Esports Management — Chapter 3 — GFX
In this series, I’m going to discuss the different aspects of an Esports Organization’s business model, why it’s important, and the way I see it getting implemented to drive your business forward.
Table of Contents:
1. Website
2. Videography
3. GFX
4. Social Media
5. Content Creators
6. Competitive Rosters
Graphics
If you haven’t heard by now, social media is very important for ANY brand. It’s even more important for brands whose product is *mostly* attention. When attention is your product, you need to be at the forefront of producing attention grabbing posts. A great way to do this is through the production of graphics.
Platforms like Instagram and Twitter are PERFECT for you to tell your story through visuals. If you had an unlimited budget, you’d want to share as much video as possible. But given the real constraints around cost and time to do that, graphics make a great second option. What are some great ideas for gfx to share? Here are a few ideas: scorecards, new player announcement, creative sponsor activations, IRL picture edits, industry fun facts. The sky is really the limit so always be attempting to push the envelope to find what is most engaging.
Now that you know WHAT to do, let’s talk for a second about HOW to do it. Your budget, once again, will play a large role in deciding how you go about accomplishing your design goals. If you can afford it, bringing in a full time designer is a great option. This isn’t really an option for the vast majority of organizations so there are a few ways to be much more cost effective.
- You could try a service like Design Pickle or a similar competitor — For approximately $350/month, you’d be getting a design a day. Over time, you’d collect a large library of editable graphics.
2. Use a service like Fiverr to find designers on a “per project basis — This would start off being quite a bit of leg work, but after you develop a strong relationship with a designer, the process should smooth out. You can possibly even begin working with the designer outside of Fiverr, although you lose all of the safety mechanisms the middle-man provides.
3. Find designers organically — Twitter is a fantastic way to do this. Once you begin following a few gaming/esports accounts, you’ll quickly see that there are a ton of designers in the space. Be very very very sure of your needs, operational effectiveness, and the ability to pay. Your reputation as being an org who is good to work for is critical. If you give poor (aka open ended) instructions to a designer, then they produce a full design that you don’t like and refuse to pay them, you have now entered into a pretty dicey situation. Realistically, you need to be prepared to pay in full even if you aren’t fully satisfied. The caveat to that is unless you negotiated for a certain number of revisions before the project started. Generally speaking, you need avoid “he said/she said” situations at all costs. The small amount of money relative the the PR nightmare that comes with the conflict, is just not worth it.
Whether it’s a sports team or an esports org, having an efficient design team is critical to engaging and entertaining your audience. Get your systems in place to consistently and efficiently output graphics, and you’ll be one step ahead.
That’s it for Part 3 of my Esports Management Series. Please stay tuned for Chapter 4 when we dive into Social Media. You can read the last chapter on Video Content here. Thanks for reading!
