Partnering With Movie Theaters For Fun And Profit In Esports

Two different industries have found a great way to make money. They just need customers.

Super League Gaming wants to host esports events in theater venues, charging gamers for the experience of being in a venue with other gamers competing on a giant screen. Theaters want to make money with their physical space that might otherwise go to waste. The real question is whether gamers – the actual customers in this scenario – want to do so as well.

The good news for the businesses involved is that the answer appears to be “quite possibly.”

Super League Gaming launched a six-week Minecraft league last Fall, which culminated in a December championship, awarding 10-year old Julien Wiltshire and his team a collective $15,000. The league took place across the country, in movie theaters, and had over 1,000 participants. Players in the league would go to a participating movie theater and compete in Minecraft mods designed to test creativity, critical thinking, and teamwork, according to Super League Gaming.

The Minecraft league, chosen in part because it is open source and thus allowed SLG to design mods specifically for a theater playing experience, showed enough success that another such league is scheduled to launch in February. Super League Gaming makes money off the league by selling tickets to league events, which take place in theater venues, and sharing revenue with the theaters.

“It’s all about scale,” said SLG COO Brett Morris. “If you look at the pure business model, it’s just like Star Wars right now. Star Wars is in over 4,000 theaters. It’s the same thing for us. The number of screens and the number of theaters we can conduct gaming events on will dictate our success.”

The fledgling company currently has agreements with theaters belonging to some of the largest theater chains in the U.S., including AMC, Cinemark, and Regal. It also has arrangements with smaller, boutique chains like iPic Entertainment. iPic has several theaters, each promising a more luxury experience than your average cineplex, with full menus, bars, better seating, and other features.

Hamid Hashemi, CEO of iPic Entertainment, has over 25 years experience in the theater industry and said that so far, SLG has been a good fit, selling out all of its iPic locations. One of the best aspects as far as Hashemi is concerned is that the league consists primarily of nine to 14 year olds. That means events can be scheduled for afternoons, after school gets out, which is typically a dead time of day for theaters.