Looking For Feedback

[rrobins]

Hi all, my group and I were tasked at school to come up with an idea and develop a business plan to go along with it.

The general concept we came up with is a pub that caters not only to the sports community, but also the community that follows E-Sports. The pub will provide television access for events from both followings, due to the rise of E-Sports in the past years. Viewership has risen from a small niche, to a worldwide phenomenon with over 3 million concurrent viewers for large events. The other side of the business will be a rent-able event room that will have access to power and internet for personal computers. This will require the acquisition of a server as well the purchasing and installation of network cabling and security measures. The technical and physical requirements will be taken care of and maintained by one of the current partners. When not in use, walk-in rentals will be available at a fixed rate, or a nightly rate for the entire evening.

Our Questions:
Does this sound like a good idea?
Any advice of anything we should take into consideration before moving forward?

Any feedback would really help.

Thanks

[Fulcrum]

Possibly.

What is your definition of an E-sport? Live gaming streams (ex. Twitch.tv) or other sporting events?

[vangogh]

Welcome to the forum.

One question I have is how sure are you that sports fans and e-sports fans are the same market? Something tells me there's not as much overlap as the common word "sport" might indicate. I could be wrong, since e-sports is something that didn't exist when I was growing up, but it's never struck me that sports and video games drew the same kind of market. I'm sure there are people who like both, but my guess is they're separate markets.

Better might be to create an all e-sports pub. That would let you differentiate your business from the typical pub. Be the place to have a good time while watching e-sports and not a pub with sports and e-sports on tv. Assuming they are different markets, if you try to cater to both, you'll please neither. You're better off being either the best e-sports pub or the best sports pub. It's difficult trying to be both.

[Harold Mansfield]

What is e-sports?

[rrobins]

Possibly.

What is your definition of an E-sport? Live gaming streams (ex. Twitch.tv) or other sporting events?

It would be twitch steams mainly, for example League of Legends hold matches Friday Saturday Sunday. We could show other channel on request it doesn't just have to be the big events.

[rrobins]

An e-sport is competitive gaming that is broadcast mainly on websites such as twitch.tv, mlg.tv and has also found its way to networks such as espn from time to time.

[rrobins]

Welcome to the forum.

One question I have is how sure are you that sports fans and e-sports fans are the same market? Something tells me there's not as much overlap as the common word "sport" might indicate. I could be wrong, since e-sports is something that didn't exist when I was growing up, but it's never struck me that sports and video games drew the same kind of market. I'm sure there are people who like both, but my guess is they're separate markets.

Better might be to create an all e-sports pub. That would let you differentiate your business from the typical pub. Be the place to have a good time while watching e-sports and not a pub with sports and e-sports on tv. Assuming they are different markets, if you try to cater to both, you'll please neither. You're better off being either the best e-sports pub or the best sports pub. It's difficult trying to be both.

The lack of overlap is something that we have have thought about and do not have a steadfast answer for. I think you may be right about just focusing on the one group of people. Not to say that people who enjoy both don't exist (myself and a decent sized group of us from school being the examples) but i do see it creating a smaller niche than by just focusing on the social stream-watcher.

[Harold Mansfield]

Interesting. I have an XBOX One and Twitch account and I had no idea it was called "e-sports". I guess I'm out of the loop.

I noticed you said "pub".
What country are you in? If US, what state? Would your location be near a college campus?

I don't think the e-sports thing is as big a draw as you think it is, and even if it is, the bigger picture is that opening a bar is a huge undertaking. You should put most of your energy on the decor, food and spirits offering. It's not such a big deal to stream whatever you want on the screens so that's not really a huge concern. When it's all said and done, e-sports or not, you won't make any money if the beer isn't cold, the food isn't good, the staff isn't nice and professional and the place isn't comfortable. Getting that formula down is much harder than you think.

I've worked in sports bars that had game console areas and ran tournaments and it wasn't a big money maker, but that probably had more to do with this particular market.

The thing is that many people go into the bar business thinking that their going to open the place that they and their friends want to hang out in, but not necessarily what's going to make any money after opening day and you have to attract and keep strangers.

I've seen all kinds of bars work, and fail. The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing. And that's keeping people coming back and money going into the register. And that means the core of the business..the booze, food and staff part..needs to be on point or all the games in the world won't work.