Organizing Esports: Scheduling, Watching, Sharing
Esports is commonly referred to as the “Wild West.” Recent investments by Visa, NBA owners, and Lionsgate demonstrate the market’s high potential, but it remains unorganized.
Most websites with upcoming match schedules rely on volunteers for updates, which can lead to infrequency and unreliable data. With over 16,000 professional and semi-pro matches played in Dota 2 last year alone, it can be difficult to find when one’s favorite team is playing or when a specific tournament match takes place. Most teams don’t even have an upcoming matches page on their website.
Stanza brings two important features to the esports community:
- Organization: giving auto-updating schedules to fans for their favorite teams, matches, tournaments, and live-streams
- Brand Interaction: letting brands engage with the esports community without a huge overhead
For example, analytics sites like OpenDota, as well as teams like Immortals and Counter Logic Gaming, have partnered with Stanza to power comprehensive up-to-date match schedules. Fans are able to view the match display on any embedded site or sync the schedule to receive notifications through their preferred calendar.
Brands target esports fans without the financial commitment of sponsoring an event or team. Instead, they sponsor pre-match calendar notifications or put their ads into the StanzaCal network—partner sites that generate over 150,000,000 impressions per month—to reach gamers.
With 140M viewers for single tournaments alone and more than $30,000,000 in Dota 2 payouts this year, esports has expanded nearly 2000% since 2011.
Stanza provides organization and access to this growing industry.
Author: Colin Bashor, Marketing & Business Development Associate
