They do
trust us to build our own talent portfolio. We would have been fine with no
league of Legends presence, but Chris in particular was really like, ‘You
should really try to get these guys if you can.’”


Dividing the streams

Esports contracts are a bit more involved than they used to be. Where teams
used to live and die by sponsorships and, to a lesser extent, tournament
placement, streaming revenue has completely changed the business model. Ellis
said that top players can make upwards of between five and eight thousand
pounds a month through streaming revenue.

The numbers have become even more impressive through Riot’s tournaments. The
World Playoffs last year gave the top teams a ton of additional exposure, and
now the LCS Season 3 format has given similar prominence to a ton of new teams.
While Riot spends about $175,000 subsidizing each League team and its player
salaries, the real wealth of the LCS is exposure.

where Ellis and Garfield ended up going back and forth in negotiations was the
exact revenue split between EG and the individual players for their streams,
and how much time they would be obliged to spend streaming.

While EG don’t comment on player salaries or revenue splits, they pride
themselves on being on placing as few burdens on their players as possible.

“Our stream take was the lowest of all [offers] and our minimum requirement
for streaming hours was tied for the lowest. So in terms of prize money take,
streaming revenue take, and streaming hours in general, we tend to be the most
appealing to players,” Garfield said. “Our prize money take is 10 percent or
lower. Whereas a lot of traditional eSports organizations its around 20 and
sometimes 30 percent. So our take of the LoL stream revenue was very fair to
them in the context of other teams.”

One reason Garfield tends not to fight too hard for more streaming revenue is
that such a large portion of its value lies in the data it generates. Much of
the eSports business takes place in the dark, with stakeholders relying on
guesswork and intuition rather than empirical data. It’s a sharp contrast,
Garfield says, from the way traditional sports work.

“Athletic sponsorships are audited even more closely in terms of numbers than
eSports sponsorships,” he said. “There’s a certain amount of limited
internal transparency about TV ratings and exposure, and players have access to
that, and agents and sports marketing firms have access to that. So they can
pair a particular player to a particular brand, and the brand can can track the
kind of exposure they’re getting by sponsoring the player.”

Esports have no comparable infrastructure, which can make it very hard to
support a team or make a case to sponsors about what their money is buying
them. Not that long ago, the coach of the renowned LG-IM StarCraft team posted
to TeamLiquid requesting that fans contact LG and tell them they appreciate
their sponsorship and that it has made them more disposed to use LG products.
This is not the kind of thing that inspires confidence in the business model.

“One of the reasons that it is so hard, if not impossible, to get money from
companies strictly to put their logo on your shirt is that we have none of that
[infrastructure]. MLG is not forthcoming with its broadcast analytics to me,”
 Garfield said. “There is no unified database. You have NOTHING to sell in
that regard. And that’s why livestreaming is so important. It’s a number you
have control over.”


“…Now we must make Italians.”

While the two sides were able to come to an agreement around the terms Garfield
outlined, it is still a very young partnership. Ellis and his team are under
contract to EG through this year, and he has not entirely ruled out eventually
going independent. Joining EG has already required some adjustments for Ellis,
who was used to CLG’s laid-back approach.

“One of my concerns when I joined EG,” Ellis said, “was that it might be a
little too stringent or restrictive. Because there’s so much sponsorship
consciousness, they want the brands represented a certain way. And that’s one
of the things we have to kind of balance. You don’t want to see pictures of me
naked, hugging Froggen, for example. That’s funny when we were CLG and we
might have gotten away with it, but now we’re part of EG. That’s definitely
not going to fly and we’ve got to be a lot more careful with things that are
being put out there to manage sponsorship relations.”

There is another issue: while EG now have a League of Legends team, that group
has such a strong identity that it exists apart from EG and their former team,
CLG. Whether or not they were EG, they would still be the same team. It’s the
kind of question you might find in an intro philosophy course at college, but
branding hinges on these phenomenological questions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXZTs0NvpAA&feature=player_embedded

Garfield insists that EG is more than a collection of sponsorships and players,
but it would also be very easy to see EG as a kind of glorified eSports
middleman. He’s aware of that perception and tries to guard against it, but he
understands where it comes from.

“They don’t do that for no reason. It takes a certain amount of time to build
a brand affiliation that’s more than us paying them for a year,” Garfield
admitted.

What Garfield wants is time. He knows that Ellis may still want to pursue an
independent path in the future, and that, for the moment, people may see the
LoL squad less as an EG team and more a team wearing EG uniforms. Integrating
the two will take time, both in the minds of the public and in the relationship
between EG and its five League stars.

“I think our contract term is for a year, and Stephen and I had many
conversations and are very clear with each other about the team’s long term
thoughts, their different options,” Garfield said. “From the players’
 perspective, they’re going to keep the option of going independent. But from
my perspective, I think that if I want to keep these guys, and I can keep them
happy, I’ll be able to keep them. And make this the most attractive option.
After a certain amount of time, people will stop looking at EG as a temporary
fix, or just a sponsor. And see it as an actual team.”

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