Casey Wehr, CEO of PVP Live, decided it was time to do something about all that confusion. So he created PVP Live, a site dedicated to all things eSports where they plan to stream matches five days a week to condition people to tune in each week.
I sat down with Casey to talk to him about what PVP Live is doing for the eSports scene and where he plans to take the site in the future.
Ryan Martinez (RM): For readers who don’t already know, what is PVP Live all about?
RM: We understand you want get people into the habit of tuning into eSport matches on a regular basis. What’s been the response from fans about that idea?
From a content standpoint, we often use the phrase “player-driven narrative,” but our content team could more honestly be described as player-obsessed. As fans ourselves, the players are the reason we make the leap from game-players to game-spectators in the first place. They inspire us, and we want to provide a platform for them to inspire the entire eSports audience, and of course, the next generation of players at home just loading the games up for the first time.
Not only do the fans appreciate having regular content that they can plan around, but even our fellow content creators in eSports are seeing the benefits. A good example of this is BlizzPro, one of the pillars of the Blizzard game community. Their correspondent Dannie Ray live tweets the show each night, which helps him boost his reach to the Hearthstone audience, but he also posts regular weekly recaps tracking the season-long progress of the players. This is in stark contrast to the usual burst of content for a weekend-only tournament, followed by a dearth of anything worth covering in the scene.
RM: A quick look at PVP Live shows you have an impressive list of players that are part of your leagues. Have teams been coming to you wanting to join of PVP Live?
RM: Obviously not everyone can sign up with you, so how do you select the teams and players that join your leagues?
RM: We’ve also been told you have a dedicated rulebook and admins for your events. Have you had trouble getting players to agree to play by your rules?
We skipped invitations and public qualifiers all together and instead approached a series of the most established, highest tier teams in esports. They selected two of their best players for the HPL active roster. The results of this approach are apparent every night on HPL, as the players continuously push the boundaries of competitive play, offering the fans a level of skill and flair not seen in any other Hearthstone event, bar none.
RM: Judging by the stats on PVP Live you’ve had an impressive run with LoL, Hearthstone, and DOTA 2. Hosting dozens of events and thousands of matches for each. Do you play on expanding and covering other competitive games?
RM: Obviously building something like PVP Live is never easy but how difficult was it for you to get Twitch streamers and developers on board with the idea of a ‘ESPN of eSports’?
RM: Now on top of working with Twitch streamers and game developers to host events your also building a 24/7 news center for eSports. Have you run into many problems getting that off the ground?
RM: So eventually do you plan to have a regular group of news casters covering specific games or will it be a constant rotation of new people?
I want to thank Casey Wehr for taking the time to sit down and talk to me about PVP Live. It was exciting to learn about the huge amount of work that has gone into making it the ESPN of eSports and where it’s headed now. I also want to encourage everyone to check out PVP Live for themselves to see everything that it has to offer.
