Pucela eSports Academy - Proposal for Real Valladolid C.F.

Abstract

eSports will rival the biggest traditional sports leagues in terms of future opportunities", said Steve Bornstein, former CEO of ESPN and the NFL Network. Although numerous traditional sports clubs remain skeptical about entering the gaming industry, eSports revenues are constantly growing, amounting to $1084.1M in 2021 with a projected increase to $1617.7M in 2024, according to Newzoo's Global eSports & Live Streaming Market Report (2021). Both the audience and players pertain to a younger age group, notably Millennials and Gen-Z. On the contrary, this same demographic is becoming less and less interested in traditional sports, one of those being football. As we have seen for example with the attempted Super League in 2021, organizations are taking initiatives to attract these younger audiences to traditional sports one way or another. As it is still unclear if traditional sports and eSports will be competitors or simply coexist, various sports clubs have taken the initiative to enter the eSports world. One of these clubs is Real Valladolid CF, a Spanish club recently promoted to LaLiga Santander, which allowed us to work with them in order to develop their strategy for this new and unexplored market. Previously, the club dedicated a fraction of their budget to a small eSports team composed of one player, in partnership with DUX Gaming, a professional team. Yet, they realized that much more could be done, both in terms of revenue generation and attracting new fans. Through rigorous market research and discussions with a number of qualified professionals in the sports and eSports industries, our group decided to create a business plan for the creation of the Real Valladolid eSports Academy. The longterm goal of the Academy would be to form an eSports culture in the city of Valladolid, as we believe that the Club will inevitably have to invest in this industry in the future. Starting from an educational academy is the ideal way to shape this culture and remove the negative stigma of eSports, while simultaneously generating further interest for the Club's core activity: football. In addition, our Academy Will have a competitive branch which will help the Club nurture talents for its professional eSports team. This report thus takes the reader through the various steps that our group took in order to develop our business plan. We begin with an introduction to the eSports industry and market research, which then allows us to define our idea. This is followed by detailed marketing and financial plans that cover every possible aspecto of the project proposal. Finally, we formulate some ideas which the Club could implement within its eSports Academy in the future.