• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EDT 04:32
CEST 10:32
KST 17:32
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
Code S RO8 Preview: herO, Zoun, Bunny, Classic4Code S RO8 Preview: Rogue, GuMiho, Solar, Maru3BGE Stara Zagora 2025: Info & Preview27Code S RO12 Preview: GuMiho, Bunny, SHIN, ByuN3The Memories We Share - Facing the Final(?) GSL47
Community News
BGE Stara Zagora 2025 - Replay Pack2Weekly Cups (June 2-8): herO doubles down1[BSL20] ProLeague: Bracket Stage & Dates9GSL Ro4 and Finals moved to Sunday June 15th13Weekly Cups (May 27-June 1): ByuN goes back-to-back0
StarCraft 2
General
Code S RO8 Preview: herO, Zoun, Bunny, Classic Jim claims he and Firefly were involved in match-fixing The SCII GOAT: A statistical Evaluation DreamHack Dallas 2025 - Official Replay Pack BGE Stara Zagora 2025 - Replay Pack
Tourneys
[GSL 2025] Code S:Season 2 - RO8 - Group A RSL: Revival, a new crowdfunded tournament series SOOPer7s Showmatches 2025 Sparkling Tuna Cup - Weekly Open Tournament Sea Duckling Open (Global, Bronze-Diamond)
Strategy
[G] Darkgrid Layout Simple Questions Simple Answers [G] PvT Cheese: 13 Gate Proxy Robo
Custom Maps
[UMS] Zillion Zerglings
External Content
Mutation # 477 Slow and Steady Mutation # 476 Charnel House Mutation # 475 Hard Target Mutation # 474 Futile Resistance
Brood War
General
BW General Discussion BGH auto balance -> http://bghmmr.eu/ FlaSh Witnesses SCV Pull Off the Impossible vs Shu StarCraft & BroodWar Campaign Speedrun Quest Will foreigners ever be able to challenge Koreans?
Tourneys
[BSL20] GosuLeague RO16 - Tue & Wed 20:00+CET [ASL19] Grand Finals NA Team League 6/8/2025 [Megathread] Daily Proleagues
Strategy
I am doing this better than progamers do. [G] How to get started on ladder as a new Z player
Other Games
General Games
Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread Nintendo Switch Thread Beyond All Reason Path of Exile What do you want from future RTS games?
Dota 2
Official 'what is Dota anymore' discussion
League of Legends
Heroes of the Storm
Simple Questions, Simple Answers Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Heroes of StarCraft mini-set
TL Mafia
TL Mafia Community Thread Vanilla Mini Mafia
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread UK Politics Mega-thread Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine Russo-Ukrainian War Thread Vape Nation Thread
Fan Clubs
Maru Fan Club Serral Fan Club
Media & Entertainment
Korean Music Discussion [Manga] One Piece
Sports
2024 - 2025 Football Thread Formula 1 Discussion NHL Playoffs 2024
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread
TL Community
The Automated Ban List
Blogs
A Better Routine For Progame…
TrAiDoS
StarCraft improvement
iopq
Heero Yuy & the Tax…
KrillinFromwales
I was completely wrong ab…
jameswatts
Need Your Help/Advice
Glider
Trip to the Zoo
micronesia
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 28224 users

A Story About Josh K

Blogs > MrBitter
Post a Reply
MrBitter
Profile Joined January 2008
United States2940 Posts
Last Edited: 2021-08-12 00:32:08
August 11 2021 21:54 GMT
#1
I’m going to tell a story about HP Omen and specifically Josh Kocurek, presently the Director of Marketing at NZXT. A real visionary marketer, and a hell of a guy who really stuck his neck out to help us produce an awesome event in New York City.

I’m sure I’ll violate a few NDAs along the way, but I don’t think anyone will mind.

At the time of our story, Josh was leading HP Omen’s marketing efforts and had just inked one of the biggest sponsorship deals in esports history with the sweetheart client of the world, The Overwatch League.
https://venturebeat.com/2017/11/02/overwatch-league-gets-big-sponsors-with-hp-and-intel/

Before Josh and I worked together in New York, we took a few meetings during my time at Red Bull - a job I held for a little over 4 years and where I got to work on some incredible projects during the formative years of what I’m going to call modern esports.

One of the biggest and most important projects I got to work on at Red Bull was our sponsorship pitch to The Overwatch League. We had put together an amazing proposal. We were going to print Overwatch characters on like 100 million cans of Red Bull and distribute them globally. You would only be able to unlock the Zarya can if you found it in Russia where it would be exclusively sold. Same for Pharah and Egypt or Lucio in Brazil, or any number of the other characters around the world. And if you somehow collected them all you would get an unbelievable in-game reward and Red Bull experience. We were going to host global Overwatch Tournaments and run amateur events all around the world.



It was going to be an incredible investment from Red Bull and we were prepared to PAY the Overwatch League $2 million for that privilege.
[image loading]
We took the deal really far, and a lot of great people at Blizzard really stuck their necks out to make it happen, but it ultimately fell through.

Anyway, Josh and I had that in common. We had both really worked hard to make a great pitch to the Overwatch League.

And at the time of our story, my awesome team in New York is getting to work on planning one of the coolest projects I’ve ever been a part of, during a really cool time in esports and on the eve of the Overwatch League Grand Finals.

https://archive.esportsobserver.com/nyxl-homecoming/

Getting that event to happen was a feat of incredible strength. At the core of it, you had a small and passionate team of people who really believed we could build a meaningful, sustainable, generational esports business in New York City. But the mindset of our management team was that anything we did, had to be strictly justified on its basis of making money. We’re building a business.

In other words, if we didn’t give our owners and investors a reason this wasn’t just a frugal spend, they weren’t going to do it.

And for anyone who knows anything about planning events in New York, it takes months of hard work and oftentimes lots of money to do anything like what we built - a dope party celebrating our beloved team coming home to New York for the first time. They were heartbroken after being upset in the playoffs, but the week they’d have in New York would be uplifting, and a powerful argument for how awesome esports localization can be.

[image loading]

So when we set out on the journey to create the NYXL Homecoming, we did it on the assumption that we would surely be able to raise $100k-$150k in sponsorship money to cover, or at least offset the cost of the event. Fast forward the months of planning and down payments required to run any event, and we’ve closed zero dollars in sponsorship sales.

The sponsorship landscape was extremely difficult. Every big sponsor in esports was either already involved with Overwatch League, or if they wanted to be, had no real reason or obligation to partner with a team instead of the league. Once you’re on Overwatch League, you really don’t need to be on anything else to be seen in Overwatch - and you’re not really going to be seen anywhere else.

We would eventually close other deals with other amazing sponsors but, it was Josh’s deal that actually allowed the event to happen.

A boardroom of a professional Overwatch League team can be an amazing place, and also a very intense, calculating, or even political place. You’re sitting around a table with billionaires. Everything you say in that room matters.

And these guys ask very simple questions: How much will it cost? Why are we doing it?

And sometimes the feedback they give goes from being very simple - “It’s going to be hot, make sure the air conditioning works”, down to the very ridiculous - “we should dress up cosplayers and have them pick up trash around the city and call it the local heroes series”.

Honestly, brilliant idea Scott Wilpon, we absolutely should have done that, it would have been awesome.

I say this to try and set the stage for the meeting when I sat in a room with Scott and other members of the board and realized the extreme pressure, expectation, and scrutiny that this event would create AT LEAST $100k in sponsorship revenue. This is the sweetheart team of the biggest story in esports and it's the first time they’ll ever be in New York City for the first time. Someone has to want to sponsor this.

But the reality was, a lot of sponsors weren’t in a position to spend more on Overwatch during that time. And in the board room, we were having a very real conversation around “do we need to cancel this event?” because we weren’t sure if we were prepared to have a $150k red row in our spreadsheet.

Enter Josh K. Josh, who I sat across from in a couple of cool Red Bull meetings who knew how hard we worked to close Overwatch and who saw all the other dope stuff we did at Red Bull.

Josh K who was under tons of pressure to justify spending another $100k on Overwatch when he’s already invested so much. And in a landscape where every other sponsor knows that sponsoring the event probably isn’t really worth more than $5k-$10k max, especially when they’re already so visible everywhere else.

And Josh comes through. He decided to write us a $100k check. He brought a local vendor, the legendary B&H Photo Video - Electronics and Camera Store in Manhattan who supplied us with like 24 of these ridiculous HP Omen Cube PCs which are incredible computers but are the absolute worst size PC to use for any event ever in the world. They look so cool but moving them, setting them up, staging them, shooting them, making sure they’re not in the way of everything else - they’re difficult. It’s not a pc that does well in rows on a table.

[image loading]


But they looked amazing in the room, they ran great and it was a real treat for our local fans to come play on them in a Free For All tournament against our pro players during the party.
https://twitter.com/jetset_/status/1022967053328805888/photo/1

The event was awesome. People lined up, celebrated our team and our local community, and had a great time. The air conditioner did, in fact, break, but the fans, the games, the music, and the vibes were all, in the end, awesome.

And in the end it did end up being a red row on our spreadsheet. But it wouldn’t have happened without awesome marketers like Josh sticking their necks out to do cool things in esports.

Anyway. That’s why I bought an HP Omen PC.

It still runs great and I’d recommend it to anyone that asked.

<3


***
select_clothes1444
Profile Joined July 2021
22 Posts
August 12 2021 10:45 GMT
#2
buy hp #ad wouldve been enough
Freeedom
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States199 Posts
August 12 2021 18:10 GMT
#3
thanks for this great read!
PSISTORM Gaming owner - twitter.com/karljayg - facebook.com/KJfreeedom
RaGe
Profile Blog Joined July 2004
Belgium9947 Posts
August 15 2021 14:30 GMT
#4
Nice read.

Didn't realize you quit Red Bull though. Their esports division is pretty amazing, and I loved a lot of the events they were responsible for.

If I'm not mistaken, you were also partially responsible for pushing them in to Melee content, and I love you for that. Thanks dude.
Moderatorsometimes I get intimidated by the size of my right testicle
HornyHerring
Profile Joined March 2011
Papua New Guinea1058 Posts
August 15 2021 19:58 GMT
#5
Interesting story. I've had 2 HP laptops, they were horrible. Never again will I buy a piece of HP tech.
oh, hai
atrox_
Profile Joined November 2010
United Kingdom1710 Posts
August 16 2021 10:18 GMT
#6
was this a cool storytime or just an attempt at advertising?
MrBitter
Profile Joined January 2008
United States2940 Posts
Last Edited: 2021-08-16 18:08:55
August 16 2021 18:08 GMT
#7
lol, I'm surprised people keep asking but I'll address it -

this is not a paid post. I thought it was a funny way to sign off.

Sorry for the confusion.

edit: intent was really just to share a cool story about a project I was proud of with some context around what had to happen to make it all happen.
MrBitter
Profile Joined January 2008
United States2940 Posts
August 16 2021 18:10 GMT
#8
Didn't realize you quit Red Bull though. Their esports division is pretty amazing, and I loved a lot of the events they were responsible for.

If I'm not mistaken, you were also partially responsible for pushing them in to Melee content, and I love you for that. Thanks dude.


<3 thanks for that. I'm very proud of the great work we did creating Red Bull Battle Grounds, Red Bull Proving Grounds, Red Bull Conquest, and Red Bull Smash Gods and Gatekeepers. It was a really special time to be working in esports. I will probably write more about it soon.
alpenrahm
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
Germany628 Posts
August 19 2021 21:37 GMT
#9
Bitter sc2 needs you. Come back to us!
Master of DalK
Profile Blog Joined June 2012
Canada1797 Posts
August 25 2021 20:03 GMT
#10
So the A/C DID BREAK, here I thought I was going insane backstage. I figured that homecoming event was crazy in pre-prod but its cool to hear all of the effort that went into it from your end few years later homie.
@MasterDalK | Maelstrom Entertainment | Streaming Every Esport Under the Sun
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
Next event in 58m
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
Livibee 143
mcanning 141
ProTech56
StarCraft: Brood War
Mong 1483
BeSt 1246
Sea 1158
actioN 316
EffOrt 296
Leta 113
Sharp 56
sSak 39
hero 30
Nal_rA 20
[ Show more ]
HiyA 10
NaDa 5
zelot 5
ivOry 4
Dota 2
BananaSlamJamma386
XcaliburYe368
Fuzer 219
League of Legends
JimRising 599
Counter-Strike
Stewie2K1232
shoxiejesuss743
Heroes of the Storm
Khaldor155
Other Games
C9.Mang0882
XBOCT442
crisheroes328
Happy275
Mew2King174
Lowko32
Organizations
Dota 2
PGL Dota 2 - Secondary Stream5355
Other Games
gamesdonequick620
StarCraft 2
Blizzard YouTube
StarCraft: Brood War
BSLTrovo
sctven
[ Show 15 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• LUISG 24
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• LaughNgamezSOOP
• Migwel
• sooper7s
StarCraft: Brood War
• Airneanach7
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
League of Legends
• Stunt448
• HappyZerGling97
Other Games
• WagamamaTV51
Upcoming Events
GSL Code S
58m
herO vs Zoun
Classic vs Bunny
The PondCast
1h 28m
OSC
12h 28m
Replay Cast
15h 28m
OSC
15h 28m
WardiTV Invitational
1d 2h
OSC
1d 4h
Korean StarCraft League
1d 18h
SOOP
2 days
sOs vs Percival
CranKy Ducklings
2 days
[ Show More ]
WardiTV Invitational
2 days
Cheesadelphia
2 days
CSO Cup
2 days
GSL Code S
2 days
Sparkling Tuna Cup
3 days
Replay Cast
3 days
Wardi Open
4 days
Replay Cast
4 days
Replay Cast
5 days
RSL Revival
5 days
Cure vs Percival
ByuN vs Spirit
RSL Revival
6 days
herO vs sOs
Zoun vs Clem
Replay Cast
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

CSL Season 17: Qualifier 2
BGE Stara Zagora 2025
Heroes 10 EU

Ongoing

JPL Season 2
BSL 2v2 Season 3
BSL Season 20
KCM Race Survival 2025 Season 2
NPSL S3
Rose Open S1
CSL 17: 2025 SUMMER
2025 GSL S2
BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025
ESL Impact League Season 7
IEM Dallas 2025
PGL Astana 2025
Asian Champions League '25
BLAST Rivals Spring 2025
MESA Nomadic Masters
CCT Season 2 Global Finals
IEM Melbourne 2025
YaLLa Compass Qatar 2025
PGL Bucharest 2025
BLAST Open Spring 2025

Upcoming

Copa Latinoamericana 4
CSLPRO Last Chance 2025
CSLPRO Chat StarLAN 3
K-Championship
SEL Season 2 Championship
Esports World Cup 2025
HSC XXVII
Championship of Russia 2025
Murky Cup #2
Esports World Cup 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall 2025
BLAST Bounty Fall Qual
IEM Cologne 2025
FISSURE Playground #1
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2025 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.