Gm and welcome to the lobby.

Content creators continue to shine. Brands double down on esports. And GameStop, Halo, and MLG all make headlines… what year is it?

Ok, grab your coffee, ready up, and let’s drop in 🪂
Here’s what we have for you this week:

• MrBeast coming to X/Twitter as Elon challenges YouTube 💸 

• Ludwig & Tarik make splash with VALORANT Invitational 💦

• In The Lab proves a point selling 15K silent basketballs 🏀

• GameStop, Halo, and MLG make the news in 2024 📰

• Esports orgs show strength with partnership announcements 💪

💸 MrBeast coming to X/Twitter

In the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover of X/Twitter and his recent tirades, brands and creators have slowly been pulling away from the platform.

Elon’s goal with X seems to focus around turning into the “everything app”. From social media to payment processing, to video content, Musk wants it all to live on X; however, content creators such as MrBeast have expressed that the ad revenue on the platform is incomparable to that of YouTube.

Just a couple weeks after making that statement — MrBeast uploaded his first video to X, re-uploading a video he originally posted on YouTube last month.

He also noted he would release how much ad revenue he generated through X. The video hit over 100 million views in less than 72 hours!

👀 Our POV

From my personal experience, X’s ad revenue seems super inconsistent and significantly lower since Elon took over.

I do think X could challenge YouTube though if they can make improvements to their ad revenue program, video quality & bitrate, and add some sort of tab that’s specifically for video content (similar to the Instagram reels tab).

Final thought: From my personal perspective as a habitual X/Twitter user, I’d love to just be able to watch a full video from the app instead of just seeing a snippet preview that takes me to another app.
 
- Justin Palacios (Private Lobby)

💦 Ludwig & Tarik make splash

Ludwig & Tarik closed out the 2023 VCT OFF//SEASON with their second annual “Ludwig x Tarik Invitational” inviting four professional North American VALORANT teams to compete from the OFFBRAND Studio in Los Angeles.

Alongside the pro matches, Ludwig & Tarik competed against each other with lineups featuring content creators such as TenZ, pokimane, Peter Park, and more.

You might think all eyes would be on the world-class VALORANT players competing at the highest level, right? Wrong… The most viewed match all weekend was the show match between Team Ludwig & Team Tarik peaking at over 82k viewers.

Throughout the weekend, the event averaged just under 60k viewers, racking in over 1.2 million hours watched showing once again: the power of creators.

👀 Our POV

Like we mentioned last week, creators & esports go hand in hand. Bringing both together engages audiences and casual players that are fans of the creators, and introduces esports to these fans.

Combined with a more casual broadcasting experience, Ludwig & Tarik’s event felt as if you were just hanging out with friends watching high-level VALORANT.

Final thought: Just as with the trend in co-streaming for esports events, we’re definitely going to see a lot more creator-led events and tournaments in 2024.

- Justin Palacios (Private Lobby)

🏀 In The Lab proves a point

In The Lab (ITL) is a group of basketball content creators and YouTube channel that has just sold over 15,000 Silent Basketballs in only six months.

“It’s been the craziest product we’ve ever made,” Navin Ramharak, ITL’s co-founder and COO, recently told The Publish Press. ”We want to take over the market [and make] this the end-all, be-all of basketballs for kids.”

Check out Publish Press for the full article on ITL -- LINK!

👀 Our POV

Though not directly related to gaming -- ITL’s success follows the trend of creators leveraging their audiences and content to sell products. Maybe not the most successful examples, but Pokimane’s infamous cookies and TenZ’s secret mouse definitely made noise.

ITL’s strategy is focused on giving it’s core audience what they need rather than attempting to grow and expand their following.

My take: Having worked at OpTic, this strategy sounds super familiar. OpTic has a similar playbook to ITL, focusing on giving their fans, the Green Wall, new products and experiences that deepen their connection with the org while also driving FOMO for members of the community that aren’t members of the Green Wall.

We’re undoubtedly going to see more creators leverage their audiences to release products such as ITL’s Silent Basketball throughout 2024.

An additional aside -- there’s also massive opportunity for brands and gaming orgs to partner with creators like ITL to support these product launches and deepen their market penetration.

An Idea: Creators have already entered many of the major product segments so the key for success in my mind is to find the whitespace.

Hear me out here… Candles 🕯️

Gamers, students, and work-from-home professionals all enjoy candles. It’s a desk staple and a product that when loved, is purchased on repeat.

It’s easy to display on stream, in content, and super easy to talk about.

Imagine this: Friends & Family
A collaboration between FaZe Clan, OpTic, and Good Good Golf.
Everything is better with Friends & Family. Scented candles for the culture.

At launch, be super intentional and only release 2-3 scents with the ability to purchase scents individually, as a sample pack, and on a monthly subscription.

Also release a premium, high quality “Founders” t-shirt and hoodie to incentivize the org’s fanbases to purchase at launch. I don’t know, I think it would work...

Hit my line if you’re interested! 😂
 
- Zach Eller (Private Lobby)

📰 GameStop, Halo, and MLG

Speaking of candles…

🕯️ A moment of silence for the fallen 🕯️

• GameStop is shutting down its NFT marketplace just 2 years after launch in February, 2022.

• Unannounced Halo Battle Royale reportedly cancelled after multiple years of development.

• Legendary platform GameBattles, formerly MLG GameBattles, has officially shut down over 20 years since launch in 2003. 

👀 Our POV

GameStop: NFT’s are dead. No big loss there but I’m interested to see how GameStop moves forward now. I’m not sure how GameStop can stay in business long-term with games going almost entirely digital at this point.

Halo Battle Royale: Halo Infinite has failed to rejuvenate the franchise as fans had hoped. Many thought that the battle royale could be the saving grace but with this reported cancellation, could Halo’s days be numbered? I think it still has some life. Halo’s IP still has a lot of value as displayed with the Halo TV series.

GameBattles: A sad end to a story for a nostalgic fan-favorite. Many gamers reminisce of their time playing GameBattles with their friends “back in the day” but the platform has continued to waste away since the purchase of MLG by Activision and the purchase of Activision by Microsoft was the final nail in the coffin. I think there’s still a massive opportunity for a tournament platform to regain the market share and mindshare that GameBattles once had.

- Zach Eller (Private Lobby)

💪 Esports orgs show strength

Esports is back? This week saw a slew of org partnership announcements!

• LG UltraGear renews partnership with esports org, Gen.G.

• KitKat and Nestlé furthers support of esports with GIANTX.

• Team Vitality renews 100% of it's partnerships for 2024 and adds Magnum, Ben & Jerry's, and Tradeit.gg.

👀 Our POV

As esports winter continues it’s flurry with layoffs, mergers, and acquisitions seemingly week after week, it’s incredible news for the industry as a whole to see these partnership renewals.

These announcements follow the positive trend last week with Riot Games partnership announcements, as well as OpTic and 100 Thieves new deals with FanDuel and Adidas Originals, respectively.

Final thought: Let’s hope this trend continues throughout all of 2024 and isn’t just a blimp caused by year-end contract renewals. That’s obviously a factor but how of a factor, only time will tell…

- Zach Eller (Private Lobby)

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Disclaimer: our views are ours and in no way represent those of our employers.