Chris Wittine, Celebrity E-Sports Agent at CAA | The Future of E-Sports

Welcome to the success story podcast, I'm your host, Scott Clary. On this podcast, I have candid interviews with execs, celebrities, politicians, and other notable figures, all who have achieved success through both wins and losses, to learn more about their life, their ideas, and their insights. I sit down with leaders and mentors and unpack their story to help pass those lessons onto others through both experiences and tactical strategy for business professionals, entrepreneurs, and everyone in between. Without further ado, another episode of the success story podcast. Thanks again for joining me. I am sitting down with Chris Wattein. He is a digital media agent at the leading entertainment and sports agency creative artists, agency, otherwise known as CAA. Chris is based in LA. He represents many of the world's leading content creators and pro gamers, so his nine to five, what he does is he works to cure business opportunities for the agency's clients. He works in entertainment and digital verticals, focuses on brand partnerships, platform strategy, a little bit of business development, and this is all well and great, but I want to just highlight some of the talent that he works with. So specifically, the Dober Brothers, Dr. Disrespect, Sam and Colby, Nick A30, so Dober Brothers, 7.9 million subs on YouTube, Dr. Disrespect, and these are outdated numbers, by the way, 1.29 million subscribers, Sam and Colby, 3.7, Nick A30, 4.6. So these are, I guess, YouTube royalty, so to speak, and I'm really curious as to the life of somebody that manages the careers of these people that are massively successful on a platform that for some individuals is relatively, they don't understand the concept of how YouTube is successful content creation, basically career defining platform for some of these people. So thanks Chris for joining, I'm really excited to understand your background, how you even get into this kind of work, what drives you your passions, and let's speak about some of the realities that you face managing these people. So thank you. Thank you, thanks for having me. I've been on this journey now for a little bit since, I guess, my career in entertainment started before I was on the business side, it was in a punk rock band in Cleveland, Ohio, which we don't need a credit or have any kind of seedling of information for listeners to follow up because I will spare them the pain, needless to say, not a successful entrance into the music space, but enough to incite the passion to follow the threat of what would be my career in digital media today. That probably coupled with too much entourage for one's own self-good. So I started my career actually at a competitive agency to see a William Morrison-Dever agency as it was called when I started there in the mailroom finishing up my graduate program at Carnegie Mellon University who has a really different sort of program that's essentially an MBA meets the world of entertainment. It's called a Masters of Entertainment Industry Management program where they have several professors that are active in the entertainment industry and they encourage graduate students either work full time or get an internship throughout the program so you can get a taste of the different facets of the industry. I was one that always kind of sided with the artists and was excited at the prospect of becoming an agent and trying to figure out the landscape of representation and how that stuff actually worked beyond what I'd seen on the HBO show. And so I came to quickly realize that one, even back then, mailrooms are still a thing and there's an incredible amount of mail that is being circulated beyond what is pushed into our personal mailboxes from flyers and grocery stores that we never intend to visit. And the second thing is that the perception I had of being a rep is quite different in the reality. So as I kind of learned from some great mentors and built my way up in that system, eventually I left that firm, joined another firm called Fullscreen, which is still in business today as part of the Warner Media Group. And Fullscreen was one of those early companies that started with an MCN or a multi-channel network. And so if you think about YouTube as kind of a vast ocean, the multi-channel networks were these sub-sex within that ocean, Fullscreen being one of the most successful ones. And so there I really kind of learned what would be the fundamentals of digital media representation, partnerships, kind of business models, and how that applied to talent artists, content creators today. Spent time there and multiple different sides of organization eventually was fortunate enough to get a call from CAA who had done some business with at Fullscreen and took an opportunity and came over as an agent in the group to focus on servicing the agency's clients at large, but also to build out my own direct clients. And then eventually we all really, really wanted to take a foothold in gaming and esports. So I've been supportive on that business and alongside one of the agents today are representing the endemic gamers on the talent side of the business. CAA had always been in gaming to some degree. So they have partnerships from league levels with groups like Riot. They help build games with developers and studios, but previously we hadn't represented any actual gamers, whether that's a streamer or content creator in the space. One that was day-to-day on the frontlines making stuff as a personality or through gameplay or commentary on the gaming industry. So now we are certainly in that business and have put a big foothold there and only plan to grow it and unfortunately enough to be part of the right. That's a, I find all of the esports digital sports quite interesting. I think that even before our current situation where regular leagues that we know are all canceled for the time being, it was already getting much of a foothold like it was already getting massive momentum. So these personalities that you represent are these, and excuse my ignorance, are these are personalities, these are not leagues per se, correct? So personally, I don't represent any leagues, but on the CAA level we do have some of those representation relationships. My clients focus on the individual level. That is the, so by, means of example, Dr. Disrespect who's one of the largest characters and personalities on Twitch and in the gaming world as an individual that's a client versus someone could represent a particular team like TSM or Liquid or a league like Riot's League of Legend. So yes, our focus is on the actual talent themselves. And so for most of those folks, you know, there's not an exact playbook for what everyone's trying to do. The strategy and the priorities are really based on the individual artists or artists and it totally evolves over time, much like the spaces itself. You know, previously you didn't see people striking partnerships with Hollywood production studios in the space or, you know, working with kind of the high end book publishers to release novels or stories or graphic novels, whatever it is. We're seeing a ton of that kind of crossover and intersection of traditional media and digital media, which kind of goes with our philosophy out of my group is that we don't kind of put the filter on these guys as being and gals as being, you know, digital specific. That's just, you know, what they're endemic to and where they start. But we believe firmly that it's talent outright and that, you know, if they were born in a different era, you know, if this was a different time, they would have rose up on whatever medium was popular then right now, Twitch, you know, maybe the home for someone, but previously it could have been somewhere else. And do you find that you mentioned something that was interesting? So you try and treat, well, you do, you treat them and they are a true talent. But do you find that when you're looking for all these opportunities for them? Are you selling the, like, is has esports taken enough of a hold where you don't have to sell the concept before you sell the talent? Or is there still that push back in the industry that I don't want to perhaps align with something that's so new and I don't understand it? Yeah. It's a good question. So first thing I'll say is, and I only jump on it because I had to take the crash course myself is esports is a very specific subsection of gaming as a whole. When we think about gaming, at least how I talk about it and how my team thinks of it, you know, I'm considering folks from the casual mobile gamer to someone that plays monopoly. It's very broad and vast. And therefore, when you look at the markets as an entertainment vertical, it's absolutely huge. It trumps, you know, film television music and many of the ways you can measure those markets. So the opportunity is quite large. Esports is something that gets a lot of attention, deservingly so for, you know, what it's doing to captivate audiences that aren't probably watching traditional linear sports, the ones that we think about baseball, basketball, etc. and for the mass appeal of it. But it's a pretty small, even still today, a small subsection of the larger gaming audience. So it, you know, when we think about it, it totally varies. And how do these, you know, all the individuals that I have on this sheet here, the names that I dropped and named that you represent, what made them popular? What made them, what brought them to some level of fame where you could now champion them and take them and turn them into a personality? Because I don't think that many of these people, and I could be wrong, did this purposefully. It seems like a lot of these, they just started playing video games. They posted it. And then all of a sudden, is it just the, is it truly the personality that takes over when, and that's what sort of propels their career, or her? I can tell you all I think about it, I don't know the answer is just the short one. The truth is that I see it as, you know, people vote primarily in two ways with their time and with their money, right? And time and attention, viewership, what you consume as entertainment content is certainly an indicator of that. So even if I, as a representative, personally don't get something, or you interact with someone on the street who isn't the consumer of this particular talent or this particular media brand, if there's enough scale and people that are witnessing it, there's probably something there. I think often it's what you said, it's, it's personality that really cuts through a lot of the clutter, the blessing and the challenge with the internet is it's really lowered the bar for content creation. So there's just a large influx of that. So it's even more difficult for certain folks to break through that noise when there's so many different people creating. Personality tends to be a big driver of that. A bit of it is, is opportunity, you know, something that has been fantastic for the gaming community at large is, is fortnight, right? It's still so relevant today, it's had a really long run if you look at the cyclical nature of titles, you know, it'll forever have a community in people playing that game with its popularity rose the attention from what some people used to consider, you know, gaming as being a niche, a niche kind of subject of pop culture to mainstream pop culture. You know, you heard stories, certainly for my colleagues in the sports group of NFL players that maybe slightly tardy to practice because they were playing fortnight, right? You know, so that stuff, cultural moments and timing can also break artists and help them cut through. You know, maybe there's a little bit of luck to it sometimes, but then boiling it down and getting rid of, you know, the gameplay, getting rid of YouTube, I think there is a natural talent. It's kind of that X factor beyond personality that really draws people. And it's one of those things that is hard to define, it's hard to be tangible, but you know when you see it and the investment by an audience, the exchange from that artist and their fans to me is probably the strongest indicator of how you can, you know, quantify something like that. You know, going back to the initial prompt here, you say, you know, do people set out saying, hey, I want to be, you know, the biggest or I want to be successful or make this a business. Some have and what's interesting is that now if you survey young folks, that's an option, right? That is a career path. And it's really hard to make the argument to mom and dad that, you know, hey, putting in the hours in this video game, you know, might have some significant ROI. It's probably not a waste of time. Look at all these examples. There's a case to be made. I have a client fortunate to work with a young man of the name, it goes by Nick A30 who's a large content creator and streamer on Twitch. Nick tells his story very publicly that he had a conversation with his folks setting out a timeline to create content and give gaming a real go to see if that could be a career path and something that he really enjoyed. Unfortunately enough, you know, all those elements to identify him as talent and to really break through the noise and to gather a community, we're certainly there for him, incredibly talented individual, and that's become his career. You know, there's going to be people, I'm sure, that give that a go that don't have the success. There's going to be people that, you know, probably try and manipulate and play the algorithms on platforms to see if they can conjure up the audience. I find that most of them kind of fall into it. It turns to be a hobby or a means of expression that catches and really resonates with folks. And at some point hits that tipping point to become the means to the end. That, you know, I just find it so interesting because all the things that you're discussing are parallels to, in my opinion, is a very personal opinion, but the parallels you'll see if an agent is working with a young athlete that is going to be in some sort of, in some sort of sporting, you know, NFL, NHL baseball, anything, really, MLB, like it doesn't really matter. I think that there's that, there's, of course, there's some people that are going to be pushed and I think a little bit more forced by their parents than they probably would in gaming in these sports. I've seen some of those crazy sports parents, but still, it's also like, at the end of the day, it has to be like that intrinsic motivation. Do you notice? Is there anything that you have to be mindful of and it could be very similar to working with young athletes when you're managing the business or the, I guess, the financial future of people that could be relatively young? I don't know how old these people are, but I know that I've seen some of them and they're very young. So that's a responsibility and how do you manage that as the agent, like the person is bringing the business, I guess, vetting the deals, that kind of thing? Yeah, you know, and I think it's really, it's really thoughtful commentary when you think about the nature of a lot of my clients in that ecosystem where, you know, previously, we lived in a world where if you wanted to be an actor, there was a very defined system and how to approach that, you know, whether you were a child actor up to an adult in the digital ecosystem, so long as you are following the terms and conditions of platforms, right? You could find success at a relatively young age, so it's a pretty practical concern or a question mark here. What I would say is that regardless of age, you know, we work on behalf of our clients. So at the end of the day, we are here to empower them, help them make the best decisions, but it is just that. It's their decision and I think one of the things that we strive for is surrounding those clients with a bunch of thoughtful people, with expertise, and quite frankly, they don't all think the same, so you don't follow that kind of group think that can have blind spots. But people that are able to engage in thoughtful dialogue of the pros and cons to, you know, certain opportunities, whether that's with the brand or it's a, you know, question of the individual artist brand building, you know, what do I want to be known for? I can go left. I can go right. I always have their merits, you know, what's the best choice for me? When it comes down to it, it's, you know, doing kind of the thorough deep dive into getting as much information as you can based on the opportunity at that time. The institutional knowledge that a place like CAA brings to the table certainly adds a lot of comfort, a lot of customary behavior that we can use to suss out bad actors or opportunities that maybe, you know, not the best choice for someone regardless of their age bracket. You know, the other thing is I think having a true sense of self going back to that origin of like, why did they get into this? You know, something I kind of try to instill in my clients and lay out and a lot of successful folks whether in sports or acting or gaming have done is you really dig into the why, you know, why are we here? Why am I doing this thing? What gets me out of bed every day? Use that as kind of the compass to your business to help guide you in decisions. Because the reality is that a lot of things are only clear in hindsight, so it's about gabbling that information, having a trusted group of advisors and empowering that artist to make the best choice they can. And so even at, you know, if you're underage, typically you have a legal guardian or someone that's there that's, you know, helping you through this stuff alongside any agent or manager or lawyer, the team can be different depending on who it is, but that's generally kind of the rule of the road. And the other part of it is we really think long term at my firm in the sense that I would say and acknowledge there's a stigma to a lot of folks that pop up to success on the internet is that it's a short lifespan, right? You don't, you know, you see some folks that are really popular for six months and then you can't find them the next and there's a long track or burnout too, I would cite. You know, people don't realize that a lot of these people are super entrepreneurial and they're working all into the funnel. So they're, they're filming, they're editing, they're the on screen talent, they're writing, they're producing. It could be quite fatiguing and certainly at the frequency required to be successful on a platform like YouTube or Twitch. There's a real sense of burnout and draining from the artists themselves or the folks working on that. So we tend to look at things from, you know, a really long term perspective striving to have lifelong careers and sometimes the short term money for what could be a lucrative opportunity isn't worth the long term costs and that can be practical from just a human perspective and a business perspective. So those are some of the kind of evaluations we put into place when advising clients and helping them make the right decision for themselves. Yeah, it's a really thoughtful approach and I think it should definitely be noted and appreciated because that's something that the longevity of a gamer's career, I personally, I don't understand it. I don't understand where they end up, like I don't get it, like I see these content creators and I see these people that are, for example, live streaming, how do you, how do you build a career, how do you have kids, how do you go on vacation if your sole income is live streaming? And I guess the question is, how do you, what is the end goal? I'd be curious to get your opinion on that, but also what are the business opportunities outside of the actual content, their name, their brand? What's the end goal? Have you reached that point with anyone or is the industry still very, like if you're, if you're a sports, if you're a, you know, a noted sports figure, you know, maybe you coach, maybe you buy a restaurant, I don't know, but like, what do you do as a gamer when you're, when you're done gaming, or are you done gaming? Yeah, I would love to have the answer to that. If you have any ideas, Scott, please pick up my way, I'll give you my email. Look, I think it's, it's an evolution, but generally speaking, you know, there's a saying that, and I would misquote if I try to attribute it, it's certainly not mine, paraphrasing, but, you know, art is never finished. It's abandoned, which is something that I believe is true with the process here, not to say that people abandon their career, but to say that it's not done. It's an evolving, it's a living, breathing thing. One of the generalities I'll use is that we encourage diversification, for our clients across the board, no matter what stage they're in, because if you think about the ecosystem, you know, you take someone you mentioned, a group of guys, I got the pleasure of working with for a long time, the Dobre brothers, they have a massive YouTube business, and there's some of the best at it, and the audience is, you know, incredibly passionate and loyal, but those, those boys don't own YouTube, right? Like, that's their business. And while they have a great rapport with the folks that create other platforms, and they have infrastructure and teams in place, and they're very thoughtful when it comes down to it, then of the day, it's a separate entity. So, you know, if YouTube was gone tomorrow, what do you have left if you were a YouTube creator? You got to think that way, and be proactive in your business to say, well, you know what, I'm active on these variety of channels, you know, I've got, maybe I do have a restaurant business, right? I've got a client that has invested in something like that, and is able to pollinate across his digital business and his offline business in a really, really meaningful way. It's that diversification. I think what we commonly see is folks that break into consumer products, right? You have a great audience. You do a lot of time in the endorsement space, often through marketing and branding partnerships with advertisers. At some point, many people go, well, hey, you know, what does it look like to have my own, or should I start my own merchandise line or maybe, you know, make a brand of hot sauce as whatever it is? That's a commonplace. I think traditional media still has a lot of credibility and appeal. And so branching into books or comics or live touring or podcasting, you know, these different buckets create diversity in the business lines. And ultimately, that turns into as a bit of stability for the talent too. So that's one of the kind of the short-term things that leads into the long-term endeavors. As far as like an endpoint, you know, it's certainly case by case, but the folks that we're able to work with, I can tell you are so passionate about what they do that there's not really like a sunset look to what their business is, meaning that, you know, they don't say, hey, I'm going to clock 20 years on Twitch and then I just kind of want to write off and, you know, have people wondering where I went. I think they kind of see things as we've observed in traditional sports and or film and television that there's different roles they can play that are probably more appealing at different stages in life, right? Expertise and knowledge of what the gaming community wants. It's going to be just as powerful as a content producer, as it's going to be, you know, being in front of the camera. So particularly right now, that's a huge area of opportunity where people are trying to learn about the space, navigate it, and so the best kind of sources to defer to those that are active in it and living it day to day. They're the ones on the on the ground, boots on the ground that are going to know what communities love and what they don't like and areas that are underserved of, you know, potential opportunity. And do you think that with you mentioned something that was really I found it to be very very important for the, I guess, the future of this industry? There's a lot of noise out there. There's tons of noise when it comes to content creators now. Do you think that it's too late or just very extremely excruciatingly difficult to build out yourself from the ground up starting today in 2020 to put yourself on to YouTube? Is it too late already? It's not too late, but it's certainly more challenging, I would say, just because of the volume of content and people in the system than it was say five years ago, you know, or at the inception of YouTube. So I think, you know, the advice to those folks are, you know, places like YouTube and Instagram and become gold standard for social media and it's kind of the bus and the table stakes of where content creation is. However, keep your eye out for emerging platforms and new opportunities. You know, being first to market is a generally great business concept, whether you're selling to other paper or you're publishing videos. You look at the amount of careers that have been started on a platform like Vine that's no longer active today, whose talent and businesses are still very active and real. We represent a young lady by the name of Liza Koshi who has transcended media and has the thriving digital business and traditional media business. That was a platform that she was fairly early on and her talent was exposed to that audience and she's been able to make something, you know, exceptional off of it. So I encourage folks to keep an eye out for those things because, you know, from an investment standpoint and from an audience standpoint, everyone's trying to find the next Facebook. They're always trying to see, you know, what's going to be the next platform. Today, most people are obsessed with TikTok, which is really having a great moment and is a fantastic place to create. But that platform has even been around for, I think, under TikTok. It's been rebranded for some more between two to three years. Before that, it was a platform called Musically. You know, even that one has been in the age of the internet has been out there a while. So you see new ones emerging all the time. Typically, it's a really good approach to trying to jump on a place that has less people creating and has a greater demand for content that you could serve. So do you think that this, this esports, e-gaming, even like YouTube content creation? I guess it's a mute point to say, what do you think about how it's going to impact the future of media entertainment? Do you think it's going to continue to take a larger portion of traditional sports? Traditional entertainment is going to move towards all this esports and e-gaming, digital gaming. What I guess, what are your thoughts on the future of this industry? And how is it going to play out against getting attention and viewership and add dollars away from traditional sports? Yeah. Look, I don't subscribe to the mindset that, you know, it will gobble up traditional sports and it will be the only behemoth in town. I think that they're distinct enough. I mean, there's many people that would argue that what they're doing on the competitive gaming side is not a sport at all. That debate is so alive and healthy. What I would say is that it doesn't actually matter what they think the audience is proven the point. So continue to argue if they want. But my perspective is that we're certainly going to see some sort of conversion between the audiences. You look at the NFL and the NBA, there's so many fans that overlap on both of those. They don't say, hey, I only watch basketball, I only watch football. So I think there's room for all of that. From an advertising perspective, I mean, we live in a really strange time right now, right? So I take the experience under COVID in the pandemic as a small sample size. However, it's certainly just been accelerating a lot of the trends that we've already been seeing. So the challenge I put out there is no matter how great, you know, a Super Bowl might be, when I'm watching, I look around the room during those ads and everyone's on their phone anyways. So I question, you know, what is the real return for the advertiser on that multi-million dollar commercial? So the trend has already been set. I mean, it's been written. So yeah, some of those dollars are going to continue to flow and it's probably been greatly accelerated by COVID into these emerging spaces on the digital side such as eSports. And I think that's all for the benefit for both the consumers ultimately and for the advertiser. So I look at it as a net good. I think much like the traditional theater model of releasing a film, we're just going to see a compression, like we're going to see in traditional sports. And hopefully that just leads to better quality on both ends. You know, eSports, again, and being a subsection of gaming, it gets a lot of the attention right now because it feels familiar to the community when you compare it to a sport versus when you say, hey, you know, here's Twitch, right? But they're just, they're just watching someone else play the game. A lot of people, particularly in the older demographics kind of scratched their head at that. You know, would they're not actually playing? No, no, they're watching someone else play, right? It's kind of hard to someone was comparing it to me earlier. Like it's the black box. We're trying to figure out what's in the box. We're trying to understand it. There's nothing to understand. You can just watch that other people understand it. So yeah, I think the two live together and they both have their audiences and they both have value, but we're going to see a big shift. It's been accelerated by all this in terms of where people are spending their time and energy and what's a credible means of entertainment. And I think, you know, eSports is already one that argument we're just going to now see it mature and continue to grow. But to the advertisers that are still heavily invested, you know, they're starting to diversify their spends and we're spending a lot of time educating, strategizing, walking those folks through how they can deploy their marketing campaigns and how they can connect with audiences and talent in this newer space. And do you see you and actually, I guess I'm just curious about your opinion on I think a couple of weeks ago, there was a UFC match that was that was basically done in a stadium with no fans. So now when you speak about like eSports, now you see even traditional sports just being purely broadcast. So I think that that's also like, you know, the whole almost like an older generation of individuals, climatizing to Amazon shopping and whatnot. And they're all getting used to Amazon shopping. Well, we're all stuck at home. Well, now I think that even if you have traditional sports and all these different leagues are trying to figure out how to broadcast their things out, you're going to see all these different leagues get into eSports, digital sports, broadcast only, no fans, no in person for the foreseeable future. And that's going to sort of push the whole industry forward. I think I don't know, but I think that I think that like, you know, when you start pushing thing, you start changing behaviors, those behaviors get stuck if people are forced to try something they never tried before. Absolutely. I mean, we talked about at one point how there was concerns when television came on the scene as being the death of the film industry, right? It was going to wipe. Who would go to a theater with this box in their house? You know, it turned out to be one of the strongest partners to the film industry when things leveled out because they can market those, having products to get people to come into it. I think about, you know, I don't have any children on my own. My sister does and my niece is who will not know a world without the iPad. They won't know any different than that, right? This is, it's not, you know, a subpar version of television. It is television. It's the same thing to them. It's just going to be how they how they spend their time and as people get more accustomed with it. As like you mentioned, there's less friction in the system to consume the content. You know, one of the greatest things that has combatted the rate of piracy is just the availability of the content now, right? You know, we're all concerned about Kazan, the music industry and the pirate bay and all stuff and legitimate concerns, disruptive and, you know, really destroyed a lot of jobs and value. However, you look at the consumer behavior to your point and there was a, you know, a large sore spot of friction that came up, was they want the content now, they want to get it where they want to get it. Look, I can't tell you probably most of your listeners the last time they've ever thought about piracy site because Netflix is so available, right? And there's so much amazing stuff that's being made. So that was the ultimate silver bullet in that beast was the market evolved. And I think we see the same thing happening over here, which is the convenience and, you know, the comfort level of the audience. Very good. One more question about eSports digital sports. I think we've beaten this topic that I do have one more question just because you're in it. What are future trends that you see in this industry? What's new? What's the latest greatest that most people would not be tapped into even if you're in this? Yeah. Well, speaking from the representative standpoint, having my agent hat on, which is really covering up my terrible hair coach, if not had, quite some times. I hope you have a great, great. I feel so ill prepared for this. I figured I would use the video on this just so I could follow your lead. But now I see that you're ready for Bloomberg TV. And I look like I'm coming from some sort of hostage situation. But anyway, so, yeah, like, where to where to go? Is there like, you know, I just want like, I don't know, I just see the people I see, I see names that I know investing in dollars in eSports. And I just like, is it just more groups of guys sitting down in like these LED lit chairs, playing all these like with drones? Like, I don't know what's what's the future? Like, is there anything that's it's new? A couple ideas. So one is on my side of the business as a representative, it's still quite the Wild West. And there's a lot of practices that I don't think we're going to see in place, call it two years, five years from now. So particularly, representation in gaming is all over the place. What I mean by that is there are un-franchised agents that aren't sanctioned to be doing the work that they're doing. There are, you know, some folks that have an attorney that looks out for them. There's some that have, you know, their buddy that was just, you know, the chair next to them when fame kind of arose, right? And they're dealing in their business and it's, you know, doesn't follow a lot of the customs and norms that we expect when dealing with, you know, professionals, the entertainment industry or artists. You have these leagues and teams that all of them, you know, there's some overlap over the norms, but a lot of them have their own way of doing things, right? I think as this stuff professionalizes, that B2B conversation is really going to take shape and probably look a lot like we have in traditional sports where, you know, you know, that there's an agent or you know that there's a commissioner or you know that there's a set of rules that are really standardized and things you can't do and expectations. So that stuff will continue evolving. That's just commonplace with, you know, a new business that's infancy. So we'll see that stuff change. I would say that, you know, the great opportunity and challenge with things is in basketball, if all of a sudden tomorrow they change the shape of the ball and it was a square, the game radically changes, right? The strategy radically changes. You know, you can get a five point shot from half court. Oh, man, everything's different. We got to go back. These sports has a bit of that built in, you know, meta changes on games of the data within the data of how things actually work to new game modes, to new titles that come out, you know, right now we're seeing with the advent of on the commercial side, you know, a game like Fortnite when it's all the buzz, how does that affect the esports competitive side of that business? If five years down the road, it's not as interesting, right? These are some of the things that the developers and the publishers behind these games are internalizing and being very thoughtful of as they put out these titles is what's the longevity of that look like? You know, how do updates affect that? How do you, you know, changes in the player modes, materializing the experience for the audience? Those are things that I think really we're only going to know by doing and taking best practices from historical learnings to implement. I think that that is a core element here that's going to be really interesting as you make the sports comparison to the esports world. The other thing too is it's interesting going back to the age of some of these artists is historically, as it's been, is most of our relatively young. I mean, you look at Booga, Kyle Dorfman, the kid who won the Fortnite World Cup last time Epic got to hold that event. I guess the inaugural time and hopefully we have another one following. I think he was 16 or so when he won that. I mean, man, talk about a story. Crazy, right? Well, you know, not to say that I'm a scientist of any sort, but there's a correlation between, you know, having young reflexes and eyes and performance in a game. There are people that retire, air quotes, retire, you know, at the right page of 20, you know, there's not a lot of fields even, you know, when the shelf life of an athlete can only be so long and high impact sports where there's a retirement at such a young age. So that's another element to the business that I don't think we have a clear path yet. It seems to be today that a lot of folks, when they retire from the esports side of the business, try and lean toward the content creation side, try and lean towards taking that momentum and being more of a public figure or evangelizing their creative work in the eye of their audience. So there's several sides of this thing that are going to materialize next couple of years. They'll be exciting to watch in a lot of, you know, the fundamentals are still being crafted. So it's still very much the Wild West. And I think that as, you know, as people start to, these kids are so young, but what makes a fan of any athlete, it's following them over their career and seeing their successes and you have, and you have these people that can list off every single stat of every single win, of every single game, of every single team. And like there's no one, there's no one that can do that because there's no athletes or participants or gamers that are that old, right? Like there's no legacy yet. There's no legacy. And once you have legacy, then you have those lifelong fans and then that's when you start, you know, there's a lot that's going to come of this. It's just very early days. I will say, I think from a mainstream perspective, most folks agree with that. For the endemic perspective, the people that have lived and breathed this, I mean, the folks that carried their monitors and their huge PCs to land parties and the basement of so-and-so is house when no one cared. And they were finding a way to rig their Xbox or their, you know, internet connection to play multiplayer. There are certainly some OGs in the space that are, you know, now just juggling with the amount of enthusiasm and interest in it to say, yeah, we've been here all along. You know, this has always been a thing. You're just now catching up to the curve. And we're lucky to represent some of those folks. But it's, yes, it's interesting to think how far we have to come. And quite frankly, it's just so exciting for anyone that has an interest in the space that there's plenty of opportunity to learn and get involved. Yeah, yeah, very, very, very interesting industry that I don't know nearly enough about. But I'm trying to, I'm trying to figure out, I'm really, really appreciate the talk because that, like, to understand, like, and when you start to listen to this, like the parallels between, like, traditional young athletes and then the traditional young gamers, like, it starts to make a lot more sense how their careers are shaped and how the future of the industry is shaped. And all the nuances that if you've never really understood it and you don't know it, you really don't realize that there's this much depth to gaming and less you're in it, and less you're in it. But then you start to really like, listen, you know, CAA, like, this is pretty much what you do. This is what this entire agency more or less is founded on, correctly. This is like, this is your bread and butter. This is, it's not like this is an auxiliary piece of the agency. This is it, right? Yeah, I mean, look, we're involved in practically every aspect of the entertainment industry and have folks that specialize in particular discipline so that we can have someone that is, you know, the best in books and the best in live touring, etc. And this is a, you know, one of those competencies that we have and we've been early on, and we're going to continue to build out and pull from this knowledge as the business mature. So the hope is that, you know, we're around, you know, focusing on this space as long as it's here, and putting our energy and efforts as a kind of a collective network of expertise to benefit our clients. All right. I appreciate that now. I want to, I want to just ask a couple more like Chris questions, because I was like wrapping it up with like, you know, more, more about you, but what, what is, what is your goal? What do you want to do? Like, I don't know, you, you seem like you, you've been sort of thrown into this environment that is new and innovative and disruptive. Where do you want your career to go? Is this something that you want to continue on? Is this like, you know, is it, is this the opportunity to like own your own agency or maybe don't say that because somebody from CA, because listen, there's what's what's absolutely not. Absolutely. Yeah. Look, the truth is, and it's boring. I wake up excited to do what I get to do, and I'm very blessed and fortunate to be able to do it. This was my goal for professionally for a long time, and now I'm in an environment where I get to work with from my clients to my colleagues, such incredible folks that it's, it's always inspiring and awe-inspiring to try and achieve new heights and try and learn new skills. And, you know, I probably can be annoying to my colleagues with how much I really want to dive in on, hey, you know, I'm never done one of those deals or, you know, I've always had interest in this, but please give me and be generous with a couple minutes of your time to learn more. So professionally, it's, it's, it's only just absorbing more information and trying to find new ways to benefit our clients. Luckily, you know, as long as my key card still works, I don't have any other plans other than to keep this going and continue to evangelize our work and build out our clientele and service them. You know, living in Los Angeles, I like Los Angeles a lot. I'm not married to the city, so maybe at some point, if I get the call from the big wigs to open up an office somewhere else, you know, maybe, maybe I'll do that. But I am fortunate to be in the position I have sought to be in. So, sorry. Yeah, that's a great answer. It's not a diabolical scheme or, or a, or a surprise launch of it. That was not a boring answer. Your job is interesting. Like, I don't, I don't, I don't think many people can claim they do what you do. So it's not a boring answer at all. It's a, it's a real answer. And it's, and honestly, to be, to be quite frank, it's a, it's a blessing that you are doing what you enjoy doing. That's really, uh, that's goals for most people. So, like, you know, hats off for that. Um, what, uh, what was I going to say? I had one more question about, about, um, oh, yes. So normally, I normally ask, um, where you go to learn from like a personal self-development piece. And I would still love if you have some great resources because you've listened to this. I'd like to, you know, what's the latest book? What's the, you know, I want to grow my career. I want to be, I want to be a more successful entrepreneur, entrepreneur. I want to grow in my company, whatever. If you have resources, that's great. But I would also love, you mentioned, you always learn, uh, where do you go to learn about something that's evolving all the time? How do you find new things? How do you understand new things that you can obviously bring to your clients in a market that hasn't been defined yet? Um, yeah. Good question. And, um, if there's any, I don't know if you, you take comments on the podcast or whatnot, but I openly, uh, RFP, the listeners to please send this back, um, as I share, um, because that's, that's the relancer on the greatest source of information for me personally is kind of this grassroots calling response, uh, in conversation with folks. You know, whether it's scoping out and scouting for new clients, I am just obsessed with, with comments and what the fans are saying. And meeting the artists themselves and seeing the perspective, you can, you know, it's the don't judge a book by its cover thing, but you can only learn so much from what's publicly available, right? I tend to find that some people keep their best secrets to themselves and their best advice themselves. So only by asking and really digging in, can you find that? Um, you know, if it's, hey, what is a new trend in the business? Look at what the youth they're doing. You know, always, always an early indicator of where things are going to go. Watch the content that, you know, your nieces and your nephews are watching come the holiday season and you're all gathered great indicators, um, for just kind of like scholastic and, you know, professional advancement stuff, a couple sources. I, I am a consumer from books to podcasts to video to anything, um, but one that I'm particularly obsessed with on the podcast front, um, is pivot, uh, Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher's podcast that's, um, really kind of hinge on tech and business, some entertainment in there, but particularly for what we discussed and what I do, you know, my, my group, my clientele, we're kind of centered in this trifecta between, you know, Hollywood, um, the advertising community in Silicon Valley, you know, Madison Avenue and Silicon Valley. So we see, you know, when Google makes a change that affect advertisers, how it trickles down to the talent. So we see all these different forces working together. So I love to broaden my kind of, uh, base by thinking a little more macro on technology and entertainment and business in a broad sense. So that podcast really covers that quite well and is also just, you know, absurdly entertaining to listen to. Um, you know, there's a, there's a wide variety of books, you know, they'll read all the, all the boring ones from the Buffett books to, you know, the self-help stuff that you can find in a Malcolm Gladwell inspirational. I think those are always good, um, to fall back on, you know, I think LinkedIn's also really undervalued space because unfortunately too many folks just use it as personal branding to, to push out there and say, hey, look how shiny my object is. Don't you want to ask me about it better yet? Buy something from me. But I think every once in a while you'll see some really just, uh, creative discourse appear in the threads of, um, you know, article postings and other executives that will give some of their time to weigh in on a particular subject. So asking that community and diving in, uh, to the post of, uh, executives and people that you admire is a really great resource too. Very, very good answer. I appreciate that a lot. Um, question are, are just to close this up. I wanted to, uh, give you the floor and anything that I'm probably not knowledgeable enough to ask about esports that would be relevant to someone who cares about esports. Is there anything we didn't touch on that's, that's topical now? And if not, that's also okay. I'm just curious to be honest. So much, uh, so that you're going to have to invite me back. Um, all right. Let's do it. And then I guess next time you're going to do a different video back. I don't mind it at all. Tropical, I'll go in those zoom things. I'll be in a tux to, to one up you. Uh, deal. Deal. Look, I mean, I'm just, I appreciate the time and the interest in your part. Um, and hopefully this is, uh, generated some sort of value for your listeners. Um, I think it's, it's an exciting time to be involved in this, no matter where you sit, from entertainment, from marketing to technology. Um, and I think that, you know, for as much, turmoil and distress as there is in the world right now, there's a ton of shining light too. And some of these spaces are a really good source to find that and find some sort of way to their express yourself or, you know, pass the time in a very enjoyable way and productive way. So grateful to be doing. I'm doing and appreciate your interest in the space. I think it's, I think that, you know, if there's any value that can be learned out of this is just it's to, to understand what's current, what's trending. Like you mentioned, I love that, you know, if you want to know where to go next, go follow what your nieces and nephews are watching or what they're doing over, you know, the holiday break, but not because that's so relevant. And that is like the most relevant business lesson. I think I've ever heard on any of the interviews that I've done because if you want to be relevant, you have to be where the next generation is going to consume content. And that's how, you know, you can literally your brand, your personal persona, your business, whatever it is, it can blow up overnight if you hit it right. You know what I mean? So that's very good. Something my father gave me as the last piece of advice. I thought was really great. And he he's, God, he's an incredible individual speaks multiple languages has worked all around the world constantly traveling, been in marketing sales, his whole life. He says something to me that was, you know, you know, you know, someone as old or they've aged out, not based on, you know, how many years they've been on this earth, but whether or not they're listening to popular music on the radio. But I think what he was really saying is that if you don't know what songs are being put out and what the new tracks are, not to say that you need to know it by the second. But if you can't pick up on that new beaver single or something like that, then maybe you're a bit out of touch with with what's happening in pop and youth culture. That is a very good litmus test. I like that a lot. I like that a lot. It's a very good thing. Feel free to take that and share that. That's all yours. That's it. No, it's why very wide. Very wide. Yeah. How do people, how do people get in touch? They want to they want to learn more about CAA, they want to learn more about you. They want to get in touch with you. What's the best way? Yeah. Well, we now have a fantastic corporate website, CAA.com, as well as I can be found on most social media platforms under C with Tina. Don't ask how I came about that. It's a combination of my name. Last same first name, but otherwise check me out on your podcast. That's all for today. Thanks again for joining me on another episode of the success story podcast. You can download or stream this podcast wherever podcasts are available, including iTunes, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, and many others. You can also watch this podcast on YouTube. If you haven't already, please subscribe and share this podcast with your friends, family, co-workers, and peers. Please leave us a rating on iTunes. It takes about 30 seconds, as it allows other people to find our podcasts and lets our amazing guests reach even more people with their message. And remember, any rating is fine as long as it contains five stars. I'm Scott Clary from the success story podcast, signing off.