Dan Sutton: The Future of Sports is Electronic

Charlie Melcher

Hi. I’m Charlie Melcher, Founder of the Future of StoryTelling, and I’m so glad to have you with me today for the FoST podcast. For those of you familiar with traditional sports, it may come as a surprise that one of the fastest growing sports in the world doesn’t involve balls, courts, or fields. Rather, it takes place on screens. Electronic sports, better known as eSports, are video games played in an organized, highly competitive environment. It’s a sector of entertainment whose popularity is skyrocketing. With a global viewership of over 500 million, the eSports market is currently valued at $1.45 billion and continuing to grow.

 

Among the biggest players in this field is the video game developer, publisher, and eSports tournament organizer Riot Games. They’re the company behind the massively popular eSports games, League of Legends and Valorant, both of which are among the top viewed games in the world with tens of millions of fans. Today’s guest, Dan Sutton, is the Global Vice President of Publishing for eSports at Riot Games, and he’s someone who has his finger firmly on the pulse of the thriving market. Dan’s the perfect person to help us understand what eSports are, why they’re so popular and where they’re headed. Please join me in welcoming Dan Sutton. Dan, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the Future of StoryTelling podcast. Welcome.

Dan Sutton

Thanks so much, Charlie. It’s great to be here.

Charlie Melcher

So, I want to start by asking you to describe what it’s like to show up at a League of Legends tournament and be there for eSports, in case somebody here just hasn’t had the pleasure yet of attending exciting eSport event.

Dan Sutton

Sure thing, Charlie. It happened to me about eight years ago. I had heard about it and I had been at the office for a few months and got offered to go to the first Worlds in 2015 for me, which was about the seventh year they had been doing this. I walked in with very different expectations, Charlie. I thought, hey, this is going to be small. I’ve been to the NBA, I’ve been to the NFL, I’ve even been to soccer in Europe. I was blown away because the first thing I noticed was thousands of people already there at like 8:00 in the morning, and mind you, the tournament wasn’t starting until 2:00. So, they’re there, they’re wearing costumes of different characters in our game, they’re wearing jerseys to support different eSport organizations, just like the NFL or the NBA.

 

I get inside and what I started to notice was a general friendliness and a general comradery, that this wasn’t the Raiders where somebody might be yelling at you for wearing the wrong jersey. This was, “Oh, I see you, you see me. We like this.” They were cheering for all of it. They were cheering for good play. They were cheering for interesting things happening in the game, not necessarily for this team vs. that team. As it went to in a Game 5, the perfect scenario, I just saw people celebrating a thing they love, even if the team they came for wasn’t there.

 

In the end, what I always love, the team that wins gets the cup. It’s our Stanley Cup or our NFL trophy. Everyone stays and everyone watches this team, whether they speak the language or not, Charlie. Many teams are from around the world, Korean, China, US, Europe. They wait and they want to watch this team who just hopefully displayed some of the best play they’ve ever seen get their reward and talk about what it means, and then they all walk away peacefully.

Charlie Melcher

So, I get this sense of the comradery, if you will, amongst the fans. Describe the teams and how people are actually watching.

Dan Sutton

That is an interesting thing to get adjusted to because as we’ve gotten bigger, the stage of where they play is still about the same size. Think of a large basketball arena or a civic center type place. Last year, for instance, in 2022, we were in the Chase Center in San Francisco. Most people know that to be one of the top NBA venues in the world. We had 18,000 people there. So, the stage is in the middle of where the basketball court would be. So, the way people are watching this, Charlie, is actually gigantic screens that we bring in and put at the top so that people that are closer can see the players actually there. But as a viewer, you get to see the screen they’re playing on. They are sitting at these perfectly lined up desks that have the exact same computers per each.

 

The only thing they get to have, Charlie, that’s unique is their own mouse and keyboard. They can bring that in. It’s checked by referees because it’s official. That’s the only thing. The monitor, the camera, the headphones, and the computer all have been checked by Riot. They are all identical. They are all set up. What you have is a desk on one side and a desk on the other side of five on five with one coach. They do have a coach. The coach is allowed behind each of their teams and they’re all wearing these kind of noise blocking headphones where the coach and the players can talk and nobody gets to hear that audio. We don’t pump that into the stadium. That is a conversation of what they’re doing, how they’re challenging, those kinds of things.

Charlie Melcher

Dan, give us a sense of just how big League of Legends as an eSport is.

Dan Sutton

One, I’ll tell you how many teams around the world are professionally playing League of Legends. It’s over a hundred professional teams-

Charlie Melcher

Wow.

Dan Sutton

… in all of our different regions. Right? I can tell you that we have paid out over $200 million in prize pool money to winners of our events over these years. Then I can give you probably the most recent relevant stat, which is to tell you that over 75 million tuned in to watch our World Finals last year. That is rivaling major global sporting events. That is up there with the Super Bowl and the NBA finals and World Cup numbers when you’re talking that number of millions.

Charlie Melcher

That’s insane. That is just huge. How many people are playing the game, not eSports, but actually playing League of Legends?

Dan Sutton

Sure. We look at that on a lifetime and we look at that on a monthly. The lifetime would be hundreds of millions of people have played League of Legends and right now, over 50 million people around the world are currently actively playing League of Legends.

Charlie Melcher

I saw a stat that it’s about over 150 million players worldwide for the year 2023.

Dan Sutton

Correct.

Charlie Melcher

How many teams at the Worlds?

Dan Sutton

So, for our World Final, we start about six weeks out before the World Final date, and we have usually a play-in round of roughly 28 to 30 teams. Those teams play in in multiple different rounds and start getting eliminated. Then we have our Semi-Finals, then we have Quarter Finals, and then we have our actual Finals. So, final Finals is just the two teams, just like the NBA, just like the NFL. It is those teams coming in. That’s what you’re paying to watch. That’s what you’re going to see.

Charlie Melcher

Dan, tell me about the fan. Who’s coming to watch and why?

Dan Sutton

Think of the Gen Z, the millennials. Think of the generation that’s just about to maybe start to have kids. We’re still in what we kind of call Generation 1. We don’t have parents yet bringing their kids to eSports, but we’re starting to get into those late 20s fandom that they’re going to start having families and we’ll get to see the effect of are we going to finally have a Gen 2 that brings their children? I bring that up to tell you that this whole generation, as you know, as your audience knows, they’re not linear TV watchers.

 

A lot of them, I don’t want to say, and I’m not going to bash them, they’re not rejecting professional sports, but it is clear when you look at the average age of the MLB and the NBA, we’re talking 50s, right? We’re talking early boomer stage is their average audience. We’re really getting that Gen Z, Gen Y millennial audience, and it’s quite unique. They grew up playing video games. They probably grew up with multiple screens. For them, Charlie, watching eSports probably started on Twitch or YouTube completely for free and there’s never been a luxury box. There’s never been a $500 ticket. There’s never been season tickets because that’s just not the way this organization has ever run.

Charlie Melcher

So, if you’re coming to watch eSports, you already have a fair amount of knowledge about the game. Right? You’re not just wandering in because it’s exciting to see. These are players, right?

Dan Sutton

We know that for the weekly in and out tournaments and day to day games, we know that it is somebody who really understands, and they’re watching, Charlie, to get better. They are watching because, oh, my goodness, the people that play at the pro level, just like baseball or football, they’re doing things that you’re maybe not sure you’re capable of or you just don’t know how to deliver. What I tell people is the biggest difference, I think, between the NFL and League of Legends, I can play the exact same game as the professionals.

 

You and I do not get the chance to say, “I’d like to go to the NFL and play on that stage.” You have to earn it. You have to go through a whole level. For me, I can play the exact same game the pros are playing. I can play the exact same characters the pros are playing. I watch it, Charlie, so that I can be better at the characters that I like because I’ve been playing the game for eight years and I’m still pretty bad, and that’s a common point of view at our game. It takes thousands of hours to master and you might just be okay. The pros excel at the game.

Charlie Melcher

I’m just blown away that there are so many people who continue to stay committed to this game. I think in an age where social media, we cycle through trends, we cycle through games, fads come and go. Why do you think that League of Legends has continued to stay so strong and grow? Is that part of the reason that you built the eSports business around the console game?

Dan Sutton

It’s twofold, Charlie. We know that eSports continues to keep this game relevant. So, ever since Twitch was introduced, which I want to say was 10 years ago, we have always been in the top five to 10 games every single day. Right? On top of, it’s something that I really, really credit our founders with that I think is difficult and expensive, but a good decision years ago. Every two weeks, Charlie, no matter what, we update the game, we change certain things in the game, we might add a character, we might update a character, we might change the way that certain things worked.

 

It allows us to also streamline for problems, software bugs, some weird glitch somebody found that our testers couldn’t find. I think, Charlie, that that constant change makes it so that every single game of League of Legends actually is different. When you just get into the permutation options, there’s 162 different characters you can choose to play in the game, and you play five vs. five. So, I’m not a mathematician, but if you do that number, five vs. five and 162 combinations, that’s pretty insane.

Charlie Melcher

So, I’m curious about the comparison to traditional sports, like ways in which there are similarities and ways in which this is completely different. For example, in traditional sports, we make real heroes out of the stars of the sport. People wear their names on their shirts and they follow their stories and they’re up and down with their careers. Are people following eSport competitors the same way?

Dan Sutton

It’s actually the biggest challenge, Charlie, that we have. It is very different in that sense that you do not watch these players in college and there’s not a draft. We do not have that. We don’t really have intramurals. We don’t really have a collegiate league that is professional. We do support collegiate eSports, but it’s kind of like you’re playing, you’re farmed by one of these organizations, they see you, Charlie, on Twitch playing, and they farm you into a very small organization, and they build you up. What I am trying to solve as the head of marketing, Charlie, is I got to get back to the basics.

 

What I’m realizing is we’re amazingly talented at making beautiful shows, great graphics packages, wonderful statement pieces with great artists. We’re not really good at helping develop a storyline and showing people why they should care. It’s a regional challenge for me, Charlie, which is, I need Korea to do that with Korean stars. I need China to do it with Chinese stars. I need America to do it with American stars. Then on top of it, and this is the hardest challenge, I have to have Korea care about China and China care about North America. Right? That’s the hardest part and the biggest difference between traditional sports and eSports. The life pursuit here is also a lot less time. Most pros are done by 24, 25. So, there’s a shorter window for these pros to actually make it and to start to get support.

Charlie Melcher

Riot’s not coming to eSports as a sports company. Riot’s coming to eSports as a gaming company. So, the role of the eSport tournaments is very different than those tournaments would be for the NBA or another professional league. Can you talk a little more about some of the larger benefits and reasons that this is so valuable to Riot, some of the other ways that it creates value with your fans and your players?

Dan Sutton

We think it comes down to entertainment. Our broadcasts are truly designed to entertain, as well as add education. I think that it’s quite unique that it’s a way to express fandom and loyalty to the IP. Riot, I should probably take one step back and explain the structure of the company, Charlie, which is think of our company as a stool with three legs. One leg is devoted to making the best video games that we can, one leg is eSports, the leg that I work in, and the third leg is actually what we call Riot Entertainment. For those of your audience that might have seen it, we had an Emmy-winning animated series on Netflix called Arcane. What we’ve been trying to figure out is between eSports scripted content, unscripted documentary content, and games themselves, various types of games, how do we help expand the relationship to what we call the player at work?

 

We say we’re the most player-focused game company in the world. We put everything at the center around the player, and I think a lot of companies, Charlie, put the IP at the center and then whatever works. Right? Oh, let’s license toys. Let’s make a movie. Riot puts the player there and says, “Oh, maybe the player got older and they have less time to play a super competitive game, but they have time to watch a game they’re familiar with while they’re doing other things.” Then to take it one step further, these people have grown up with 160 characters plus. What if we start using some of the story material and make scripted content for the person who stopped playing our game? Because we admit, Charlie, it may be hard for someone to continue playing League of Legends for 20, 30 years. It’s our goal to make it last for generations. But what we really have decided in the past maybe five years, what we really want is the relationship with our original player to extend as maybe their life changes.

Charlie Melcher

I think that makes total sense because it’s through those stories that people get more of an emotional connection, as well as become better informed, and there’s nothing that fans want more than to just be more knowledgeable about the thing they’re passionate about. So, the more you can take them behind the scenes and into the lives of competitive players and teams, you’re going to create a stronger connection from the fans to the sport. I imagine that a bunch of people, when initially hearing about eSports, their first response was that this is not a sport. Talk about how skilled it is and how much of a discipline it really takes to be a serious competitor in eSports.

Dan Sutton

We’re talking 40 hours a week, Charlie, average of a player playing this game. So, these teams, they are literal teams. They have nutritionists and they have personal trainers. You know those Theraguns and Hyperice that you see everywhere? They’re using those, Charlie. They’re using them on their forearms, or they’re sitting in a chair, so they’re using them on their quads. There is a ton of work that goes into it and they have to study, Charlie, and they have to play. If there’s 160+ characters in our game, if you’re a pro, you kind of have to know all of them so that if you encounter one of them across from you in the game, you know what’s coming at you. You don’t have to be good at playing all 160+, but you do have to know what they all do.

 

So, you got to be studying. You have to know what those characters can do. You have to know what the current meta of the game is. I think that’s pretty true in everything, right? Basketball changes the meta and gets rougher, and suddenly fouls are not fouls. Those things change. For our game, certain characters in the game become less relevant for pro play and they come in and out of the meta. Most teams have about seven to eight players on the roster. So, you’ve got two or three backups that can do two or three different positions, but you’re keeping your seat, right? You have to do good. It’s such a team-based game, Charlie, that if you try to solo, you try to do this on your own, you will not be that successful. There are stars that are just amazingly good at the game, but it really is team coordination. That’s been the interesting thing.

 

When you see it all come together and you’re at the Chase Center and you see the 18,000 people lined up and they’re eating hot dogs and they’re bringing Boom Sticks, you see and feel, honestly, you feel in your chest this, oh, my goodness, what’s going on here? Oh, did you see that? Everybody’s cheering. It’s funny, my boss was kind of new to eSports and I took him last year to the Chase Center and he’s like, “I had my skepticism, but I came in here and wow. The production value, what I saw, what I felt.” He said, “Even when there’s parts that I wasn’t really sure what just happened, I could tell. The audience was helping me understand it was really good or really shocking.” I think that’s the part where, yeah, that’s sports, right? Somebody strikes somebody out, somebody fouls somebody and gets taken out of the game, those things are moments you feel, and if you know what happened, you know what happened. Even if you don’t, you still know something happened. You’re still feeling it from the tension around you in the crowd.

Charlie Melcher

Yeah. There are a lot of sports that I can think of where if you don’t really know what’s going on, it can be hard to follow. But again, the crowd or you can enjoy it on a more superficial level, and then the more knowledgeable you become, the deeper you go, the more you really appreciate the artistry. I grew up with a sport like that. My father was an Olympic fencer. So, I was literally in Munich for the ’72 Games when he was representing United States. Epee fencing happens very fast. If you don’t really know the rules, it’s hard to understand what the director’s saying and doing. Television can barely keep up. You can’t really read the blade movement. It’s too fast. I certainly understand what it means to follow a sport, enjoy a sport that not everyone instantly understands and has to have the knowledge explained to them as they go.

Dan Sutton

I think it’s why hockey has such unique pockets of insane fandom. But if you didn’t grow up in a city that had hockey as a sport to play or to watch, you’re like, “How does hockey work? What is a foul in hockey?” That’s the unique thing, where baseball is somewhat easy to tell somebody quickly, but a lot of sports, they have kind of regional or very unique … Cricket is one that I don’t know the rules of cricket. I know that there’s billions of fans around the world of cricket, and you’ve probably seen the effect, Charlie, with F1.

 

Drive to Survive, that show on Netflix, has truly proven that a bunch of people will watch a show about a thing they didn’t care about last week or understand last week, and now they’re like, “I’m really into this show and I think this weekend, I’m going to watch some F1.” People care about the characters. People care about the strife between two different people and organizations and the drama. Right? I never thought of sport that way growing up, but I can see sport is entertainment all in and everyone’s going to have different angles of what they really care about.

Charlie Melcher

Do you think that League of Legends and eSports are the Olympics for the young generations, for Gen Z? Or may it actually become part of the Olympics? Are you thinking about this growing into being an international Olympic sport?

Dan Sutton

We’re getting very close, Charlie, and I believe … So, we have two co-founders, Brandon and Mark. I believe Brandon is on record maybe in 2015 or 2014, Charlie, and he says, “One day these types of games will be in the Olympics.” We’re very close, Charlie, because this year, in November, there is the Asia Games. The Asia Games are a very traditional sport event. It is your typical Olympic-like competitions. However, it’s only focused on Asian nations. This year, they have included League of Legends itself as an event, and I believe the stats I saw most recently are 27 teams are being fielded from different Asian countries.

Charlie Melcher

That’s really amazing. So, you are close.

Dan Sutton

That means we’re pretty close, right? Because also, as I mentioned, Korea, China, Vietnam, some of these Asian nations are also the largest fan base of eSports. They have some of the most prolific and dominating teams. So, I’m like, “If it happens there, we’re still pushing in Europe and South America and North America, but it’s going to be on stage.” This year, Charlie, we had to move our World Finals because much like the Olympics, we have to let the Korean team field their competition and go off to the Asia Games. So, the funny thing, Charlie, is that some team members who fought it out last year at the World Finals against each other, they’re on the same team representing Korea this year at the Asian Games.

Charlie Melcher

Just like the Dream Team in basketball. Yeah.

Dan Sutton

Just like the Dream Team. So, we’re going to get to sit back on it, Charlie, and see how does this go? How do people represent this? How do countries respond to having an official team playing League of Legends in their version of the Olympics?

Charlie Melcher

Well, look. We’ve all watched when X Games went from being this fringe thing to now having some of the most popular Olympic sports. It makes total sense that things that start in a kind of youth culture with a big fandom ultimately can make it to the center of the sporting world, international sporting world. So, what else do you see as the future for eSports? Any other insights or projections?

Dan Sutton

Yeah. I think what hasn’t been delivered yet, Charlie, is better ways to allow viewers to get even more out of it. I think with Red Zone on NFL, you getting a channel that just gives you the highlights of whenever a team makes it close to scoring. That’s unique if you’re trying to just catch up on all the highlights. What nobody’s done, especially from the player’s point of view, Charlie, because most NFL audience did not play football, but most of our audience does or did play League of Legends, nobody’s thought through what they need, Charlie. They need maybe a view of a certain part of the gaming map, or maybe they want a pro-type view of what the coach is seeing. All of those things because they’re familiar with the strategy of the game and familiar with the actual backend of how the game works, nobody in eSports has done that yet.

 

The other thing we think the future needs to be is, and we’re learning our own lessons, Charlie, League of Legends, every team was required to pay multiple millions of dollars to be considered part of the league. We’re realizing that revenue for a company like Riot, that’s not important. What is important is those teams having healthy financials and surviving. That means they’re going to be content creators on their own. That means they’re going to start selling their own merchandise, keyboards, jerseys. So, I think that’s the other thing is team economics are very different, and I think Riot has to be at the forefront of championing that change. Our goal is 100 Thieves, which is one of the teams, or the Sentinels, we want those organizations to thrive. We want those organizations to be here for the longterm. So, I think that’s the other thing.

Charlie Melcher

By the way, where are the next Worlds?

Dan Sutton

The World Finals for League of Legends in ’23 are going to be starting in Busan, Korea and ending in Seoul. Korea happens to be, some would argue, probably the birthplace of eSports. Years ago, before League of Legends existed, there was a game called StarCraft, and that game used to be an eSport. But it was so unique and just a Korean thing. I knew a few people here, Charlie, that used to find some ways, this is pre-Twitch, pre-YouTube, some way to watch it. We know when we go back, we haven’t been to Korea for years, we know when we go there we get such a lively audience and the city knows we’re there, and so it becomes quite a unique way to get introduced to this. The other option, in LA this year, our other game, Valorant, is going to be at the Shrine, followed by the Forum, and this is our first time to go that big with our second game.

 

It’s growing rapidly, much faster than League of Legends did years ago. So, we’re trying to catch up to how big do we go with the eSport? But that’s the other option is seeing either of them is going to be a very similar experience of what you notice, the generation, the types of clothing, the types of comradery. One of the games is just very hard to follow, and that’s League of Legends because you have to know a lot about the game. The other one is more like a tactical shooting game where if you understand why there’s a base over there and why this guy’s trying to defend that base, collectively, the audience would be like, “I get it. This team wants to take that objective and that’s what they’re doing.” League of Legends takes a lot more of rules and viewing to understand what you’re watching.

Charlie Melcher

Dan, this has been super interesting and just incredibly valuable. I appreciate your opening up and sharing the details and the inside knowledge that you have about eSports. I think that there’s just great things ahead in this field. I really want to encourage people to go to and check out an eSports tournament because I don’t think they understand the power of that experience. It’s super exciting to see how well it’s doing, how much growth there’s been in the space, and I can’t personally wait to get to someday go and experience the World Championships myself. So, again, thank you for being on the podcast today.

Dan Sutton

Thank you, Charlie, and I’d love to take you to one of these events. I think that for folks who don’t fully know what’s going on, going with somebody who’s played this game or can be kind of a navigation buddy, I think you walk away with an even higher appreciation once you get somebody like me trying to help you understand a few things.

Charlie Melcher

I would love that. I grew up as a gamer. I need to get back to my roots.

Dan Sutton

Thank you, Charlie.

Charlie Melcher

Warm thanks again to Dan Sutton for joining me on today’s episode. To learn more about Riot Games and their work in eSports, please visit the links in the episode’s description, and thanks to you as well for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please consider subscribing to the FoST podcast and leaving us a five star review. You can learn more about our other content and become part of the FoST family by signing up for our free monthly newsletter at F-O-S-T, .org. The FoST podcast is produced by Melcher Media, in collaboration with our talented production partner, Charts & Leisure. I hope to see you again soon for another deep dive into the world of storytelling. Until then, please be safe, stay strong, and story on.