Gaming
ODEE speaks about his future in League of Legends, Dota and more.
Michael "ODEE" O'Dell has been in the eSports scene almost since its inception. Originally a professional Battlefield player in the early 2000s he went on to form and become the managing director of Team Dignitas, which has grown to become one of the biggest and most recognisable eSports organisations in the world.
Dignitas has top teams in Counter Strike, League of Legends and Hearthstone to name just a few and are constantly on the lookout for new teams to add to that roster. This year has been a busy one for Dignitas, with teams joining and leaving the organisation, and that looks set to continue heading forward. To find out just what the future holds for Dignitas we sat down with ODEE at DreamHack London last weekend for a tête-à-tête.
“This year we have had a rebuilding process,” explains ODEE. “At the end of last year we lost a lot of top stars, which happens in eSports, but now it’s a big hit because if you lose a top star you lose 100,000 followers on Twitter. We have been building during the first half of this year to replace what we lost and we are quite happy with where we are going at the moment. The company is making money now, we are paying over 40 players a month, whereas two years ago we were paying ten. Now it seems that if you join Dignitas you’ll probably get a salary as soon as you join, and salary is a loose term, it can be £500 [€688] a month up to a proper salary of £2,000 [€2,752] upwards.”
One of the things that Dignitas has been known for over the last few years has been picking up teams or players early on in a competitive game’s life. The organisation has ventured into titles such as Smite, Trackmania and Hearthstone relatively early on, while also taking part in the more established titles, but was this something they intentionally did?
“In the past we didn’t really care what games we had. The criteria was that we like the game, so we didn’t follow the cool kids, as I call them, and go for the top eSports games. In the last several years we wanted to be ahead of the game and look early at the new and trending games that are going to be big eSports titles. We have been looking early to get in and pick up teams – some have worked some have failed miserably, but that’s eSports, that happens. We have just signed a new Heroes of the Storm team. I can’t say who it is yet, but it’s a good one and they will be at one of the Blizzard regionals, we are announcing them on October 1, but we are happy with that one, it’s a top team.”
The rebuilt Dignitas roster is already fairly impressive, with teams in League of Legends, Smite, CS:GO, Trackmania, StarCraft, Hearthstone, FIFA and a whole host of streamers, but are there any other eSports that ODEE wants to get into?
“Dota. I would like to go into Dota 2. It’s really annoying because we had a team, they were good, and now three of the guys who won the last International played for us so it’s kind of annoying. Dota is a great eSport, but also a horrible eSport because as soon as The International is over, teams split up and there is a shuffle. The starting salaries for an average team are now silly: if we went into Dota it is going to cost us $250,000 straight away and for that investment where is the return? That’s where I have my feet on the ground, I have seen so many things come and go and fail, so we will move when I know we can actually break even or make a profit on it.”
ODEE may be eyeing up a return to Dota but right now it's the other major MOBA, League of Legends that is causing issues. Team Dignitas is currently in the process of having to sell one of its League of Legends teams as their European squad qualified for the EU LCS earlier in the year and the LCS rules state that one team cannot have two LCS teams. This means that either the American team or the European team will be sold, and right now the organisation is looking for potential buyers.
“We didn’t actually set out to make two LCS teams,” ODEE reveals. “When we picked up the EU team I was chatting to Ram ‘Brokenshard’ Djemal about who he would recommend as a coach for my NA team and then he mentioned their contracts were out with their team. I started thinking it would be cool to have an EU team to go to some LANs because I missed League of Legends at LANs. So that’s what we did, but then they got good and qualified for LCS. It’s a good problem to have but we have to sell one. I wouldn’t say it's stressful but I want to know which one we are keeping.”
A spot in the LCS is one of the most sought-after commodities in eSports, so the sale of a team is sure to bring in a lot of money to Team Dignitas. But what exactly will the organisation do with all the money that comes in?
“Definitely invest it in our team in our staff. We are investing a lot in our staff to build more sustainability for ourselves. And of course we will invest in our teams: it means we could go out and get a Dota team tomorrow with that kind of money coming in, and just investing in our salaries and our players and treating our players well. Something that we want to happen next year for LCS, whatever our team is, whoever the five players are, we are going to send them on holiday somewhere. So if we have our NA team we want to go to somewhere like Hawaii for five days about a month before LCS starts, just so that they can get it all out of their system, have a laugh and then come back and work hard.”
“In five or ten years I want to make sure that we are self-sustainable, that would be ideal. Hopefully like most sports entities we will be able to do that from attending events. I think in ten years’ time people will be paying for teams to be coming to events like the tennis tours – if you qualify for an event you get an appearance fee. The fan base will be much bigger so the merchandise sales will be a lot more than they are now hopefully. I want to make sure that the players are on ridiculous salaries.”
ODEE clearly has a plan for the future of his company and how he sees them getting there but what does he have planned for the near future?
“We have our teams where we want them to be, so over the next few months we need to get them to the events. Our salaries are good for our players, we make sure the players are happy that they go where they want to, but there is literally not a tournament that we won’t go to because we want to be everywhere. We have had a lot of rebuilding especially in LoL. I think next year’s going to be better, touch wood. I have got to sign maybe another player or two, and we have to revamp the way that we have done things. A lot of the LCS stuff especially has been trial and error but I think we have a good system now and we know what to do. At the end of the day you need the players to win and you need the team to click so that will be out focus. I want to do better in LoL.”
