SEAT Global Magazine - Exclusive Interviews of Global Sport Executive Issue 07 November/December2017(clone) | Page 8

Insights & Perspectives

Michael Zaletel

VP of Technology & Innovation

Productive Edge

Why I Believe eSports is the Next Big Opportunity in Sports

I am most excited about the future of eSports. If you think about it, when we were kids, we used to play baseball in the backlot or football in the park while hanging out and socializing with our friends and pretending to be the current pro sports stars and so our heroes were professional sports players. Sure we played video games when we were kids but our lives didn't revolve around them like our lives revolved around social sports. This generation is far more consumed with video games and now their social lives revolve around it.

Their heroes are the people at the top of the leaderboards and that's why they will watch hours and hours of screen recordings of someone else playing their favorite games. Recently my 9-year old son told me that my generation used to talk to each other at the ballpark or on the phone, my daughter's generation (18 year old) talks to each other mainly through SMS and Snapchat, but his generation mainly talks to each other and socializes through chat interfaces inside of video games. In other words, it's not just the quality and accessibility of modern video games that is causing this shift, it's the combination of games and social chat. For this generation, it's actually the first time video games have ever felt like when we used to play real baseball in the backlot or football in the park. This is why we are investing time and money in research and development around this exciting area of opportunity for traditional sports franchises, venues and entertainment companies.