Why Does Esports Apparel Suck?
Opinion
Ecommerce and Apparel are industries that dwarf esports. Why then are esports companies not investing in this market?
The next time you see someone wearing a Thrasher, Vans, or Supreme hoodie, ask them if they skate. Most will say they don’t, and a few might say “I used to.” In fact, skating as a hobby isn’t doing so well, and fared even worse in 2020, limping along in the era of indoors. Regardless, skatewear companies are doing a booming business, despite the lack of skaters available to purchase their products.
Esports companies are limited in terms of monetization. Most esports companies pull most of their revenue through sponsorships and revenue sharing from the game developer. Some are owned as an advertising campaign or future-proofing attempt by a larger sports company or shareholder, like Golden Guardians or FlyQuest (owned by the Golden State Warriors and the co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, respectively.) It’s then expected that they would be open to putting as many irons in the fire of commerce as possible to maximize profits, and consequently, raise their salaries to achieve greatness. Why then are they treating their merchandising as an embarrassing afterthought?
Online clothing sales have exploded over the past decade, now comprising a staggering $50 billion dollar industry in the United States alone. Esports, by comparison, is worth barely a billion worldwide. Do me a favor and browse the merchandise options of the top LCS teams. Hoodies, t-shirts, and whatever else they have. Do they inspire you to purchase anything? Are you drawn to any of the products as a non-fan?
The answer, if you have any taste, is no. The designs are F-tier, like someone’s alcoholic cousin got ahold of Adobe illustrator and slapped the first 5 designs they could think of on an array of low-quality Hanes hoodies and called it an afternoon. The colors are atrocious, the lettering and designs are straight out of 2005, the pricing is done apparently at random. In fact, it’s so bad that even the players are rarely seen in their merchandise, despite ostensibly being given it for free. Out of the LCS, the only two teams that seem to give a shit would be Team Liquid and 100 Thieves, and even those have issues. Team Liquid is obsessed with their horsehead logo and rarely reimagines or deconstructs it, leading to a lot of sameness in their product line. Yeah, uhhh, gimme a blue and white hoodie with a horsehead logo on the left breast, but make it shiny. There are no product descriptions on their website, the materials are anyone’s guess, and there’s a lot of sameness. Their Marvel line is a clashy déjà vu carousel of slight colorations that leave you feeling underwhelmed. Some of their products reach for greatness and achieve it, while some fall a bit short. At the very least they went with actual models instead of esports pros, most of whom not named Rekkles have radio faces and basement bodies.
100 Thieves gets the design aspects right. Considering it’s a major draw for their high-profile investors, among whom Scooter Braun and Drake are numbered, it would be an embarrassment if their clothing was ugly. However, they fall into the classic trap of modern streetwear: too little for too much. 90% of their designs are “100 Thieves logo, but small in the middle of a plain hoodie.” Their shop is broken and doesn’t even have any products in it, hoping that scarcity of a product from an infant brand will lead to excitement. Asking $105 for a hoodie should be a one-way ticket to the guillotine. They’re permanently “sold out” on their website, but it doesn’t take a hallucinatory level of creativity to realize they’re probably directly posting their merchandise directly on StockX for $200 to sell the scarcity narrative, rather than move product. Their designs are B tier, fairly good without much creativity or newness, but their availability is a joke and any competent company should be able to eat their lunch.
How then do you fix these problems? There’s an easy three-pronged approach that will funnel an esports team directly to success. Following these three steps will set your esports company ahead of the others in terms of monetization and merchandising and set you on the path to getting a cut of an industry that dwarfs your main source of income.
1. Take the Pokemon approach. Make most designs easily available, with a rotating stock of rare designs available only in person, at events, or at certain times of the year. This allows you to double-dip on constant sales while drawing in hardcore fans intent on collecting every piece.
2. Hire actual designers and models. Let the professionals do their job. Excellent, groundbreaking designs that don’t look like a second attempt in illustrator will sell well. Go beyond LOGO — TEAM NAME on the right breast or center of the sleeve. Invest in high quality materials that don’t look childish or are too quickly associated with esports. Revamp the image. Don’t make something gamers would want to wear. Make something you can see a skateboarder wearing, or a bodybuilder, or a professional snowboarder. If you make clothes they want to wear, they will wear them, and then provide free advertising.
3. Make apparel a major part of the business. Esports companies can’t survive on angel investing and venture debt forever. Everyone has to wear clothes. Making an esports company a successful brand in and of itself is a path to success as it future-proofs the company against the inevitability of game deprecation. Basically, if your keystone esport gets Starcrafted or Heroes of the Stormed, you’ll weather it until you can essay into a new esport.
IKEA isn’t a food company, but their restaurant is famous for cheap, good food. Some people who go into IKEA for a snack buy furniture, and vice versa. It’s a symbiotic business that helps sustain the other while providing a clear corporate identity for IKEA. Thrasher is a magazine that accidentally launched a successful clothing brand that’s now more popular than the magazine. This strategy is a form of catamaran business, where two sides sustain the organization as a whole. It’s high time esports companies stop treating apparel like an afterthought and start using it to pull down real money.
