How one exec moved from pro sports to esports
How one exec moved from pro sports to esports
Esports learned a lot from traditional sports. Now the tables have turned, says Kristin Connelly, co-head of Activision Blizzard Esports.
At first blush, Kristin Connelly’s career seems like a tale told in two chapters.
In the first, she managed marketing for two professional sports teams competing in a league founded the same year that World War I officially ended. (That’d be the Baltimore Ravens and New York Jets of the National Football League, created in 1920.)
In the second, she led marketing for a virtual sports league established the same year that “Despacito” dominated the airwaves. (That’d be Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch League, founded in 2017.)
But talk to her about that shift and it’s clear that her move from sports to esports is less a leap than “an evolution,” as she puts it.
We caught up with Connelly, who both co-leads Activision Blizzard Esports and serves as its vice president of global marketing, as a record-breaking heatwave descended on her home in the New York City metro area.
You’ve spent most of your career in sports. Did you always want to work in the industry?
I'm really into sports. At [the University of] Penn[sylvania] I played field hockey. I took classes at Wharton [business school] and wanted to get into marketing. I liked being in front of the consumer.
My family are big NFL fans—we're from Maryland, so the Baltimore Ravens—and I joined that organization for a year. But I was looking to move to a bigger market and go deeper into marketing. So I moved to New York City and joined the Madison Ave ad agency world. I worked for J. Walter Thompson (now Wunderman Thompson) and got great consumer marketing experience working with pharmaceutical companies. But I missed the diehard fandom aspect.
In 2010, the New York Giants and Jets were building the brand-new MetLife Stadium and the Jets were looking for a marketing manager with an ad background. I joined and stayed there seven years, ending up overseeing marketing, communications, and graphic design.
Why did you miss sports fandom? Don’t people get excited about Neutrogena, too?
I've always been someone who's brand loyal. I don't buy many private-label store brands; I stick to the brands I trust. When you think about fandom and sports, it's not just loyalty; it's identity. It’s your community, tribe, friends, families. It's an integral part of how you spend your time.
Being able, as a marketer, to shape someone's experience and create opportunities that they'll never forget for the rest of their life? That's huge.
When I joined the Jets, I was able to influence how people spend their game days. I planned out the activations for kids under 12 who came to the stadium for the first time: what certificate they get, what things they go home with. Those moments where you see a little kid's face light up with mom, dad, or granddad? That could be the most positive thing they experience that day, week, month, or year. That means a lot to me.
Even if it’s the Jets.
Even if it's the Jets. (laughs)
I’m being a little unfair, I know. The Jets fandom is genuinely diehard—you have to be when you’re a famously under-appreciated team. What made you jump to esports?
I was taking night classes at NYU Stern. Going to business school, I studied global marketing and advertising. I studied abroad in Turkey for two weeks. That trip made me realize that marketing for a 75-mile radius, the home market for a professional sports team in New York, was too small for me.
I wanted the opportunity to market to a global fan. I wanted to think strategically about talking to different people around the world. In 2016, the NFL felt it wasn't moving fast enough in digital and social media—it was worried about reaching younger fans. And it dawned on me that I wanted to try working for a brand that was more relevant to younger consumers, rather than trying to pivot to them.
That year, Blizzard announced the Overwatch League. I played video games growing up: Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario Kart, GoldenEye 007. But I didn't consider myself a gamer and didn't know much about many other games. Coming from traditional sports, though, I understood esports. I started at Blizzard in June 2017.
Esports has the passionate fandom [of traditional sports] but it's a fully global fanbase. It's young. It's innovative. Digital first. Social savvy. Even though it’s been around for 20 years, the esports industry is still new, nascent, scrappy. And I've always felt at home in that environment.
Overwatch really spoke to me because of its positive, inclusive environment. I loved that it created that tribal connection, but in a positive way. The first year of the Overwatch League was so special. The community rejoiced that they finally had something that was theirs. It brought together their favorite game and their lifelong friends. When we held the Grand Finals in Philadelphia and Brooklyn, people came from all over—drove in, flew in. To see thousands of people come together like that in person was electrifying.
It clearly struck a nerve. Today you oversee marketing and content for Overwatch League as well as Call of Duty League and World Series of Warzone. In hindsight, was your path through traditional sports the right one?
My journey feels like the perfect evolution for me. You can't just say you want to work in sports or esports and not have an idea what you want to do within that. You have to really establish what your craft is.
For me, that’s marketing. The marketing team has to have the fan at the forefront. All of the decisions are to benefit, or create an incredible experience for, the fan. Working in the entertainment industry is just a bonus. It's easy to market when you have a passionate fanbase.
Most major sports leagues have been around a century. They have well-established traditions, storylines, and rivalries. All of that is useful and important for esports. My time in traditional sports provided the right foundation for the jobs I’ve had since. Esports is still up-and-coming.
That’s an interesting choice of words, “up and coming.” On the one hand, an esports championship can attract hundreds of thousands of fans—an attractive prospect for most traditional sports leagues. On the other, it’s not like I hear my parents, who are in their 60s, talking about the LA Thieves beating the Atlanta FaZe in last year’s Call of Duty League Championships. What does “up and coming” mean to you?
Commercialization, which drives the business. Monetizing media rights and sponsorships and merchandise. As an industry, esports is still early on that.
And there are so many different esports. So many different games that have leagues. It's so much more fragmented than saying "soccer."
And remember, it's a very young fanbase. Our average fan is 25 years old. Twenty years from now we'll be in a different place, purely by generational change.
We used to think of different forms of entertainment as completely separate categories. But it’s never been clearer that books, music, movies, tv, concerts, social media, and sports are all competing for the same minutes of attention. What does it mean for esports? Marketing?
Esports is still the future, but I think a lot about the future of entertainment. It’s culture—the blend of music, video, events, all of it. Generation Z and Generation Alpha aren't separating gaming from watching Netflix or watching live sports. It's all entertainment.
We make games at Activision Blizzard, but I'm thinking about how I serve our fans in all facets.
How do we leverage technology and the new opportunities to foster that community? It all comes back to these tribes, these shared experiences we're creating. As lines are blurred between different areas of entertainment, and as artificial intelligence is incorporated, how do we deepen communities and continue to celebrate that level of fandom? As time passes and technology evolves, I don't think it's necessarily different. If anything, we're just increasing access and reach. And gaming is now at the forefront of culture and entertainment in a way that it wasn't even 10 years ago.
As for marketing, I'm an adjunct professor at Columbia [University], where I teach sports marketing. So much of my future is the fan but also fostering the next generation of leaders in sports and esports. The way we've been doing marketing has changed so much, even in the last few years. We used to do TV buys; now we're launching on TikTok. Content is the glue. What "marketing" means today is so different than just "advertising." It's a 24/7/365 dialogue with a community.