Developing eSports in Sweden

by Nafiz Choudhury

Original article on zonerank.com / page 2

When I talk to gamers around about the eSports scene in Sweden, many take it for granted that just because there are so many professional players and teams living in Sweden, the community and scene are well established. Well here is the hard truth: It isn’t as developed as one would think!

Sweden has basically no big gaming organization except for Ninjas in Pyjamas. Nor are there any good events with a decent amount of prize money to which teams from other countries come to attend.

I had the chance of interviewing some of the top organizers and finest gaming journalists in Sweden to ask them for their thoughts and opinions about the current eSports situation in Sweden.

Filip “Flpee” Hansson: Co-founder of the well known and established website Fragbite. Fragbite are known for their great coverage in spite of writing mainly in Swedish. Together with his crew they covered most of the big events last year and were nominated as the best international coverage site in eSports Awards.

Tomas “greykarn” Hermansson: A former top player who now focuses on journalism and runs Rakaka, a news/gossip site. He’s worked with several projects in his past and founded the first eSports Magazine in Sweden – NOOB Magazine.

Daniel “Nostra” Thornell: Has been involved in gaming for the past eight years and have worked on a lot of projects in Sweden and Scandinavia. Former owner of Counter-Strike and founder of ESNation and Nordichardware. He is also deeply involved in one of the most known LAN events in Sweden, Rendezvous. A few months ago he was hired as Content Manager at mYm.

Vasili “Individ” Rikardsson: Owner and founder of Begrip-Gaming, which is one of the oldest gaming organizations in Sweden. Has been involved in gaming for several years, and a few years ago he managed to add Subway as a sponsor to his organization.

Daniel “dREk” Abdiu: Currently the front figure of Swedish National League and an eSport association in Sweden. In the past he has worked for CPL during their world tour and mainly with the stops in Sweden and UK.

One of the biggest factors in a well developed eSports country is the events, and that is something Sweden has been lacking on for the past years. Many LAN events have tried handing out huge cash prizes but almost all of them have failed. Today the three biggest and most known LAN events in Sweden are DreamHack, Rendezvous and KrangParty. DH is the current world Guinness record holder for biggest LAN event and hosts two events a year. At their latest event they handed out approximatively 4500€ in the Counter-Strike 1.6 tournament. Rendezvous takes place four or five times a year with its main attraction being CS 1.6 tournament where they usually hand out approximately 2200€ to the winners. KrangParty is a LAN event hosted up north in Sweden once a year and hands out approximatively 3300€ in its CS1.6tournament.

You would think that this is a lot of prize money but frankly the top teams probably disagree, because they never attend these tournaments. According to many top teams these prize purses aren’t enough to drag out the spark in the teams, and I’m guessing that the prize money doesn’t cover the costs to attend the event, with full accommodation (food, travel, hotel etc).

Lack of events with a decent amount of prize money is a huge problem in Sweden despite having top eSports players in almost every game out there. But what are the main reasons for lack of top events in Sweden?

Flpee: E-sport in Sweden is not very well developed in terms of public acceptance and recognition of the sport. Therefore the few people who try to run e-sport events in Sweden have much greater obstacles to cross when approaching sponsors and the likes than those who work in the bigger e-sport markets, such as Korea and Germany.

greykarn: Good question. We had SEL, maybe the greatest eSports league of all times. The only one I can see breaking SEL’s true sports structure is this new CGS league. However it looks more like a copy of NHL, which means, professionals only. I think the people involved have pretty big dreams but not enough routine in the eSports scene.

A lot of people have tried to arrange LAN-parties in Sweden with pretty good prize money (around 100 000 SEK – €11,000). But almost everyone screwed up and the players that won the tournaments didn’t get any money. I think people are tired of Dreamhack-wannabes and "traditional LAN’s", they want something new. The only event that we actually have in Sweden several times per year is Nostra’s old traditional Rendezvous, 300-400 dedicated gamers and always good tournaments.

Nostra: First of all I think it’s too expensive to build up that kind of event in Sweden. As you know many people have tried it before in Sweden and failed. The costs are too high. A couple of years ago everybody tried to make big events with high prize money but it failed (big-time). Most of the companies that tried it went under and so on. The other thing is that we don’t have people that are engaged that much to do this kind of thing. It’s too much work for a lousy profit and maybe Swedish people think about "money making" instead of making a good eSport event to help the sport.

Individ: Sweden has many good players but very few professional teams. That makes the idea of a national league quite unstable. Though I think that time has come to learn from previous mistakes and launch something similar to SEL (Swedish Esport League). I really like the layout of NPCL (Russian Professional Cybersport League) and we in Sweden should get some inspiration from it.

I think there are three major reasons why there aren’t so many major events in Sweden. The first reason is that: Sweden is a small country and for sponsors it's mostly about numbers. The second reason is that companies have been scared away after previous setbacks, (Optihack, Nollelva, and Rixhack) just to name a few. And last but not least: kids with big dreams but little knowledge who are thinking of a short-term profit.

dREk: First of all it is important to say that one can’t compare Sweden events (SNL, Wonderbase) with other international events (WSVG, ESWC) and their prize money. Sweden is also not a big country, Germany for example is 10 times bigger which makes it a bit harder for higher prize money since there is less people for sponsors to market their products to and less people to participate in leagues and tournaments. So in Sweden I would say that an event with 50 000 SEK in prize money is an event with high prize money.

Another crucial factor is that the majority of the players in Sweden think that everything is for free and therefore in my opinion they do not treat gaming as a sport. In order to make E-Sport better in Sweden with better events and leagues they have to understand that a registration fee is necessary to build-up the administrative part around the tournament or league and that will also help to increase the prize money in the end. Take soccer for example, everyone pays a fee both to the team you are playing in and to the tournaments that you participate in or the soccer association. In Sweden players think that you should not pay for any of these, many think that it should be “free” to play in a team instead of investing a small sum each that is used for the team and pay registration fees to tournaments to have larger prize sums and better arranged tournaments.

Let’s take a look on what CPL and ESWC had for their CS tournaments last year. ESWC was kind enough to hand out US 160,000$ at their event last summer and CPL handed out US 150,000$ just a few weeks ago at their CPL Winter event. You would now say that both have been established for many years but isn't DreamHack the same? Dreamhack has been running for more than 10 years now… isn’t it surprising then, they only hand out 4500€ in prize money?! So what needs to be changed in order to increase the amount of prize money?

Flpee: A wider acceptance of e-sports and a more positive attitude towards hardcore gaming in general among the public, primarily in the youth segment. This can be done with for example continued media coverage.

greykarn: As I said, new innovative ways of building up an event. Take a look at Rock Band Booking Agency, be inspired of an Ice Hockey event. Because, I tell you, it isn’t working trying to make another Dreamhack or CPL. Try something new and don’t get stuck in the traditional thinking (1. Get the people masses 2. Give exposure to sponsors 3. Get money), it’s just stupid. I don’t want to give away too many examples, but to get high prize money you will need a solid base of media partnerships including TV-coverage. In the end it’s always up to the organizer, what goals you have and how much time and money you can invest in an event. Almost everything is possible.

Nostra: I think people have to unite more in Sweden. As it is now everybody more or less hates each other when it comes to LAN/esport sites. We have to work together and not against each other if we want esport to evolve in Sweden. I think that is the main thing honestly.

Individ: The sponsors must feel that they are going to get a good deal whilst investing in new events. If they do it's a win/win situation. Therefore a bigger focus is needed on the media so you can reach out to a broader audience.

dREk: Players need to be more open-minded and welcome new organizations and tournaments a lot more than they do today and realize that if we want this to grow everyone needs to contribute with something. You hear players complain all the time about the Swedish scene is missing something but when the opportunity comes no one takes it instead they are complaining about a certain issue or think that this organisation only do it for the money etc.

Having media attention would help to increase the prize money but that will not happen in a bigger scale until the players are ready to support the organisations and are ready to invest their own money into the sport.

The prize money handed out at Swedish event doesn’t seem to attract the best to attend but qualifiers to CPL, WSVG and ESWC however has that affect on elite. The teams practise lots and lots of hours to be able to qualify to these big events despite the fact that there are no cash prizes involved, usually. But why host these qualifiers at DreamHack, which already has approx. 5000-8000, great media coverage and lots of sponsors, instead of hosting them independently at different locations? Because the players would attend the qualifiers anyway, tickets to big events are basically eye candy for them. So why not take the opportunity to make these qualifiers huge independent events focusing on spectators? Is hosting these qualifiers at DreamHack any good?

Flpee: I believe having the qualifiers at Dreamhack is actually a good thing, since Dreamhack always draws in a lot of media attention and has a huge amount of potential spectators already on site. However, the qualities of the event setups haven’t really matched the quality of the teams so far. But I don't necessarily think the organizers are at fault, because you can't expect grand events when there's not an audience to support them, which is why there are pretty much no Swedish events that can stand comparison with the international events. We'll just have to wait for the e-sport market in Sweden to evolve.

greykarn: It’s sad. Dreamhack should make own tournaments with better prize money. It would make the global Dreamhack presence even greater and that kind of branding is really the next thing Dreamhack needs to do.

Personally, I believe all the Swedish qualifiers (CPL, ESWC) have ended up at Dreamhack because of the Swedish license rights owners really want to give their global event a good face. It looks good on the yearly report to the ESWC administration to say that we made the qualifier at Worlds Biggest LAN-party.

Nostra: My opinion about that have been up and down for several reasons like huge delays, really bad playing area, not spectator friendly, poor organized and so on. I think most of the bad things come with the lack of money or that the organisers of the qualifiers want to earn too much money and saves too much on expenses. But it’s a good idea though to have it at Dreamhack because of the huge amount of people and companies that are present. It’s also a huge media coverage by Swedish television, newspapers etc.

Individ: Dreamhack is the biggest LAN event here in Sweden and as far as I know also a profitable one. So I think it's a good choice.

dREk: Dreamhack is a great LAN event with plenty activities for casual gamers. However, in my opinion the “big” events do not get the attention that they deserve. I am not saying that the results and score get unnoticed. in fact, that is mentioned on every E-Sport site around the world. What they do not get is the attention from the people attending Dreamhack and that is mainly because most of the attendees are not there for spectating games, they are there to meet and play games with their friends.

Sometimes it feels like those “big” events just disappear in all the other activities around Dreamhack and the focus towards the tournaments is lost. Having more focus towards each event would benefit the E-Sport in the long run and then maybe it would be better to have it on another place and date and not at the same time as Dreamhack.

Dreamhack just got new owners so hopefully they might do some changes to this, putting a different focus on the “big” events. We just have to wait and see but I doubt that they would put the “big” events outside Dreamhack, at least not in the near future.

This will affect the Swedish scene and opportunities in the future for sure. Unfortunately, the Swedish media that was there did not get a good picture of what E-Sport has to offer in Sweden. Hopefully, this will change in the near future and get better support from the players.

But not long ago ESL entered the Swedish market and hosted their first event in Sweden. The Intel Friday Night Game was for the first time tested in a country outside of Germany, and they probably chose Sweden because the amount of top players that actually live here. I went therewith three of my friends and we all liked it: good venue, nice staff, nice booths and great activities...we all even managed to get free shirts, caps and one cool bag. But this was apparently not enough for the gamers in Sweden because only a few paying spectators showed up. Is the disappointingly low amount of spectators at iFNG somehow proof of lack of interest towards gaming?

Flpee: The Swedish community is not used to big e-sport events. At previous events in Stockholm the teams have mostly been sitting at Internet cafes with quite poor spectating conditions. I believe the community simply did not imagine the event to be so accommodating to the spectators, and that's why so few showed up. Hopefully there will be another Intel Friday Night Game in Stockholm and the community will be ready for it by then.

greykarn: There’s no culture of being a spectator of an eSports event. To be honest, the Swedish eSports Scene likes to hang around on Fragbite, speak with people on Ventrilo. They never meet and play scrims in CS and Dota. 9 of 10 think its more fun to hang in front of IRC during a Friday night than go out clubbing with friends.

I was there, at the Intel Friday Night Game, and I can’t say there are many other ways of making it better. I loved the organisation, the TV-programming, set-up and everything. I only missed some beers. To be honest I don’t have a good answer on this question.

Nostra: Of course that's really bad. Honestly I don't know who was responsible for the advertising etc. But he must have done a lousy work. If that event was in my hometown I and my friends would have been 20-30 people there. And this one was in our capital, Stockholm. Huge loss for the eSport community but I think we have to blame the responsible for media/advertising/marketing for that big failure.

Individ: It could be due to a weak marketing campaign prior to the event. Also for some reason, here in Sweden, it's still considered that you are a nerd if you are cheering for a counter strike team. I suppose watching a football match is considered cooler plus you could get a bonus and beat each other senseless after the game.

They need to host more online tournaments, leagues and establish themselves in other ways. For e.g. something similar to what CEVO has today wouldbe a great choice of path. A league with the top teams that plays against each other for weeks and in the end the top4 in the league and to finish it all they host LANFinals. The Swedish National League was founded but never got its breakthrough in Swedish eSports because they need money and they tried to get it from the players that participate and as I said, Swedes don’t want to pay for something they don’t know about.

dREk: I believe that there are several reasons that so few spectators showed up. One thing is the way they promoted it, a lot of people that I talked to did not know about it. Other reason is that it was more or less the first time something like this was presented in Sweden. Since it was broadcasted over the Internet and on TV many Swedish players decided to stay home and watch it instead of seeing it live, which is a shame. Finally, it was up to the Swedish players to actually go there and support the E-Sport by paying a small fee of 20 SEK (~2€).

Sponsors and investors seem to be a big factor in gaming these days, just look at CPL. As soon as CPL lost Intel and NVIDIA they rushed themselves on adding AMD and ATi along with other companies as sponsors. But look at the list of DreamHack’s sponsors: ZyXel, Telia (one of the telecom companies in Sweden), Antec, Asus, Abit & Sennheiser. That should be more than enough to provide at least 10000€ in a CS1.6 tournament, but it doesn’t strangely enough (according to some reports DreamHack made a profit of 155000 US dollars of which almost $100000 was salaries to the board of directors, being the two owners.) But the sponsors doesn’t provide with a decent amount of prize money but why? If they can sponsor CPL and ESWC-Why not any Swedish events? Is it due to lack of interest by gamers or for lack of exposure in the main stream media?

Flpee: I actually don't know if Swedes do show a lack of interest towards companies that sponsor events. My opinion is that the problem lies elsewhere, in the poor recognition of the sport and the often pessimistic attitude towards gaming in the media.

greykarn: Some eSports sponsorships are successful some of them aren’t.

Nostra: I don’t think so. Just look at Dreamhack. They have been more and more expensive but there are more sponsors and exhibitions every time. When it comes to Dreamhack I think most of the companies are satisfied.

Individ: I don't think that Swedes show lack of interest. What is needed however is more exposure from the media. This is a key factor.

dREk: Well, I do not think that Swedes show lack of interest towards the companies that makes investments into events. I do, however, think that the Swedes need to show their interest a little bit more when it comes to supporting the events. So in that case I believe that the companies that are actually willing to invest into this are getting the attention they deserve. Everyone knows which company those are behind WSVG, ESWC, SNL and what kinds of products they have etc. The problem is that the event organizers are not getting the attention they deserve which of course makes it harder to find more and new partners for their events or leagues.

Well that’s all about the events lets move on the Swedish organizations that focus on teams and players. For a time now I’ve seen people on several global communities that, for a strange reason, believe that Fnatic and SK-Gaming are Swedish organizations because of their focus on Swedish players. So here are some facts, Fnatic Team is a company which is registered in Australia but have offices in the Netherlands and UK as well. SK-Gaming is a registered company in Germany with most parts of its management living in Germany.

The only major organization in Sweden is today Ninjas in Pyjamas, an almost 100% Swedish organization registered as a company in Sweden, with a Swedish CEO and a Swedish CS1.6 team. But why is that? Why only ONE? Why is there only ONE when Sweden has won 7 CPL tournaments the past years, placed second at both ESWC and WCG in CS1.6 this year, won many events in Quake4 the past year and has several top players in WC3 and many other games? What are the reasons for the fact that Sweden only has NiP?

Flpee: Non-Swedish organizations in markets bigger than Sweden simply got the head start, and have managed to acquire most of the Swedish talent and in time established themselves, so there's not really that much room for Swedish organizations to move into. Of course the fact that e-sports has developed much further in for example Germany also plays a role in it.

greykarn: The German and International organisations stole our talents, with hiring Swedish GM's to get the best players. The Swedish eSports Scene doesn’t have enough good leaders and serious entrepreneurs. The one's that try to make eSports big are too few and got to much projects so they can’t focus on everything to 100 percent.

Last but not least, I think its easier to like "some" international teams to have off-shore bank accounts, paying their players black-money in salaries and prize money while starting up a real business and company in Sweden takes a lot of time and costs very much money.

Nostra: The reason is of course that we have those big organisations established since ages in Europe like MYM, SK, Fnatic and more that have been using Swedish players. Sweden was pretty late with trying to build up eSport communities around players/clans and that’s probably it. It’s hard to compete with those giants!

Individ: It's very expensive and hard to have a small company here in Sweden and I also guess that investors don't find it profitable to invest in an eSport team.

dREk: The reason for this is due to the situation in Sweden at the moment. Having a professional team takes time, effort and money. The only way you can do this professionally is by having a company behind the team. As soon as a new team or organization starts a company in Sweden every player believes that they do it for the money and that the “managers” should earn a lot of money on the team and players. This is of course not always true, there are many persons doing it for the love of the sport but has to organize things legally and easier handle contracts with players and companies. This attitude makes it harder for Swedish people to actually want to start up new professional teams or organizations in Sweden.

For example Fragbite, one of Sweden’s biggest community sites, they are a company and “earn” money but they do it for their community by providing top news and not so much for the money. Why should this not be possible for teams or other organizations as well?

Swedish organizations, both teams and events, also have hard time finding decent sponsors. For eg. the smaller Swedish teams at best get BNC deals, Web packages, small Internet Café deals etc. But never do we see huge deals with teams. And when it comes to events its pretty much the same, local deals with local companies. No Intel, no AMD/ATi, no NVIDIA. What could something like that depend on?

Flpee: I would guess the lack of major Swedish organizations and events that we discussed earlier is what's preventing the big sponsors from entering the Swedish market. There are simply not that many organizations in Sweden who deserve a big name sponsorship at the moment.

greykarn: There are no regional offices for Intel and those hardware companies in Sweden, and they rather spend on a European based organisation like Fnatic that will make exposure in Sweden anyhow. Once again, Sweden misses good eSports leaders. There's too few.

But, remember, for example the local Samsung office have sponsored the Swedish eSports Scene with millions during the years. We first got a professional league with 100 00 SEK in prize money every month and probably a multi-million yearly budget, and then they have paid the Nordic Qualifiers to World Cyber Games for four years.

Nostra: It’s not impossible to get good and famous sponsors to Swedish teams but you have to offer them good things back...

Individ: Sweden has only a population of 9 million. This is tiny in comparison to other competing countries.

dREk: Hard to say, I would say that some of the bigger companies in Sweden has not yet realised what big opportunity this is for them. This will come with time when E-Sport gets more attention in Sweden and when more leagues like SNL grows.

So what is the conclusion of all this? What approach does the Swedish scene need take in order to develop into an eSports country that isn’t just famous for its pro gamers and teams and instead famous for its amazing events and decent organizations that can provide teams and players with money?

Flpee: A greater acceptance of e-sports and a better attitude towards hardcore gaming among the general public through professional media coverage. If that happens, the business opportunities will open up and the rest will pretty much work itself out, I believe.

greykarn: Something like SEL (Swedish eSports League) needs to come back and we need more individuals that are good leaders and entrepreneurs.

Nostra: Unity!

Individ: The companies need to know, that they are getting their money worth whilst investing in Swedish events and Swedish teams.

dREk: After my answers it might sound as Sweden is not good at all when it comes to E-Sport but compared to other countries Sweden is a good E-Sports country but we can of course be better.

First of all, E-Sports players should support new teams and organizations a lot more. Players and managers should also try to start more “solid” teams and have more long-term goals and not give up after one tournament. This is a key to success in the long run. Players should also be willing to sacrifice a bit of their own money to help E-Sport grow. Finally, Organizations should become more professional and also dedicate more time to explain to companies what E-Sport is and how they can benefit from it.

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