By Sarah E. Needleman
Like many team coaches, Mark Zimmerman oversees practice
sessions, analyzes game footage and makes sure his players get
along.
Only his players use keyboards, not muscle, as they compete in
videogame contests with the hope of reaching lucrative championship
matches that draw thousands of spectators to arenas and millions
more online.
Last spring, 6,200 students from 460 colleges in the U.S. and
Canada participated in Activision Blizzard Inc.'s "Heroes of the
Dorm," whose championship aired on Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN2. Players
on the winning team each received up to $75,000 in tuition funds
depending on how far along they were in their education.
Next month, top players of Valve Software Corp.'s battle game
"Dota 2" will compete in Seattle for more than $17 million.
The growing money and fame in "e-sports" over the past several
years has hatched a field of coaches and other professionals who
want in. Most of the 116 teams world-wide that participate in
tournaments run by Riot Games Inc. for its "League of Legends"
battle game have at least one coach on their payrolls, according to
Riot.
Some e-sports coaches make between $30,000 and $50,000 a year.
That is in line with traditional baseball minor league coaches,
says John Thorn, Major League Baseball's official historian. The
median annual salary for all coaches and scouts in 2012 was
$28,360, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Mr. Zimmerman said he is paid somewhere in the mid-$30,000s
annually, plus performance and health insurance, to serve as the
assistant coach of Team Liquid, a six-player collective that
competes in "League of Legends" tournaments.
E-sports players, meanwhile, can earn between about $35,000 and
$120,000 a year depending on which games they specialize in and
their level of success. That is on top of any prize money they
might collect from their team's winnings and benefits.
Some of the most popular players can generate tens of thousands
of dollars in extra income by having ads appear alongside streaming
video footage of themselves playing videogames on sites like Twitch
and YouTube.
Team Liquid practices in a Santa Monica, Calif., office complex,
just blocks away from an apartment where the players live and eat
on the team's dime--they even have a house chef.
As gamers play, Mr. Zimmerman will lean over their shoulders to
tell them just when to use "trinkets" that reveal part of the game
map that isn't normally visible. Or he might tell them to "just hit
the front line"--another way of instructing them to strike the
closest enemies.
Team Liquid competes in about 36 official matches a year--more
if they make the championships. In a typical pro "League of
Legends" match, two teams of five players can be seen fighting one
another using various spells and weapons throughout a mystical
countryside. The screen is overrun with text, graphics, scores, a
clock, a map and more.
Mr. Zimmerman encourages his athletes to get eight hours of
sleep, avoid junk food and exercise regularly to stay sharp. He
meets with players privately to give feedback or provide a
listening ear.
"There was a time when we were doing really poorly...I actually
started crying," says Alex Chu, a 22-year-old who dropped out of
the University of California, Santa Barbara, three years ago to
pursue e-sports. Mr. Chu, who plays under the name Xpecial, credits
a pep talk from Mr. Zimmerman for boosting his confidence.
Coaching can be tedious, with long hours of studying
gameplay--not unlike the film sessions National Football League
players sit through. "You're taking notes. It's really analytical,"
says Ryan Towey, a 24-year-old trader in Chicago who coaches a team
that plays Microsoft Corp.'s "Halo," a shooting game.
Tournament matches, though, can be thrilling. The biggest events
span days and take place inside spectator-packed arenas. Coaches,
typically wearing the team uniform, advise the players between
contests. "The adrenaline is there," says Mr. Towey, who hopes to
one day coach full time. "This is what I'm passionate about."
E-sports this year is estimated to generate more than $600
million in global revenue--$140 million in the U.S.--from ticket
and merchandise sales, corporate sponsorships and advertising,
according to SuperData Research, a New York firm that tracks the
videogame industry. That is up from $398 million in 2014.
"Electronic gaming is on course to enter the arena of modern
American sports," Major League Baseball's Mr. Thorn says. He cites
two reasons: millions of viewers and gambling via sites based
outside the U.S. like Unikrn.com and Egamingbets.com. "Money and
spectators" are the keys to growing a game into a sport, he
says.
So far, Team Liquid, which has had marketing deals with Nissan
Motor Co. and HTC Corp., can only afford staff for its flagship
"League" squad--a head and assistant coach, a manager and five
mostly part-time analysts, says co-owner Steve Arhancet. He
wouldn't detail Team Liquid's overall expenses or how much money it
makes, except to say that "it's increasingly profitable."
The cost of running a pro e-sports collective--including
players' and staff members' salaries, plus travel and in some cases
living expenses--ranges from about $500,000 to $5 million a year,
depending on the number of teams in it and where they're located,
says Ralf Reichert, chief executive of the Electronic Sports
League, or ESL, a German-based organizer of e-sports competitions
world-wide.
In January, Riot mandated all 20 "League of Legends" teams in
North America and Europe that compete in its pro league hire
coaches. The Los Angeles company, in which China's Tencent Holdings
Ltd. has a majority stake, provides each team with $50,000 a year
for coaching expenses. "League" teams in China and South Korea had
coaches for years, says Dustin Beck, vice president of e-sports at
Riot.
Yoonsup Choi, a former e-sports player known as Locodoco, spends
as many as 10 hours a day, seven days a week coaching a Los Angeles
"League" team called SoloMid. He earns a little more than he made
as a gamer, he says.
It is hard earning the respect of the players under his watch,
he says. They are about his age--23--and often need to be told to
be punctual and tidy. "For a lot of players, this is their first
job and first time living away from their family," he says.
Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com
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