A week of news covering the intersection of business and gaming / esports, all in about one minute – everything you need to know from the “profit of esports” himself.
039 – March 7th, 2021
In this week’s Business of Esports Minute: Epic Fall Guys, Amazon GameOn, and Multi-Bagger GMBL.
From the keyboard to the boardroom, this is the Business of Esports Minute! Every single week, I, Paul Dawalibi, the prophet of esports, will be bringing you my hottest takes from the week, basically everything you need to know about the business of esports all in about one minute. Let’s go.
This week, Epic Games announced that it acquired Tonic Games Group, the British-based studio responsible for the hit video game “Fall Guys.” Fall Guys has definitely been on the decline since it peaked last year, but this acquisition makes total sense for Epic. Fall Guys is family-friendly, animated, and very similar to Fortnite or Rocket League in many ways including the demographics of the playerbase. Whether this was a good acquisition or not obviously comes down to price (which was not disclosed), but the synergies are definitely clear.
Amazon is extending their leadership in gaming clips to mobile with the announcement of their “Game On” app. It is now available to download in Apple’s App Store after originally launching on Android phones back in November. Twitch has had clips functionality on desktop for a while. Sleepy YouTube Gaming management just knocked them off. The mobile clips landscape has mostly been occupied by small startups. The takeaway here is that Amazon has a very confusing gaming strategy at the moment. They’re also losing talent at the top. Twitch is no longer a gaming brand and probably why they called this new mobile app GameOn instead of Twitch. While I hate that Amazon didn’t aggregate all of their gaming business under one roof and one brand, I see GameOn as an experiment for them and by using a new brand, they are hedging against any potential failure and reputational risk.
Finally, Citron Research, a firm now focused on identifying multi-bagger opportunities but famous for their GameStop short report, said that GameStop should buy Esports Entertainment Group for $50 per share. While GameStop would no doubt benefit from EEG’s stack of esports assets, there’s likely nothing that will save the company at this point, other than becoming a niche pure e-commerce play. Regardless, the takeaway from Citron’s research is the value of Esports Entertainment Group. They’ve done their homework and the $50 target share price is spot on.
You can get esports news anywhere. This is the only place you can get real insight. For more of this, as well as the most exceptional line-up of guests, please tune in every week to the Business of Esports podcast and every Wednesday evening into the Business of Esports after-show Livestream. Also make sure to follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok @bizesports and on YouTube at The Business of Esports.
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