Carlos ‘Ocelote’ Rodríguez is one of the great figures of esports in Spain. At 28 (he was born in Madrid in 1990), he has been linked to this industry for half his life and has not stopped adding successes, neither as a player – “I was the best in the world”, he assures – nor as the founder of one of the most important in the world, G2 Esports.
This year, heir to the old EU LCS. But before the confrontation, he spoke to elEconomista.es, to talk about his beginnings, his learning and his goals for the future, both for himself and for G2, in addition to “sending a message of thanks to the entire army of G2 samurai” .
You were one of the best players in the world, and then you take the leap and become a team owner. How was that process?
I started playing World of Warcraft competitively when I was 14 years old, during four years I became the best player in the world, I created my own brand, OceloteWorld, and people started to follow me. Then I switched to League of Legends, where I also became one of the best players in the world, and where I spent five years. In total, there are nine years in a row competing, also in two different games, which taught me three skills that later have been very important in managing my business:
1. Form teams that win, and also knowing which games are going to be relevant tomorrow.
2. Create a powerful brand, as I demonstrated first with OceloteWorld and now with G2 Esports, thanks to the fact that I understand very well how to generate content, how digital platforms work, how to speak the language of millennials and post-millennials… I it’s pretty easy to build a company that captures a large fan base.
3. Generate ‘brand partnerships’, sponsorships with other brands, advanced, creative and original, which allows us to be one of the teams worldwide that renews the most sponsorships. This achievement is also thanks to the great effort of the marketing team.
In my last year as a player I decided to create an esports team, not only because my skills were perfect to lead an organization in this sector, but also because I understood that if I did my job in an exceptional way, my brand, or my brands, would achieve a great number of fans who would spend 20 or 30 years in the world’s top video game competition.
Do you see yourself dedicating your whole life to esports?
Don’t know. I really like the entertainment industry, I am very creative, although not too structured -laughs-, and I always have plans about content, about brand management… skills that would allow me to do many things. But I don’t know what I’m going to be doing in 20 or 30 years, but right now esports are what I’m best at, something that I understand very well and with which I also have a great time. My job is the most fun I know!
Do you already consider yourself famous?
No. Or not so much if I compare it with what I want to achieve.
You have been dedicated to this sector for 14 years. How has it evolved in this time?
In the first event I participated in there were 12 people following the game. A few weeks ago, in the confrontation between G2 and RNG, there were 160 million viewers from all over the world. It is a big difference! But because I remember very well those times when we only had 12 viewers, I gain a better understanding of the dynamics of the industry. Does a game that is succeeding now have a future? Is a team the right one to enter a competition or have they won a couple of tournaments with no vision of the future? These are questions we often ask ourselves, and understanding where the esports industry began allows us to find better answers.
What role do you currently play in G2? Are you still doing the same as the first day?
Now we are many more employees, and my role in the organization has evolved. I dedicate a lot of time to the relationship with investors and sponsors, explaining our plans, our strategies… Then I also take care of the product part, brand management, marketing, merchandising… And the rest I dedicate most of my time to the search for competitive success and to locate the games that will be most relevant tomorrow, to invest in them at the right time, before it becomes too expensive.
Then there is Peter -Peter Mucha-, an executive who has gone through Adidas, Activision Blizzard, or Universal Music, among others, who arrived at G2 in June and is in charge of administration, finance, sales…
Regarding the League of Legends Worlds, what is your assessment of the competition?
No one expected G2 to finish in the top three or four of the World Cup, except for us, who were confident of winning the tournament. The loss in the EU LCS, not making it to the finals for the first time, was a huge pain in the ass. This is the sport: you have a bad day and say goodbye to the tournament. But since that defeat we set out to win the regional finals that gave us the last place in the World Cups and then have a great World Cup. And we have been sad, because we really believed that we had the best team and that we could win. But hey, we will do it in 2019.
What repercussion does the result in the World Cup have for G2? At the level of income, business opportunities, followers, impact…
G2 teams win in quite a few relevant games. A victory in a tournament allows to increase the number of fans, which translates into a greater reach, and in turn into a higher rate for the companies that sponsor the club. And a good result in a tournament as important as the LoL World Cup allows us to further increase the fan base, that the videos published achieve more visits, that there are more followers on social networks…
And even though you always want to win, what makes G2 special is that, even though they are the most competitively successful team in Europe, along with Fnatic, they have such an incredible marketing team that even at events that aren’t going too well we manage to win. win fans and increase the fan base that we sell to brands.
Does your result, and that of Fnatic, confirm Europe as a world power in esports? Or are we still far from Asia?
Europe is very good right now, and I insist that G2 should have won the World Cup. But we had terrible semifinals, like after Fnatic the final, but we should have won the World Cup. And next year we will achieve it.
Europe already has some of the best players in the world. Maybe Invictus Gaming, the Chinese team that won the World Cup, has some players that may be better, but not much better than ours. The important thing now is to prevent those players from being “robbed”.
What plans do you have now for the future?
Our goal for 2019 is to win the League of Legends World Cup, increase our fan base and expand into other games, while always keeping LoL as the jewel in the crown, being esports today. In addition, our goal this year is to help the European LoL League become the best in the world, both in terms of visibility, rivalry and entertainment… It’s going to be an incredible competition.
And in 18 to 24 months we want G2 to become the most valued esports organization in the world. Forbes already recognized us a few weeks ago as one of the biggest clubs in the world.
What does it mean for G2 to be recognized by Forbes as one of the world’s largest esports organizations? Do the data offered by the magazine agree with reality?
The data is quite reliable, especially in relation to valuation, according to the data to which I have access. At the income level, the Forbes report does lack precision.
But the classification makes us feel very proud of the work we have done in these three and a half or four years. Who is not excited to create a company valued at more than 100 million euros in just three or four years? But the reality is that we have not done anything yet, and we still have a lot to do. Our goal is for G2 to achieve a $1 billion valuation in four to six years. And I insist, in 18 or 24 months we are going to be the most valued team in the world.
What have been the keys to achieving a team valued at more than 100 million in just four years?
Ambition, empathy and resilience are our three great values that have led us to achieve success.
In the last few months you have expanded into new games. What is the process you follow to make these jumps? What aspects do you take into account?
My professional experience for nine years has given me insights into game mechanics and design that help me identify which games will be most relevant for tomorrow. If we add empathy and the fact of being part of the community to this knowledge, it allows us to discover, quite correctly, what the audience wants.
When you’re part of the community and you listen to it, you notice what people are looking for, what are the complaints about current games… you only do that with empathy and being part of the community and understanding it.
For example, we already knew that Fornite or Rocket League were going to be as big as they are now when only 5,000 people played them.
But what is the exact moment to enter? Why, for example, did you not bet on Fortnite before?
We didn’t get into Fortnite before because when the game is very new you don’t know who the best players in the world are. And our brand strategy calls for the best in the world, not the most entertaining. And you need to wait for the best in the world to show up. And we have needed time to find those people.
But, also, with Fornite we wanted to do something more based on entertainment. We believe that it is a game to entertain more than to compete. We were looking to launch a unique project that had not been done before: a talent show, a kind of Fortnite X Factor. It’s called ‘Making the Squad’, it’s already being recorded, and I think people are going to love it. It will surely be broadcast on television. Some of the sponsors are Universal Music, paysafcard or Logitech, very good ‘partners’ that allow us to be quite ambitious with the project.
Is it so important to have the best players and win?
For our brand strategy, yes. In addition, this way I know that I can get the best professionals even at a better price. Because they want to play for me, because they know that they are going to have good teammates that are going to help them win. In an industry, that of esports, in which the prizes are huge compared to the salaries of the players, which makes the players want to win and they will go to those organizations in which they earn the most
That gives us a very, very good competitive advantage, since all the players know that everything we do is for and to win, and at the same time to entertain. I don’t think there is any other organization that wins as regularly as G2 and that also entertains its fans so much, with projects like Fortnite, for example.
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