Listen to Decoder, a show hosted by The Verges Nilay Patel about big ideas and other problems. We have a really great and very fast-growing direct sponsorship line. Something you may not know about me is that Im also a private-equity turnaround-trained, martial-arts and mountaineering-molded innovative leader with a penchant for uncompromising results through ethical and culturally impactful means. Who do we partner with, and why? Get notification with the latest net worth updates for free. The NFL is not doing that, rIght? Its in alignment to our league partners, like what are they trying to achieve and where are goals that we can co-help together, as well as what sticks to my shareholders values, my investors values, and our corporate strategy. Jokes on me, I was told about two weeks before the investment closed, converting to more of an acquisition, I should be rolling in to help kind of spearhead the business and really figure out the space of esports, as it had not been well figured out, especially when I had entered two years ago. Youre running a startup. Properties. We sell those rights. But as I kept going through life, careers in gaming were not a thing. And thats our biggest revenue stream. So we really focused on bringing peripheral revenue streams into the business to support what we do but that also dont deprecate from the core product of who we are. So given all of that, what is your decision-making framework, and how has it evolved over the two years youve been at Evil Genius? LaPointe Jameson joined Evil Geniuses as CEO back in 2019. Content Creator . Lets talk about your diversity and inclusion efforts here. Nicole LaPointe Jameson (Evil Geniuses CEO) on Twitter: Last owner's meeting @TSMReginald complimented 100T as the only non-shitty new LCS team. And building a playbook of how even my team members at EG can operate, understanding, okay, what lanes do we play in and what lanes do we not? NICOLE LAPOINTE JAMESON. 2,546 followers. Greenwich native Nicole LaPointe Jameson is one of the youngest women of color to lead an esports organization. Owning the Lakers is just a lucrative proposition because the Lakers play basketball, and people buy tickets, and youll sell the rights, and you can just do it that way. Some are like, Hey, I used to be a pro Actually, I can give a good example; we have this one player, Ricki Ortiz, she used to be one of the best Street Fighter players in the world and now shes a content creator. And he has this line in there, which I think is very funny I dont know if its true. You cant be all things to all people. My differences made me nervous, but since I had spent so many months in the due diligence process with the internal EG team, I felt like I had already been working with them. Our first #valorant international LAN started with a ! Nicole LaPointe Jameson, the 26-year-old chief executive of Evil Geniuses, doesn't come from esports. Millions of dollars to buy that slot. And why do people become fans of sports teams that you traditionally see on traditional sports broadcasts? Nicole LaPointe Jameson (born April 11, 1994) [1] is an American businesswoman currently serving as the CEO of esports organization Evil Geniuses . While it definitely has some cons in terms of exposure, Im hopeful Greenwich is improving and supporting different pathways, and more international exposure, she said. So we think of the fans and the community quite a bit. It tends to be May to June and May to June versus Jan to Jan. And COVID has reshuffled quite a bit of traditional sports or athletics or club or intramural budgets into things like esports programming. What are your revenue lines right now and where are they growing? So its not geo-affiliated to a place and then you end up chasing after a team of kids who live in a house in the Philippines. I left PEAK6, rolled into Evil Geniuses, and havent looked back since. And then, in particular with sports, sports are traditionally very local. I am actively discussing the future of women in tech and have participated in conversations around these topics with organizations like the Female Quotient, Poker Power, and Shondaland. Those are the types of decisions we make beyond what is the money. Manchester Grand Hyatt. Or maybe you do, in the lab, I dont know. Its a bit more junior, where every person really has a voice and matters, still, in esports. Everyone thinks Supreme is the business, and its not the business. I was from this private equity firm, Im a woman, and Im a person of color. Put your money where your mouth is, and thats fine. Its a fantastic organization focused on creating and maintaining an inclusive hub for women in the gaming space. #EVILEXHIBITED https://t.co/3RMEoUcqGQ. Well, so this is something I think about a lot, especially in the creator ecosystem, which we pay a lot of attention to; its new, but the cultural product its making is maybe not new, right? Under 30 class of 2019. view profile. And its hard because I have a lot of people at EG who intrinsically, deeply, deeply care and theyre like, Well, we have a platform, lets say something. So weve been able to pull in things using our core athletics platforms to really help self-sustain the business in the past two years to keep the esports product alive but keep the lights on at the same time. Like, you dont have competitive Candy Crush teams. Weve made decisions that we knew, well, this might not resonate with the fans, but we know we have to do this. And how do we be consistent globally, rather than just locally, is important. And so weve really pushed for organic, non-quota, non-targeted hiring through heres what EG is: we offer maternity and paternity leave, we offer college tuition stipends when you leave our rosters, we offer a lot of things that help bring other people. Normally the ad cost for an Instagram ad post is based on the number of followers on the account. So for example, pushing into all these initiatives with colleges and bringing in the next leaders of esports. Following a spike in interest during the pandemic, esports is projected to nearly double in revenue by 2022. We recently entered a new title called Valorant. Im almost ashamed of a lot of the things weve had to do that were firsts in the industry. That even if youd gone and brokered your own deals, that company would get a cut. Greenwich native found a social escape in gaming. Is that just a bad business idea? And Im actually very blessed that I have investors that very much are aligned with the longer-term vision, even when short-term cash is problematic. And so Im just assuming theyre full-time employees, they have 401(k) and health benefits. "We are lucky to have an authentic position in the women's esports space," Evil Geniuses CEO Nicole LaPointe Jameson said in an interview with The Washington Post. See, this is why youre in charge. Right. Many shows depict an awkward tension when a suit from the firm suddenly takes over a growing company. Second of all, these are the peripheral business arms we then use to support. Some of them are like, I really love this game. Its why were here, to be competitive, but it wasnt profitable. I can personally say, even as a team owner, more broad-facing incumbent providers in the agency, the sports infrastructure, even like sports science and wellness, please enter the space. See you again soon, Brazil! This is a carousel. We all compete under one banner. Retracing the path of controversial Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe includes many stops in Connecticut. We're an inspiring, informative, and motivating daily updateall wrapped up in a quick, fun-to-read email. And if you include mobile gaming, more people play games than not. It would be unrealistic for us to cut out, as a gaming company, China, for example, as a country, because half of developers in the world are owned partially by a Chinese company; our fans are there. I think a very interesting today case study is Fortnite, right? [Due to an Achilles injury,] I was immobile for a lot of my childhood, so gaming was my social connection. Why? @katrinaxian @Oatymeals @LoLKudo @Timkiro @Inspiredlol @Ssumday @VulcanLoL @VictorHuang ALSO Katrina you look so lovely!! So that agency roster scouting play, I think, is an untapped area we might want to tap into. You make a lot of money owning the Lakers, maybe you sell concessions, you sell tickets, you have all these ancillary things around the Lakers. What should people be looking for? What are resources you have to help if you ever feel uncertain, as well as even staff and management crisis and de-escalation training. We like being punchy, bold, and authentic voices, and create a lot of content and programs beyond just our athletics, like collegiate and education programs, data and analytics programs, and spicy engaging content to excite and inspire our people. This is good, its like being in a meeting with you. Thats amazing. So, okay, its a big number. Ive asked you a lot about places youre increasing costs. One thing we love about Riot and them franchising League of Legends is even though you might look at that price tag of a franchise medallion and go, Holy crap, who would spend that money on this? What it shows is, though, we have a voice at the table and how the league is constructed and supported. For our players, only 30 percent are represented by agents. A new podcast from The Verge about big ideas and other problems. So we were able to activate and support brands, bringing their awareness to different spaces through what we offer in activations. It also has a team of professional esports players who are among the best in the world, she said. But its not supported by the magnitude of the revenue with league revenue share like youd find in traditional sports today. In her first year, she's made significant moves to pull the team back to relevancy, primarily by re-entering two of the top esports, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and League of Legends. Right. But that level of talent brings challenges. Nicole LaPointe Jameson. This is something we hear from every entertainment company, again, to make the comparison to traditional sports leagues, the NBA keeps crashing into this wall, they cant seem to help themselves. @DrJordantsai @EvilGeniuses *and Nicole's dumb IT bands . Its inherently this de-location. The fandom globally is massive. News 2022 Video 2021 Video Podcast Photo Gallery. Growing up, LaPointe Jameson said she didnt know many kids of color with a similar interest in gaming until she attended Columbia University. League of Legends professional gamers, for the esports organization Evil Geniuses, are pictured at a recent competition. I know its a bad answer, but some developers run their own leagues and then I think you see those tensions pretty clearly, I dont need to call them out. That was definitely one of the scarier elements for me, like, How do I navigate this space? Historically, gaming has been very cliquey. And so that comes from a data decision framework around risk-reward potential, level of effort, and costs, almost like an engineering arm, to ensure that theres the why behind decisions. Maybe more people will play basketball but still, the market for being a professional basketball player is still pretty small. LaPointe Jamesons successes should be an inspiration to Greenwichs youth of today, said her mother, Lise Jameson, who is the executive director of At Home In Greenwich, a human service nonprofit. I dont think its a badly kept secret that a lot of them dont look great on paper from an investment point of view, and EG was a diamond in the rough. Please only use it for a guidance and Nicole LaPointe Jameson's actual income may vary a lot from the dollar amount shown above. Is that true? One of the best parts of how gaming operates is: Were digital, were behind the internet, we have some anonymity, and were relatively global, said LaPointe Jameson, who now lives in Seattle. But one of the things thats true about pro sports the NBA, baseball, and the NFL they tune their product to make it easy to watch, because the market for playing football is actually very small. And so there is a balance, right? Thats a very different legal regime. In a few weeks, Evil Geniuses teams will travel to a tournament in Romania that has a prize pool of $45 million, LaPointe Jameson said. Our players pick half of our charitable donations that we do every year. She worked with several distressed asset businesses for five years before coming across Evil Geniuses, which she described as a "diamond in the rough. At the time, the 25-year-old investor had scant experience running a gaming organization, but since her appointment, the esports. Lets sift through empirically, look at key metrics that we know align in-game, and build a roster from there.. In May of that year, Nicole LaPointe Jameson '16 became the first African-American woman to lead a major esports organization, taking over as CEO of Evil Geniuses. And that, by design, the infrastructure of underfunded esports, where you dont have salary, you dont have benefits, parents with kids are not going to do that job, right? Im looking forward to the soft-focus human interest package before your Like they do at the Olympics. As a lawyer, I can say that. The predominantly male esports industry has a reputation of toxic, harassing and bullying behavior toward women players. CT native named Philadelphia Eagles Defensive Coordinator, Connecticut Snow Tracker: Latest forecast and accumulation, CT lawmaker drops F-bomb during woman's testimony, 'It will take some time': Gov. Does it fit into the matrix of this is what we set out to do? And so again, trying to be thoughtful of how we navigate what we participate in, and why, is important. We are 30 percent people of color, which is also very high for gaming. You came in as kind of an outsider, you had fresh perspective why do you think that was, such that creating a team empirically that ended up mixed-gender, was shocking to people? So from a private equity, distressed-asset turnaround point of view, [it] was very exciting, because heres a very open sandbox that had built and preserved the best elements of what you look for in a business; strong IP, fan affinity, and all of the marketing was all set to go, needed help with business acumen and financial growth. AboutPressCopyrightContact. That sounds very interesting. That sounds like a lot to deal with. And whos paying you guys? "Despite the enormous migration to electronic media, neuroscience research shows that paper-based content and ads offer special advantages in connecting with How comfortable are you with how much of your business requires China? I am classically trained as a technologist and (through trials and errors) molded into a business leader. Im all about the methodology underneath it. Were partnering with universities to build out their esports programming, curriculum, facilities, whatever it is. Some of them leaned into Mixer that didnt turn out so great. You are a woman and a person of color in gaming. Most people play games. The pandemic brought a new class of gamers online for the very first time, and the gaming . Evil Geniuses boasts sponsorships from Monster Energy, Xfinity, AMD and Twitch among others. Nicole Lapointe Jameson is Chief Executive Officer at Peak6 Investments LP. The transition to a network of people who were excited about my changes made it much easier. Some developers have let third parties run their leagues. And heres what they look like, and heres who they are, and lets support them. And that exercise, Im grateful that I had team members and investors and partners that got on board and supported it. More at IMDbPro Contact Info: View agent, publicist, legal on IMDbPro. Do you still game in your free time? You know, from a total volume point of view its probably direct sponsorships. And so very recently, our pipeline in terms of potential has quadrupled, just in the past two months this year. And Im trying to protect the masses of my people at EG. Many people ask about the amount of money Nicole LaPointe Jameson makes from Instagram. One of the questions I have for all of these digital media and entertainment models and obviously, I work in digital media so I think about this a lot but one of the questions that always comes up is it seems like so rarely is the core product itself the money. People love floating. And so its not easy, but its exciting. She puts her focus behind learning everything she can about a subject, Jessica Hammond, chief culture officer at Evil Geniuses, said of LaPointe Jameson. And two good examples ESL and BLAST are two league partners, and they are focused on making a top-of-line broadcast and accessible product. Lets pull API data of the best-ranked players in the world. Was that an avenue of expansion for you? Im the University of Michigan. For veterans of the space, theres a well-deserved chip on their shoulders, and I came in as a triple whammy, right? And so that also breeds a negative culture by people who come in and say, Well, like attracts like. And so weve pushed a lot there to ensure we bring in many different people from many different backgrounds to support and bring true optics of who is a gamer and whos in the gaming space. Its also tough, right, because were global. What are the primary metrics you look at for decisions? 00:00 Nicole thanks so much for being here. She has also stabilized a company that she said was once worth zero dollars but is now valued at $255 million. 385 following. All Rights Reserved. I wouldnt be here if I didnt believe that wont change over time. Seattle, Washington About Nicole LaPointe Jameson In May 2019, LaPointe Jameson took over as CEO of storied but fading esports outfit, Evil Geniuses. For this weeks episode of Decoder, I spoke with Nicole LaPointe Jameson, CEO of esports company Evil Geniuses, to figure out how an esports team makes money, where the industry is headed, and where she sees growth. Its almost a due diligence process in itself to know what developers are supporting the league in a way that helps brands grow. But esports, being a digital platform, also bridges entertainment, so you think of content creators, digital influencers, and all of those revenue models and revenue streams. So heres the next big difference with a traditional sports team. They usually say, Okay, take a coach whos been in the space for a long time. In May 2019, LaPointe Jameson took over as CEO of storied but fading esports outfit, Evil Geniuses. To clarify for the people in the back that didn't catch it the first time @omgitspotter is the first female coach to win an international #VCT series. If you are the best of the best, you have a home here at Evil Geniuses."[13]. But we can do both authentically and well. Let me ask you this, eight to 150 college tuition stipends, better health care, right? Its a spectacle. Evil Geniuses is one of North Americas oldest esports organizations. We were one of the first esports teams to have multilingual content creation. and break down barriers that might have existed, into the fold. I mean it completely makes sense why we're talking about EA Sports in conjunction with this F1 event. How do you balance that, especially as youre growing? In May 2019, she was offered the opportunity to become CEO of Evil Geniuses. So we got her in Japanese Vogue, we got her working with anime partnerships, we got her in an absolute global marketing campaign for inclusivity in the LGBTQ space. I cant leave the private equity realm mentally. Now 27, LaPointe Jameson is the CEO of Evil Geniuses, a major esports organization, where shes shattering stereotypes and creating an inclusive environment. Happy Wednesday! The newly acquired CS:GO team quickly made its presence known by debuting with a championship win at ESL One New York 2019 in Brooklyn's Barclays Center. It shows is, and heres who they are focused on making a broadcast... Like, and I came in as a technologist and ( through trials and errors ) molded into business. Deals, that company would get a cut she said, AMD and Twitch among others a. An untapped area we might want to tap into gaming, more people play games than not latest worth... Of them are like, I really love this game, nicole lapointe jameson salary every person really has a reputation toxic... 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