10 lessons learned from a virus. Number 1: the advantage of an early punch in the face.

The scene is memorable. Thursday the 27th. of February, 19:45 CET in Katowice, Poland. Everything is ready for opening the doors of Spodek Arena in a few hours and welcome the largest esports event in the world. All the team has been working for this moment for many months. The best CS:GO esports teams in the world been battling already in the studio close by to get qualified. They can't wait to walk into the legendary stadium, get cheered by the massive crowd, and hopefully lift the IEM Trophy on Sunday. Hundred of thousands of people have already traveled from all over the world to attend the show the next morning.

At this moment, the world is still very different from today. Everyone is traveling without restrictions, there are concerts, football matches full of supporters, festivals happening every day. We all see the news about the Chinese lockdown in Wuhan that begun a month ago. But outside of a 120 cases in Lombardy, it is still the old world almost everywhere. In Poland in particular, there is absolutely no single case and no specific measure in place.

But the warning signs are here already. The team worked daily with the authorities sharing about health and safety measures. They organized a temperature check for everyone at every entrance, a tracking to be able to contact any visitors, sanitizer stations and educational material almost everywhere. There were probably more health safety measures in place than for any other sports event in Europe back in February...

And then, it happened. This Thursday 27 February evening at 19:45, with a simple social media post, the governor of Silesia decided to ban on-site attendance. This was unexpected, not pre-discussed at all, and publicly communicated … A serious situation. 

Of course, we did put the health and safety above all and respected the decision. Everything had to be changed overnight: communication with the fans, tickets refund, and more importantly prevent visitors who were already gathering in the city from showing up in front of the venue the next day. The team did extremely well. And as we all know now, the show totally went on. NAVI could lift their Trophy on stage that Sunday. ESL broadcast even broke all our records for a non-major CS:GO event… so everything was fine after all...

….but this is what I would call an early punch in the face. A serious hit in the first seconds after entering the ring. And looking back at it, I believe it turned to be an advantage…

Here are 10 lessons I learned from the virus. These are not supposed to be exhaustive nor pretend to teach anyone a lesson. This is only about sharing personal observations made during the last 4 months… and one more thing: it is not about me or any personal achievement here. Most of it came from and was done by an exceptional team...

1. The advantage of an early punch in the face

The real punch in the face was walking in this huge empty Spodek arena and exhibition center on Friday 28th. February. It was like the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. It was real, brutal, it was concrete.

With some more distance, I believe today, this helped us to navigate the pandemic situation that was just about to start with two serious advantages; 1) A strong understanding that it was going to be extremely serious. It prevented us from losing time with too "soft" scenarios, minimizing the reality or hoping things could simply get back after a short delay. 2) An early wake-up call, almost ahead of time. That gave us the opportunity to have few days in advance to bring the company into a safe financial harbor before the storm widely exploded around the planet.

2. Employees safety first

Employees′ safety has been at the center of all attention first. In such a situation as a pandemic, these are not only words. These are real people. When team members are all over the world, in different offices and when event crews are traveling already for the next event in L.A. or Malta, for example, it becomes very real. Real people, colleagues, friends... Many colleagues spent nights to be sure that theirs colleagues would be coming back safely. We have been so lucky here to have no contamination at work and no real issue for any employee.

3. Back to the roots

esports is by nature a digital sport. Even if it all started with Lan parties connecting PCs to create the magic of multiplayer, even if for the last five years esports is filling arenas, it all started digitally. Competitive gaming is digital at its core. The virus pushed the company fast from plan A to plan B, to plan C, migrating everything online. It went extremely smoothly and fast. It was a natural move for the crew, the teams, the players, the fans. Why ? because it is in our DNA and our roots.

Different from any traditional sport, we mostly did not stop or postpone competitions but simply were able to keep going digitally. This was a clear move showing that esports can adapt quickly to a no live events and no travel situation. This quick move, back to the roots, not only created the conditions for resilience in such a situation, but also opened new possibilities... We have been glad also to have diversified activities. Digital esports platforms, streaming platforms offering and e-commerce operations got a good booster from the lockdown situations. This all being said, I know it is difficult for a lot of our partners and suppliers active in live event sector. We try to be as supportive as possible.

4. Solidarity

Like many other mid-sized companies, we asked employees to contribute. It started with the leadership and the top management, who took a pay cut. Not only everyone voluntarily agreed to accomplish the gesture but it did not drove big discussions at all. I am not saying it is the best example of spontaneous generosity, but if we all think a bit about it, it is a very engaging step with a concrete consequence for each of us.

Such a situation is bringing people together.

5. Entrepreneurs′ agility

As many grown-up start-ups, we still count several entrepreneurs' profiles within the company. These tend to not always totally thrive in a too corporate environment, which is what inevitably happens when the company grows. But they tend to be extremely at ease in situations with a lot of uncertainty. It amazes me all the time to watch such a diversity of profiles when going through these rapidly changing situations. It makes ESL rich and diverse and it is great to still have some entrepreneurs, who truly understand speed to action and how to pivot fast. They have all my admiration.

6. Forecast humility and eagle vision

In changing times like these, we can do a plan that is obsolete a few hours later and then spend time trying to forecast the un-forecastable. And so we did too, we had scenarios 1, 2,3,4, etc… At some point, what really mattered was to have a sort of worst-case scenario that tended to be the lead scenario and work from there to build mitigation action. By planning the worse, we still can hope for the best without too many consequences. Forecast humility is to acknowledge that we don't know what will be exactly and take a bit of a distance.

To the classic forecast concept, I prefer the “eagle vision” concept -which is not from me nor Assassin's Creed in this case. The eagle sees from a very high position in the sky and can look quite far. But it can also see very small details. And once a target is locked from above, the eagle does not lose it anymore. It can adjust its position constantly if the wind or the streams are changing, but it always remains focused on the target during the approach until being close enough for an attack. Spend more time on a larger vision, attention to detail, and constant focus on the target rather than looking too much at the all the different routes ...

7. “Only when the tide goes out, do you discover who's been swimming naked”

This quote from Warren Buffet is for a different purpose but I feel it applies well to this context too. Any cracks, any branch that was already a struggle, any communication issue between some departments simply get worse when the storm is coming. The things that did well will continue to flourish and the one that did not do well before will become worse. A situation like COVID-19 is a great amplifying loop for pre-existing issues and a great opportunity to identify them and get them solved faster. 

8. The surge of opportunities

Every change is bringing new opportunities. The COVID-19 is no different but what we all observed this time was a very clear surge in incoming opportunities towards esports. It was actually as if every traditional sport just discovered esports and gaming, like if every advertising agency were jumping onto streaming to replace live sport that disappeared from the TV screens…

The main issue in such times is to balance the intense work to secure and pivot existing products & revenues and the work to go after the new opportunities at the same time. We focused on our existing competitions, partners, and fans first to secure that we continue to deliver for our long term partners. We have also picked up some opportunities, literally the ones that made the most impact, but certainly not all of them… we have dropped a lot of balls. It was the right thing to do to maintain the value and existing relationships and take some benefits from the wave of opportunities...

9. Work from home, communication, and culture

The whole company went working from home and still does. It was not a complicated step. If you ask mainly gamers to work from their home, it is feels more like a reward than an issue. As a truly international company, we already used Slack intensively and all Google collaborative tools. Every meeting was already on Hangout for our American or Asian colleagues...so on the positive side, working from home has been bringing all of us at the same level now that no-one is in the meeting room when some other are on the video call. No dissymmetric meetings anymore. Equal access for all...

But after a while, we start also seeing some inconvenient. It seems to me that more recent and youngest employees are the ones who miss the office the most. It is quite logical after all, they are the ones who need the most to build a network of relationships and embrace the company codes and culture. While employees who have been here for 5 or 10 years have established it already. Not to mention of course, that working from home is not the best if you share a flat with other roommates all working at the same time there, if you have to deal with small kids or cook for a big family for every meal now… I also wonder about the impact on the company cultures without real contacts from time to time. These moments of togetherness do count. We have organized virtual coffee breaks to randomly meet other employees, encouraged managers to organize team dinners outside, etc…

The main word in such situations is communications. We do management videos and streams, from home to keep the personal link. But I truly believe we could do much more. In such situations, we need to double-down on communication. 

10. Looking forward to a new continent. Abandon the old.

As soon as we start sailing to discover a new continent, it is essential to stop looking back to the old one we just left. The new world will be different. The new continent can be better if we take the opportunity to make it better. No one knows how long the virus will last. One thing was clear since the beginning: it will be longer than we all think. So the best is to go and build a new world for as long as necessary and never really come back to the ancient one.

For esports, the current situation has been driving new ways to produce events, new learning, new possibilities to connect with our fans. I am not saying big stadium events will disappear. They will be back, no doubt about that. But esports was always more than that and it will be enriched now with an even larger portfolio of solutions and stories from the new continent.

When we will look back at esports history, 2020 will be seen as a defining moment and an accelerator for the industry.

I am pretty sure about that. And the 27th. of February in Katowice will certainly be the date this new chapter begun.