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 A GUEST   NOV 19TH, 2017   33   NEVER

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Midas Mode is one of the most adventurous and unique esports tournaments we have ever seen. The team behind it has created an entire economy around Dota 2 heroes and mechanics, with teams having to manage their finances as well as winning games. Nothing like this has ever been done before, and we don’t even know if it will work, which is why it was a massive surprise to see big name sponsors, including the Kennedy Space Center, sign up.

This was the work of Jake “SirActionSlacks” Kanner, a Dota 2 host, caster and content creator who has taken the lead on the Midas Mode competition. Despite never working in sales, or doing much in the way of behind the scenes work on tournaments Slacks managed to pull in some big name sponsors, and even got the Space Center to enter esports for the first time.

In the second part of my interview with Slacks and Alan “Nahaz” Bester, who created the economy for Midas Mode, the pair reveal how they got both big sponsors and big name teams to get involved with the strange competition.


Mike Stubbs: You were pretty vocal on social media about your search for sponsors, and then suddenly you come up with these massive names like the Kennedy Space Center, so how did the search for sponsors go for you?

Jake “SirActionSlacks” Kanner: Oh, it went terribly. It was horrible. A big reason why I did this was because I wanted to move from being on-screen, on-camera talent to seeing how esports works in the backstage. What does it take to put on a tournament? It was a big challenge for myself to take that on and see how the different facets work.

The biggest revelation I had doing this was how difficult it is to get sponsorships, especially in the esports realm. I had no idea you had to approach people more than a year before to allocate budgets. There are a lot of people out there who were like: 'This is an amazing idea, we really want to be a part of it. But we have six other promises that we have already made nine months ago – we have no money'. So that was interesting.

It's especially dynamic in this year in Dota especially. Dota is opening itself up to sponsors for the first time, which sounds like it would be very easy to get new sponsorship, but in reality because that's happening, there's a huge tournament every two weeks. Scheduling was a nightmare. Finding any kind of sponsor that wasn't completely tapped out for the quarter or entire season was extremely difficult. It was a world I have never been a part of before.


I have got a degree in neuroscience. I have never worked in marketing or business and I learnt what it was like to cold call people, what it was like to think very uniquely about age demographics and it was something else. Honestly, a lot of it was the community stepping up. I was talking a lot and being very vocal about how my struggles were going, how my hard was work was finding people. It was people knowing people, as it is in the sales world, then eventually getting into some contact that would prove to be fruitful.

I don't know how you business guys do it. You just cold call, send about ten emails a day, you never get any replies back, you feel horrible about yourself, you never know if they have read them. It was super interesting.

Alan “Nahaz” Bester: There's a reason that CEOs make a lot of money. It's not fun, it really isn't. From a personal standpoint, I was actually glad that Slacks was so vocal about the search for sponsors because I think it shed some light on some issues that a lot of people in the community might not know. This is going to be relevant for other tournaments this year, now that Uncle Valve isn't opening the pocket for every tournament, these are third-party tournaments that are producing events, which in my opinion it should be. But they have to pay the bills. I think because of some of these experiences that we're having this year, that if you try and run the same event a year from now, it's going to be a very different experience, it's going to be a lot easier.

When you look at the exposure that Mercedes Benz got at ESL, this organic viral marketing is very difficult to achieve in any other background. That's the kind of thing you can get in esports where if you sponsor an event that goes well, all of a sudden the front page of the Reddit for this game is full of memes about your new sedan. Sponsors are going to drool over stuff like that.

Kanner: Yeah. It's interesting how long it's taken sponsors to get that. I'm sure Mercedes had no idea that's how it was going to be. One of our smartest sponsors was the Kennedy Space Centre, who way before ESL One Hamburg happened, they thought: 'Here is a group of some nerds that are in our age demographic, that are going to want to know about what we do and we can imagine that this off-brand, goofy sponsorship of this tournament can really work in our favour. People could just talk about it because we're sponsoring and grow it in there in that culture'. Hopefully more traditional companies realise that this kind of integrated into the product advertising is certainly the way to go, especially when you're trying to target this kind of demographic, which is growing every single day. Esports is getting bigger and bigger and just getting more profitable for these companies that get to be a part of it.

Stubbs: It isn’t just the big name sponsors that surprised a lot of people, you also have some of the best teams in the world taking part. In a year where teams seem to constantly be playing in qualifiers and at Minors/Majors, how did you get them to agree to this 10 day event?


Kanner: Mostly just a lot of begging and bribery. All jokes aside, actually they were super into the tournament idea. It's strange. You wouldn't think that these big teams would be interested in these goofy, off-brand tournaments but every time that we've done something like an Elimination Mode or now, Midas Mode, approaching the teams has been actually very easy. They're eager to play something new and something interesting because it built up a lot of new ideas within their team.

This mode in particular I think a lot of the big teams were interested in because it requires both teams to have unique drafting. It gives them an idea of what potential strategies could work together that they hadn't thought of before with very weird hero line-ups and synergies, but it also gives them a peek into what other teams could potentially run in the future that they might be trying to hide, or their unique picks and what they're really good at.

When it comes down to it, esports is special in that way. Our pro players and our biggest teams are just gamers like us and they want funny, goofy stuff as well. I really had no problems at all getting these huge teams to play. They were super eager to do it and super thankful that they took time out as well.

Bester: While I agree with everything that Jake just said, he's also being very modest right now. Teaching exec MBAs at Chicago that you see in some of the best business people out there is that they have this ability to get other people excited about an idea. That's what Jake does really well. He put a lot of sweat equity into this in terms of getting these teams just excited about the idea, and I think he does that right now better than anyone else in the Dota 2 scene.

Kanner: Oh you, stop. Thanks.
RAW Paste Data

Midas Mode is one of the most adventurous and unique esports tournaments we have ever seen. The team behind it has created an entire economy around Dota 2 heroes and mechanics, with teams having to manage their finances as well as winning games. Nothing like this has ever been done before, and we don’t even know if it will work, which is why it was a massive surprise to see big name sponsors, including the Kennedy Space Center, sign up.

This was the work of Jake “SirActionSlacks” Kanner, a Dota 2 host, caster and content creator who has taken the lead on the Midas Mode competition. Despite never working in sales, or doing much in the way of behind the scenes work on tournaments Slacks managed to pull in some big name sponsors, and even got the Space Center to enter esports for the first time.

In the second part of my interview with Slacks and Alan “Nahaz” Bester, who created the economy for Midas Mode, the pair reveal how they got both big sponsors and big name teams to get involved with the strange competition.


Mike Stubbs: You were pretty vocal on social media about your search for sponsors, and then suddenly you come up with these massive names like the Kennedy Space Center, so how did the search for sponsors go for you?

Jake “SirActionSlacks” Kanner: Oh, it went terribly. It was horrible. A big reason why I did this was because I wanted to move from being on-screen, on-camera talent to seeing how esports works in the backstage. What does it take to put on a tournament? It was a big challenge for myself to take that on and see how the different facets work.

The biggest revelation I had doing this was how difficult it is to get sponsorships, especially in the esports realm. I had no idea you had to approach people more than a year before to allocate budgets. There are a lot of people out there who were like: 'This is an amazing idea, we really want to be a part of it. But we have six other promises that we have already made nine months ago – we have no money'. So that was interesting.

It's especially dynamic in this year in Dota especially. Dota is opening itself up to sponsors for the first time, which sounds like it would be very easy to get new sponsorship, but in reality because that's happening, there's a huge tournament every two weeks. Scheduling was a nightmare. Finding any kind of sponsor that wasn't completely tapped out for the quarter or entire season was extremely difficult. It was a world I have never been a part of before.


I have got a degree in neuroscience. I have never worked in marketing or business and I learnt what it was like to cold call people, what it was like to think very uniquely about age demographics and it was something else. Honestly, a lot of it was the community stepping up. I was talking a lot and being very vocal about how my struggles were going, how my hard was work was finding people. It was people knowing people, as it is in the sales world, then eventually getting into some contact that would prove to be fruitful.

I don't know how you business guys do it. You just cold call, send about ten emails a day, you never get any replies back, you feel horrible about yourself, you never know if they have read them. It was super interesting.

Alan “Nahaz” Bester: There's a reason that CEOs make a lot of money. It's not fun, it really isn't. From a personal standpoint, I was actually glad that Slacks was so vocal about the search for sponsors because I think it shed some light on some issues that a lot of people in the community might not know. This is going to be relevant for other tournaments this year, now that Uncle Valve isn't opening the pocket for every tournament, these are third-party tournaments that are producing events, which in my opinion it should be. But they have to pay the bills. I think because of some of these experiences that we're having this year, that if you try and run the same event a year from now, it's going to be a very different experience, it's going to be a lot easier.

When you look at the exposure that Mercedes Benz got at ESL, this organic viral marketing is very difficult to achieve in any other background. That's the kind of thing you can get in esports where if you sponsor an event that goes well, all of a sudden the front page of the Reddit for this game is full of memes about your new sedan. Sponsors are going to drool over stuff like that.

Kanner: Yeah. It's interesting how long it's taken sponsors to get that. I'm sure Mercedes had no idea that's how it was going to be. One of our smartest sponsors was the Kennedy Space Centre, who way before ESL One Hamburg happened, they thought: 'Here is a group of some nerds that are in our age demographic, that are going to want to know about what we do and we can imagine that this off-brand, goofy sponsorship of this tournament can really work in our favour. People could just talk about it because we're sponsoring and grow it in there in that culture'. Hopefully more traditional companies realise that this kind of integrated into the product advertising is certainly the way to go, especially when you're trying to target this kind of demographic, which is growing every single day. Esports is getting bigger and bigger and just getting more profitable for these companies that get to be a part of it.

Stubbs: It isn’t just the big name sponsors that surprised a lot of people, you also have some of the best teams in the world taking part. In a year where teams seem to constantly be playing in qualifiers and at Minors/Majors, how did you get them to agree to this 10 day event?


Kanner: Mostly just a lot of begging and bribery. All jokes aside, actually they were super into the tournament idea. It's strange. You wouldn't think that these big teams would be interested in these goofy, off-brand tournaments but every time that we've done something like an Elimination Mode or now, Midas Mode, approaching the teams has been actually very easy. They're eager to play something new and something interesting because it built up a lot of new ideas within their team.

This mode in particular I think a lot of the big teams were interested in because it requires both teams to have unique drafting. It gives them an idea of what potential strategies could work together that they hadn't thought of before with very weird hero line-ups and synergies, but it also gives them a peek into what other teams could potentially run in the future that they might be trying to hide, or their unique picks and what they're really good at.

When it comes down to it, esports is special in that way. Our pro players and our biggest teams are just gamers like us and they want funny, goofy stuff as well. I really had no problems at all getting these huge teams to play. They were super eager to do it and super thankful that they took time out as well.

Bester: While I agree with everything that Jake just said, he's also being very modest right now. Teaching exec MBAs at Chicago that you see in some of the best business people out there is that they have this ability to get other people excited about an idea. That's what Jake does really well. He put a lot of sweat equity into this in terms of getting these teams just excited about the idea, and I think he does that right now better than anyone else in the Dota 2 scene.

Kanner: Oh you, stop. Thanks.


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