International Hustle | Edition #84

JAN 14
Hello gals and pals!
We got to 40% open rate last week, I see you. This is a tasty edition, let's dive.

Made by Franco

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🌎 International Hustle
So TheGrefg, a Spanish streamer + co-owner of Team Heretics, broke all records with 2.5M viewers on Twitch for his own Fortnite skin announcement. Two things to have in mind here:

Another record, and of course, Fortnite is attached to it. Epic Games is still the king of events and it won't stop anytime soon.
The English-speaking audience is bigger than Spanish or Portuguese, mainly because the world (including a good % of Spanish and Portuguese people) understand English. In the west, the main companies, leagues, teams, major sponsors are from the USA, meaning that the possibilities to find success at a big scale goes to English-speaking people. TheGrefg momentum is a result of many factors, but the most important one is that English audiences have an ocean of well known streamers to pick from, while you can count with your fingers the amount of massive Spanish-speaking streamers getting English stats, which ends up in Spanish-speaking fans getting funnelled at full force towards one or two streamers. In this case, TheGrefg or Ibai.

THE Opportunity
For teams or startups thinking"omg I would fucking kill to have TheGrefg on my team". Well, there are better (and cheaper) options. I'll tell you a lil secret that international people don't like to admit (I'm from Argentina): We know that USA is what its at. We do, and every streamers' audience know it as well. When we see somebody hustle enough to make it to the USA scene, we follow that person + consume content and goods from him/her. It's like Son playing for Tottenham Hotspur, now every South Korean fan is a Spurs fans.

Esports teams are just starting to bet on this. Do you want to compete vs everybody for US players, or you want to hire an Argentine pro player or an Italian streamer and literally double your audience for a salary probably lower than your CS:GO worst player? NA teams thought that Brazil was the only market big enough worth going through Visa paperwork. Talent is global, harder to find.. but is there. Sign a Colombian player/streamer and the entire country will follow. EU teams were born on this concept, that's why FNATIC barely have British players, shit I bet most of you didn't even know FNATIC was based in London. NA gaming is literally starting the globalization process right now (with FlyQuest and FaZe Clan as examples), and with Visas soon to be more accessible because of the elections, you better start putting more effort on scouting. But how do you scout internationals? Well, thats a convo for another day.

👂 The Future of Tech
Here is everything announced at CES 2021.

💡 Game Spotlight: RUST
Why is it experiencing a popularity boom?

🕹 For the Collectors

Arcade1Up announced new X-Men arcade and Pong pub table.
Latest Xbox Series controller.

🔌 What The People Wanted
It's happening. Ubisoft partnered with Lucasfilm to create a story-driven open-world Star Wars game. Curiosity takeaways:

This game has The Mandalorian inspiration blueprint to create something truly incredible.
Star Wars has been very collab-friendly with gaming in 2020, I'm sure they will bring some never ever seen (or expected) collabs for this project.
It will be a complex game like Cyberpunk, so a humble advice would be to not tease a lot and postpone like crazy. Play it mysterious and BANG, release the game out of nowhere to catch people without high expectations. In 2014, Lady Gaga teased her new album for months; Beyonce released hers that year at late-night without any previous announcement and crushed Gaga. Star Wars is the Beyonce of gaming, no need to promise shit... you already are the shit.

🎞 Trailer of the Week
Returnal - Combat for PS5.

🚫 L of the Week
Hogwarts Legacy, postponed to 2022.

🎙 Ninja's Next Step
Voice acting. It makes sense from everywhere you see it. Streaming is an audio experience at large. If you put an athlete like Steph Curry as voice for an animated movie, a lot of people won't recognize him, because we watch him play and eventually talk on interviews or commercials. People watching Ninja's streams are constantly hearing his voice. At the first second of the movie kids will be like— holy shit that's Ninja! Once again, he paves the way for gamers into culture, this time: Hollywood.

🐦Thread of the Week
Behind The Pirate Bay, by Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi.

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Pokemon x Katy Perry

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Fall Guys x Doom

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SPOTLIGHT
G2 Esports partners with Adidas. The video announcement, in my opinion, one of the best we have seen in esports and gaming. Carlos está loco de la cabeza, pero de los locos que cambian el mundo.

OTHERS