M. Welcome to another episode of Strictly Business, the podcast where we speak with key leaders across the media business. Today.
I'm Corey Errickson with Variety Intelligence platform. The video game industry has for years undergone consistent growth and experienced a considerable boost and attention during the pandemic, with the entire market reaching nearly one eight billion dollars globally in One executive involved in several sectors of this market and Sophia Lupo, a partner and the head of video Games at United Talent Agency, whereas division represents top global developers, professional E
sports athletes, content creators and live streamers. He's also been involved in negotiating several high profile M and A deals through ut A, So now is as good a time as ever to hear from him about what's continuing to steer the game's market forward. Welcome back to strict Leap Business. We're here with a fair LOOPU, the head of video games at U t A. I would take at things started off with, you know the development side of things at U t A, and you know all these different
game creators and studios you've been able to sign. Has there been anything recent going on there. Well, hey, thanks Corey and thanks for having me UM. I really appreciate the time. Uh. Yeah, Look, we are you know, we're we're we're We're an active group of folks here at U t a UM who oversee our gaming business and we're always on the lookout for developers to represent. We really want to represent the best and most talented group
of developers we can on a global basis. You know, our business is and our client base is really diverse, uh, in global in nature, I can tell you. I think we have almost exactly one client in southern California. UM. Our clients spanned the globe from Boston, Montreal, Tokyo, Copenhagen, and even even South Africa. And so we're always on the lookout to represent really great developers. And you know, one of the areas that we're always focused on is
representing really incredibly young and talented new studios UH. And I'm really happy that we've signed two new studios in that regard in the last few months here UM. One of them is incredibly talented based in Copenhagen. They're called De Guta Fabrick UH, and they made an incredibly wonderful title called Mutatsi one, which was nominated for all the awards in the in the last year or so, and
we're really excited to work with them. So we we were lucky enough to represent a studio called Diama cop based in South Africa, our first studio in that region, who made a wonderful first title called semblance Um, which also is recognized for a ton of awards. So we're really interested, Corey in not just representing sort of the biggest and best names that are sort of household names in the gaming business today. And we do that. We love doing it, obviously, and it's an honor to represent
those folks. It's equally as important to us to make sure that we represent the next wave of creators in space. That's a really good point. I mean, the gaming industry is it's become, you know, an incredibly vast global market. Um new Zoo has it at seventy billion globally as of November of last year. UM So yeah, in terms of signing development studios and creators, what specifically draws you
to them? In terms of the sort of games you're seeing coming from you know, all these different places in the world. What is ut A really looking for? In that regard, well, I think we always look for folks that have unique voices. I mean, I think that's the you know, that's sort of a through line across all of our various divisions and clients that we represent, right, we want to represent people who have unique creative vision and voices that are going to stand out from from
the rest, you know. Um, it's the thing that gets us most passionate about representing these people. Um. You know, we talk about game in my groups. We talked about games all the time, we play games all the time. We talked about the things that inspire us. And that's really sort of been the guiding light. It's as simple as I can put it. Um. You know, we want to represent people that inspire us and that we are
passionate about. Certainly, you know, one of my favorite games of all time is limbo Um made by play Dead based in Copenhagen, and it's it's an honor to represent them, right, It's it's exactly the kind of studio that we're we dream of representing. It's great. Um, you've also signed people from within Hollywood before too. Um. I believe justin Royland some time ago came to you wanting to collaborate on games. Correct. Yeah,
Justin is a longtime client. The agency on the the more traditional television side obviously is the co creator Rick and Mortium and now Solar Opposites, which is incredibly funny. Um And you know, I got a call from Hit from my colleague Matt Rice, who one of our board members met TV Group who who asked me to meet Justin. Uh and I did, and Justin came into my office and was so passionate about games and set down and basically said I want to start my own game development studio.
And after I tried to talk him out of that, um, I realized that he was serious about it, and we put a real plan together and put a plan in place for him to you know, really understand because he's a huge gamer, right and really just deep, deep understanding of games and you know, going all the way back to you know, generations ago in terms of consoles, you know, really plays board games and and understands game design actually
like on a crazy level. Um But above and b on that, it was really how do we get him to understand how to build a development studio, how to get financing around it, and then how to strike relevant partnerships that can help take them to the next level of Trover Saves the Universe was sort of the first game that came out of that studio. Squaunch Games is the studio UM and they're working on a unannounced, super cool new one right now and I can't wait for
everyone to see it. So, in addition to signing various development studios and game creators, U t A is also heavily involved in raising capital for a lot of these companies. Yeah,
that's right. Um. You know, we recognize about five or six years ago that in addition to the primary function and services that we provide, our clients, which predominantly in the game space, had been doing deals with publishers for publishing services and in many cases with you know, some of the first parties and first party platforms for distribution deals.
That we were starting to see this influx of investment coming into the space, equity investment coming into the space, whether that was from a handful of strategics mostly out of Asia, whether it was from private equity adventure, some institutional investors. Um that we're really starting to see gaming
as a viable investment strategy for them. That we wanted to make sure that we also had that ability on behalf of our clients to broker those types of transactions, and so myself and a number of colleagues went out, UH took our series seven, did our studying, got licensed by Finra in the SEC to do those types of deals, and it's been really successful UM, and it's been an
incredible expansion of our of what we do for our clients. UM, both on the capitol ray side, I think we've done a twenty or so of those on the gaming side and the better part of the past five years, but also on the M and A side. UM. We've advised numerous clients of ours in the sale of their STUDIOSUM, most recently representing Clay Entertainment in their sale to ten CENTUM which capped off I think the third sale we've done in the past eighteen months across a number of
different categories. So we're UM, yeah, we're super excited to continue that line of business for our clients. It's an incredible UH time and opportunity for game developers, both on the publishing and distribution side, certainly also on the Capital rays and M and A side. Shifting gears a bit um U t A ended up acquiring two different companies that were pretty invested in the e sports world, press
X and everyday influencers. What spurred U t A to really sort of, you know, dive head first into with the e sports and live streaming space. Yeah, it's a great Uh, it's a great question. Glad you brought it up. You know, E sports for US is a really important important growth area. UM. You know, gaming has been a big part of the growth of U t A on the digital side, and we think that the sports UH
is in incredibly important and complementary. UM. You know, what spurred it was I'm fortunate enough to sit on UTA's investment committee, but we've been investing in companies UM for quite some time, early stage all the way to late stage companies across you know, media technology in various entertainment sectors and consumer products as well. And that's you know, companies like Lift or pocket Watch or Patreon or Masterclass UM.
And one of the companies that we invested in that I was really an advocate for investing in along with my colleague Sam Wick, who runs our adventures practice, was Cloud nine, which is a leading e sports organization and they're very well known. Obviously, they're they're dominant in in League of Legends and a number of other games in the sports sector. And that investment, which you know was
our first investment into the sports, our first investment in gaming. Frankly, really, I think gave us this incredible front row seat to what was going on in the sports world right whether it was on the pro player side or the content creation side. I think it really helped give us even more UM certainty that we needed to be in a deeper way. And so Sam and I together UM really went out and developed this thesis that we should be
in that space. UM. You know, on Uta, being the entrepreneurial company that it is, really gave us UM, you know, all the rope we needed to go out there and you know, look at companies, look at the sector, come back make a recommendation. We had met Damon Law who's the CEO of of both those sister companies and his team and really felt like they would be an incredible fitt a U t A. And we're so lucky to get them. And you know, since then, I'm really happy
to say that the thesis proved itself out cool. UM So with a lot of E sports athletes. You know, they're competing in a lot of virtual tournaments sometimes you know, live tournaments and stadiums to you know, obviously before the pandemic change a lot of that, but content creation is also such a key component for many, um many sports athletes active in that space. When you're looking for teams or players to sign. How much is um their attitude and you know, sort of quantity of live streaming sort
of affecting these decisions. Well, that's a good question. I think it's also important to say, you know, E sports for us is sort of abroad umbrella under which we really operate three sub businesses. Right. There's the business of representing pro players, and those are players who primarily play in the franchise leagues, so that would be mostly in League of Legends. And we represent a handful of really incredible players in the Call of Duty League. UM, so
that is sort of its own separate business unit, right. Um. Then we represent streamers of course, UM and those are some of the biggest names in streaming, whether it's Nick Merks or Pokemon or Valki Ray, um, this guy's Toast and many many more. UM. And then we also have you know, a a brand business where we've represented a handful of whether they're consumer facing brands or gaming companies who are looking to really activate in that space, and we help advise them on a number of different ways.
So that's sort of e sports. More broadly, I think it's important to just make sure that we touch on UM with respect to signing new clients. Look, I mean, going back to what I spoke about earlier with respect to our development studios, I think the number one thing that's important in representing and signing somebody is passion. Right Having that passion for them, you're going to be establishing a relationship, working with them daily, weekly, monthly, you know,
seven days a week three. I mean, this is a real it's in many ways, being an agent isn't the job. That's really a lifestyle, And if you're gonna do that, you're gonna have to be really passionate about the people that you represent, right. UM. Coming down to it with respect to live streamers, you know, I think in many ways what they do is this incredible blend of art and science. Um, the science part is the technical aspect.
Are you really good at playing these games? Because some of the most amazing gameplay sessions I see are from our clients on Twitter, which I mean, it's incredibly skillful what they do. Um. Just in and of itself, the art of it is can you be compelling to an audience? For I mean, you know, Corey, these streams sometimes last five, six, seven, eight hours. It's really it's it's it's really incredible, um what they do. Can you be compelling to an audience? Right?
In many ways, you know, I view Twitch and our live streamers as it's sort of the new late night couch right. Um. This incredible back and forth with guests that they bring on that they co stream, with the interactivity with the audience, you know, So it's got to be really compelling. So I think number one, you've got to be passionate about the people you're working with. Uh. In second, there's this incredible blend of art and science that I think goes into being really great at it. One.
I think one of the most interesting things about sort of you know, the live streaming universe and all of the different people uh sort of making a living doing this is the fact that their medium of choice is something that often has them on stream interacting with fans
for hours and hours and hours and hours at a time. Um, A lot of studies that often look at sort of, you know, the most popular streamed games on Twitch often find that, you know, just the streamers chatting with their fans ranks as high as you know, some of the
most popular titles. Uh So, in that case, is there sort of you know, given that Twitch in recent months has really sort of been you know, cracking down on its terms of service and making sure you know, it develops very strict protocols for player behavior and addressing misconduct and you know, potentially offensive things that can be said
on air. Uh is there sometimes a bit of a concern with signing on players, especially from a crowd that often exkews pretty young, that you know, they need to understand that things like professional conduct and behavior are still sort of you know, expected if you're going to be wrapping brands for hours and hours and hours at a time on stream. Yeah. Look, I mean I think it's
it's a timely question. And you know, as a parent of two young kids, UM, I'm really supportive of what Twitch is doing to try and ensure that the platform is really safe for not just the consumers and the participants, and but certainly. Also, you know the streamers themselves. Um, there's a lot of there's a lot of back and forth there, right, Um, the questions are we concerned about it?
I mean, look, you know, to my point earlier, we tend to get a really good feel for who our clients are early in the process, even in the signing you know, when we're signing them, right, the profile of our clients is pretty consistent. Right, We really want to represent folks that were again not a passion is going to keep coming up here, not only that we're passionate about, but that we feel, you know, really confident in taking
to the market. Um. Not everything is perfect, Not everything is always gonna work out, and it's our job in those thankfully very rare. I can't even think of one instances that we've that we at least have the tools accessible to our clients to ensure that, um, you know, if they need it, that it's there. We're gonna take
a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about how the pandemic disrupted the e sports world and what companies heavily invested in this space, like U t A, had to do to adjust to the new reality.
There welcome back to strictly business. We're here with Fear Loop, who the head of video games at U t A. Now Fear When the pandemic happened, obviously, it's something that affected you know, virtually every sector that requires people to be physically present for anything, but especially in games and with the sports you know developing into you know, this gigantic universe of global events, you know, crowd filling stadiums and all that. What was sort of you know, the
initial impact when all these different shutdowns occurred. Gaming events got canceled. Obviously, e sports can you know, exist and thrive virtually. But nevertheless, you know, there were a lot of developments in you know, continuing this to be your world Blood operation. Call of Duty League in particular, I think was really you know starting to ramp up things following um the release of their Modern Warfare game as well as you know, prepping for the release of war
Zone coming out not long after that. How did U t A you know, respond to you know, all the chaos of COVID. Well, the first thing and the most important thing always was ensuring that all of our clients were you know, we're safe and healthy and take care of so that's that that's sort of standard across the
board stuff. And look what we did was we worked with our our partners right to ensure that our clients were going to be well taken care of, UM, whether that's our partners on the league side, on the team side, the organizational side, UM, and on their brand partners side UM. And you know, those discussions happened early and often, and
I think the results were pretty good. I mean, I think what's incredible about, you know, this pandemic generally is seeing the innovations and ingenuity of businesses across the board, UM, and how they managed to sort of make it through. And the same can you know, can be said about
the gaming business, certainly the sports business. I think the quality of the production level was really high, the quality of the gameplay and the competition was really high ultimately, and UM, we're really proud of our clients for getting through all of it obviously, UM. And we're really you know, happy of the relationship and the working relationship we've got
with with our partners across the board there. And I think net Net, you know, we're glad at all it all turned out well and the fans were able to watch and participate. And you know, obviously I I personally can't wait to get back into a stadium full of people and see UM and see matches live. And I'm sure our clients can't either. I mean, that's that's there's
certainly a connection there that you can't you can't replicate. Yeah, absolutely. UM. You know, as chaotic as everything has been with the pandemic, one of the most interesting things to sort of witness in the video game space was how, you know, massively popular games like Fortnite really sort of turned themselves into multimedia platforms beyond you know, just characters, you know, battling
each other for the top prize. Um. You were actually this had already been going on before the pandemic, um, as far back as when they sort of had their first concert with the electronic musician Marshmallow, which arranging that was something you were actually involved at the time. Correct, Yes, yeah, no, that's a look. I think what Fortnite has done, generally speaking, UM, in terms of creating this shared social space um is
has obviously been incredible. UM. The yeah, the Marshmallow concert and uh and and all that that went into it was just an incredible experience to be a part of and I'm always be I'll always remember that one for sure, UM. And look, we're always trying to find ways to put our clients at the center of gaming. We think it's obviously really important UM to have our clients who are authentic gamers and who are really interested in the space. Authenticity matters, as you know, UM find the right ways
of participating in in the ecosystem of gaming. So whether it was the Marshmallow concert, whether it was you know, someone like Dominic Fike, who's an up and coming artist that you know on the music side that we're thrilled to represent. He had credible debut and Fortnite during the pandemic, Or whether it's someone like post Malone who has a really deep love of Call of Duty and we were able to partner him with Team Envy for him to come in as an owner. UM. We're always looking for
those opportunities across all of our respective areas. Now, the pandemic, for sure, UM created a heavy amount of interest from our clients who some you know, a lot of whom were couldn't tour UM to get into the space. And you know, we think given all the work we've done in the past on that that there is a huge business opportunity there for our clients. UM. And so to that end, I went out and we hired somebody great again named Jeff Sawyer, who announced a few months ago
is come in. We hired him from Red Bull to come in and oversee all the specifically all of our
music and gaming partnerships. UM. Given the success of Fortnite and all the work we done with them, of course, the success of Roadblocks, and you know, a ton of other opportunities in the space when you see music immigrations and games like two K t A UM, you know, we see that that intersection of gaming and music really happening and coming into a really fast velocity, and we want to make sure that we're you know, we're the best in the business of doing that for our clients.
And yeah, you brought you brought him up a post. Malone has also been active on sort of these music collaboration front to UM. In February, he headlines Pokemons twenty
five Anniversary Virtual Concert. UM. After this, Jeff Sawyer higher coming from Red Bull, what what do you see as you know, sort of the future of these collaborations and finding all these different opportunities for gaming to come together with U T as other departments and clients, and not even in terms of just music, but you know what's going on with looking at opportunities in the film and television spaces. Look, there's a lot of ground to cover,
and the opportunities, frankly are are really endless. And I don't just mean, you know, I'm just saying that to say that, I think that I think we're just beginning to scratch the surface of what music and gaming integrations look like. Um, we're not too far away from the moment where you're going to see original music by big name artists being title tracks for games in the same
way they have been for film and television. Um, for sure, I think someone you know, what you're coming to see is someone like post Malone, you know, doing this Pokemon collaboration. He's an authentic Pokemon fan, right, that really meant a
lot to him. And I think we're starting to really mind our clients across the board in terms of what are they interested in, Because, as I said, gaming is a global business, right there are games that are not popular necessarily in the US, that are hugely popular in other territories. UM. And so it's really important for us to know what our clients play, what they love, UH. And we're going to be able to sort of make
those matches organically and ensure that they're authentic for sure. UM. On the film and TV side, you know, that's another area that we're really excited about. UM. You know, i'd say gaming I P. Has always been attractive to film and television, UM, mostly films sort of historically. UM. I think what you're starting to see now is as new creators emerge in both mediums, right, as they as they mature and grow up, right, Um, they're coming from a place where gaming became sort of a steady part of
their media consumption diet. Right Like you know, growing up, I grew up playing games UM. And I think as generations mature upward, it becomes less and less of a stigma about what games are relative to other medium right. I think it's just a natural part of your media intake. UM. And so with that, I think has come this mutual respect and admiration across both you know, both film, television and gaming collectively. UM. And you're starting to see these
really incredible collaborations happen um. You know, the first that comes to mind is the game that I love, The Last of Us. You think of someone like Neil Druckman pairing up with someone like Craig Mason, UM, and what that's going to be? Right? I think there's this like mutual respect across both that is going to allow for this incredible collaboration to happen. And by the way, just last week, I think you saw or a few weeks ago you saw Chris Mellowdandry get named to the board
of Nintendo UM. Right, Chris Meldountry of course runs Illumination UM. And so I think you're going to start to see a lot of cross polemization from from creators on across multiple different vectors who are going to come together and create, you know, either new experiences or find ways of adapting gaming i P and bringing them to you know, linear audiences in a much more authentic way. True. I'm glad
you brought up The Last of Us. UM. That's a particularly huge project coming from HBO and Sony Interactive Entertainment, which, through its PlayStation productions banner, has been you know, making a really big push to bring a lot of its
original I P two various film and TV outlets. I think another very sort of chaotic development to come from this past year was the launch of all these different streaming services, you know, before the pandemic and now after it, we see NBCUniversal, Warner Media, UH, and more recently Visicom,
CBS all active in the streaming space with new services. So, given that there is such a high demand for content right now, has you know, anyone been coming to your division looking to see if the gaming i P um across your various clients is stuff that could present you know, lucrative story opportunities for on visual projects. Yeah. Look, I
mean the short answer is yes. Um. And as I alluded to earlier, I think the thing that's going to be most exciting to our clients, UM and certainly two i P holders generally, certainly on the gaming side, is how how are we going to put together a package that's going to be reflective of and be authentic to the source material itself? Right? Um, there has been no shortage of interest in in gaming i P for years, right.
I think the advent of these streaming services, you know, so the need for content, but also the ability that we've seen from the streaming providers themselves to give a lot of creative flexibility to their partners is also super interesting, you know. I mean, I think the economics are always important, but I'd say as important to the economics of all this is the quality bar being set at a pretty high level um for these exploitations. It's really excited about it. Absolutely,
there's looking ahead at the universe of gaming. Like like I said earlier, Um, it's really it's almost approaching two hundred billion dollars in worth for the overall market. Esports in particular is projected at just over a billion by new Zoo. There's just so much expansion that is really
still on the way on. You know, as long as video games have been around for it, it really seems like, you know, we we just kind of we just went through the you know, the golden age of television from nineteen Basically, it seems like the equivalent of that is you know, fast approaching for video games in a way. But because video games have such an intrinsic virtual nature, it's you know, it's something that does really feel endless. Yeah. Look, I mean gaming has been growing at if I have
my numbers right, it's been growing at eleven. I think computed annual growth rate for like over a decade at this point. Um, you know, mobile alone last year was like seventies six billion dollars. So mobile usually accounts for about half of the whole thing, about half of the whole thing. Yeah, and you know that's a that's a market segment that didn't exist, you know, fourteen years ago.
So I think as you look at you know, increased broadband globally, um, you know, mobile availability five G. You know, just an incredible amount of of gaming talent that has not just come from um, not just come from cities that are well known for for having a high degree of gaming companies, you know, cities like Montreal or Toronto for instance, or San Francisco, but also from universities, right, I mean, don't forget about two decades ago we started
seeing the creation of university programs across the country, across the world that we're training you know, students who had a real interest in learning how to make games, UM, and they were putting out you know, highly skilled, highly talented folks who had a deep understanding of how to
make games out into this ecosystem. And as a result of that, as a result of you know, Epic Games and Unity really coming to the forefront of the game engine sort of off the shelf technology solution side of things. You know, distribution opening up more broadly, whether it was Steam, whether it's the console manufacturers sort of opening up their distribution capabilities to indie developers. You know, you've just seen just this incredible output of games and creativity and innovation
from you know, small teams. Right, look at the team that made among Us is I think four people, um, right, based in Seattle, and you know, so you're going to continue to see that kind of output. You know, you lay your in new platforms, whether it's mobile, as we discussed, um, you know, predating that was the social you know social social gaming on platforms like Facebook, and you know what's up next. I mean a R is gonna is certainly
going to be relevant. VR continues to be you know, really really good, um and I think as those those platforms and new platforms emerge, um, you're going to continue to see hopefully, um, you know our business continue to to grow. Yeah. There, there's definitely so much to look forward to. It's yeah, it's really just you can go in so many different directions. Anyway, um, I just want to thank you for taking the time to stop and chat A fear Corey thinks it's been great. I really
appreciate it. This has been another episode of Strictly Business. Come back next week for another helping of compelling conversation with media minds leading the industry, and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast to stay on top of future episodes. Also leave us a review on Apple Podcasts so we can hear your feedback.