After announcing their partnership with the Korean e-Sports association, Major League Gaming offered TeamLiquid a chance to talk with Senior VP's Adam Apicella and Lee Chen about the details of the partnership, and MLG's league philosophy in a progressively more Korean Starcraft II scene.


TeamLiquid: Let's start off with the question on everyone's mind. What exactly makes this an 'exclusive' partnership?

Lee Chen: Exclusivity is going to be Major League Gaming agreeing to just work with KeSPA, and KeSPA agreeing to just work with Major League Gaming. And that fundamentally means it's two leagues working together in lockstep, coordinating closely with each other, and not really work working with anybody else at a global level.

Adam Apicella: It doesn't mean that players won't attend other events, potentially. It just means that in terms of planning, we are working together, lockstep, in terms of our collective goals for the future.

Okay, so it means that you'll schedule your events around theirs, they'll schedule their events around yours to make sure their guys can go to your events, etc?

LC: Sure, at a basic level, yeah.

If exclusivity doesn't mean that KeSPA players are only playing at MLG events, that they're allowed to go to other events, what's KeSPA getting out of this deal, and what's MLG getting?

LC: Let's be clear on what that means.

If you want a KeSPA player to show up at your event, you have to go through KeSPA. That's the way the pro-gaming licenses work, that's the way KeSPA controls their players. You can't just go to Flash and say “Hey, I'd love for you to come play at MLG Anaheim.” They don't allow that, that's not the way their league is set up. It's similar to a lot of other sports, you don't get to do appearances unless the league approves it. That's how it works with these guys.

I'm not going to say that Flash or Bisu are just going randomly show up at another event because someone extends an invite to them. These guys plays on a really demanding, tight schedule.

But what part of exclusivity means is that if we ask, KeSPA will seriously consider it as opposed to just saying no. So, let's be clear on that, there is special treatment happening here, for the lack of a better term, and that's part of the business relationship. It's not like everybody else gets to just do this, that's not the way this thing works. This is an exclusive partnership on a global level.

AA: I also think we have two distinctly different models, us and KeSPA. I think both of them kind of blended together, us intertwining together and working closely. There's a lot of value and synergy there, and we're going to work together to figure out what the next step is. Behind closed doors, we're fleshing out how we're going to work together this year and next year. I think there's going to be a lot of cool stuff that will come out of this, with our leagues working very, very close together globally.

Would you say it's analogous to what you did with GomTV a while back, when you had your partnership with them?

LC: No, I think it's much, much bigger, and much more than what we did with GomTV. This is actually the relationship we were looking for, and this is the partner that we were looking for in KeSPA, in terms of what we were looking at on a global level for expanding our business. We were really looking for a true global partner that was going to be there with us every step of way, one that thought the same way we did.

I've known the KeSPA guys for years now, and I've been talking to them specifically about becoming partners for a long time. The underlying tenet of it was that we're two leagues – we think of ourselves as a league first, and a production & broadcast company second, KeSPA think of themselves only as a league. So putting a priority on the fairness of competition as being the most important thing, holding that as sacred and really designing everything that you do around that, that's what this relationship is about. That's two leagues meeting eye to eye on every level.

You said this is bigger than anything you've had with Gom. Besides scheduling for each other, and perhaps having KeSPA events at MLG, etc., is there anything else specific you could talk about in terms of cooperation?

LC: Well, KeSPA players will be at Anaheim playing from nine to midnight on Saturday in a single elimination Wings of Liberty tournament. But in future MLG events, you'll be seeing them competing in our bracket, our normal tournament. So that's part of the league exchange, the leagues working together. That's critical from a competition and spectator standpoint.

And there's things like cross training, and trying to bring some of the Korean esports mentality and training mechanisms to the West, and then giving Western players a chance to participate in that kind of training regimen to get better and to learn from the Flash's, Bisus and Storks of the world.

Does that mean MLG will facilitate team house exchanges...

LC: Well not to be vague, but those details aren't final. But those are very core and key concepts to the relationship.

AA: What they've built in Korea around Brood War is just an incredible infrastructure and ecosystem for players. Like Lee said, we would love to have something similar that in the West, so that the skill level is raised through virtue of that regimen and lifestyle. I don't think that's anything that exists outside of Korea right now.

I'm still not getting a good sense of how vastly different this is from the Gom partnership. Giving their players berths in your events seems pretty similar to what you had going on with Gom.

LC: I think what actually went on there was Gom started that relationship with us, then they kind of started those relationships with everybody else, too. Which is great, because they exposed a tremendous number of very talented, great players from the [then] Starcraft II Association and independent teams to the entire world.

But those were all preferential seeding arrangements, the reality is we slotted four players from the current pool of SC II players right into our championship. That's not the relationship we have with KeSPA. There's going to be a qualification process within KeSPA that decides who will get certain spots at MLG events. It's not just a random, abitrary “oh, I love Boxer, we're inviting Boxer,” kind of thing. It's a true league type structure.

So there will be a certain number of KeSPA spots in MLG events, and KeSPA will run qualifiers for those spots?

LC: That format hasn't really been decided yet, but the underlying mechanism will be a fair qualification process.

You're in an exclusive relationship, so would you give KeSPA players some kind of advantage because of it? Such as, they qualify into championship brackets, while other Koreans have to play through the open?

AA: We will continue to have the full scope of qualifications that we currently have, where players on independent teams in their specific region or players affiliated with the Starcraft II federation in Korea etc. can play in the online qualifiers or qualify from the Arenas or a previous Pro Circuits. We will continue to have mechanisms for everybody whether they're KeSPA or not.

LC: Let's be clear on that, because I've seen a lot of stuff on TL or Reddit about how this means that progamer licenses are coming to the West, or that you'll only be able to see these players in the West behind a PPV wall at Arenas, or all kinds of insanity that are based around rumor mongering. I mean, fair enough, we haven't actually said that much about it yet.

This isn't about pay-walling these players, charging an access fee to get to them. This is about bringing the best players in the world together, and giving the viewers in the West a chance to see them play, and helping accommodate for the demanding schedule KeSPA players have in Korea. We're not going to do anything less than we are now, or limit anybody in any way. We're adding on to what we're doing now.

In the mid to long term, would we be looking at something like a Proleague first-half finals event at an MLG?

AA: If we had the opportunity to do that, we'd love to.

LC: We would absolutely love to do that. But bear in mind this is the beginning of an official partnership, so we don't have all the details yet, and we're still figuring out what we can do.

KeSPA has hinted at the creation of a larger, integrated global league in the future. Have you talked about that at all?

LC: Yeah, we absolutely talked about that with them. I think a lot of those were very early, preliminary discussions. Something like setting up a global league between three or four different parties, or even just two, takes a lot of work. This is a global partnership – as very specifically worded in our press release – and a global league is something we're definitely talking about and looking at.

Not to ask you to throw Gom under the bus, but what happened with Gom? It seemed to be going well, and then thing started falling apart rapidly. Now you see them going with IPL, and people are wondering about what happened.

AA: Yes, GSTL finals happened at IPL, but just to be clear, we were offered that before and we didn't want to do it. I mean, we were offered Code S finals at one of our events, and the details of that deal, which will remain behind closed doors, were not something we were interested in.

But as to why the actual partnership ceased, we're not really sure. We're not sure why they revoked NaNiwa's seed...

Oh, that was actually a thing?

LC: I think there was a sequence of events there that we're still not clear on, and we've really felt like we haven't gotten a straight story. We're happy to sit down and chat with Gom, but I think this is one of those thing the community has made a bigger deal out of than it really is. We don't sit around trying to figure out what happened there, because it's pretty clear that their priorities were elsewhere.

So it fizzled out, and here we are?

LC: Which is fine, because people end up with different priorities as business evolves, and ours took a different turn.

AA: We also wanted to get away from any type of subjective entrance into our championship pools, so the League Exchange Program as it existed wasn't going to continue. We wanted to implement global qualification measures, and we speculate that might have affected it, but again, we don't know for sure.

LC: We don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about it.

You can see why the exclusivity would be good for MLG, from a business standpoint. Could you tell the fans why it's good for them, why they should be happy about one organization getting the so called special treatment in terms of getting KeSPA players.

LC: Bear in mind – and I've said this in my State of the Game interview earlier on – that KeSPA has never done a league partnership in its entire history. Yes, Korean players have played in WCG and Blizzcon. But they were playing as individuals at WCG, that was not a league partnership. And Blizzcon, Blizzard owns the game.

KeSPA was not going to allow their players to play outside of Korea unless it was with a partner. MLG, too, has never had a league partnership – I mean we've done collaborations with a lot of leagues, like giving DreamHack a qualification spot into Spring Arena II – but we've never actually done a real league partnership in our history.

AA: We've never even been open to it. We've never offered anybody the deal we're doing with KeSPA because we've never had somebody we felt had the similar core values we had, about how we position our league and view it.

Not only has KeSPA never done a partnership with any leagues prior, but it's also a schedule thing for them. Proleague is similar to GSL in that it requires ton of the players' time just to play their matches, and their practice regimen is insane. I don't know how much time they could feasibly fit into their schedules to go to other events, based on their current routine.

I also think that KeSPA is very particular and careful. They want to make sure their players are represented in a certain way, and I wouldn't say they're completely comfortable yet with every tournament out there being able to present their players, and treat their players the way they expect.

What's the value of KeSPA for you right now? Gom objectively has the better players right now, KeSPA guys have the fame and rep the Brood War community has spread to the SC II community. You could almost say it's an investment – what kind of benefits does this have over a relationship with an organization like Gom that actually has the skilled players at present?

LC: I think a lot of this is philosophical, and I don't mean that we're going to be creating a pro license program or anything like that, but at one of the fundamental, underlying tenets of this relationship is that KeSPA operates as a league, trying to advance a sport. That's the common basis for understanding, the common basis for dialogue. That's really what this relationship is about.

Players like Bisu, Jaedong, Stork, etc., we don't know what they're going to do. I personally think they're going to absolutely kick ass when they convert over to Starcraft II, but that could take a little while. Six months, a year, three months? Who knows? And taking nothing away from the MKPs, the MMAs, and DRGs of the world, those guys have had more time. So I'm actually curious to see who's going to win.

But if you're talking about what's in the KeSPA relationship for us right now, that's not really about the players. I mean sure, part of it's about access to stars, and giving them a chance to shine on the global stage like we did with MMA, DRG, and the rest of the guys. But that's not all that this relationship is about. This relationship is about building something that is global, about building an eSports program that spans the entire world. That we all have a chance to be part of a 120,000 large crowd watching eSports on a beach, not only in South Korea. It could be in Brazil, or Orlando, something that's a true world championship that brings together the best players in the world.

AA: Also, let's be realistic here. This game has been out for what, two years? And an expansion's coming out very soon. To say that the competitive landscape today is going to be the same six months from now is insanity. This scene as a whole, is going to change, just based on the expansion alone.

Players come out even now that invent new ways to play when everyone thinks they have everything figured out. We're all fooling ourselves if we think that we're in the golden age of Starcraft. It's still growing, it's still evolving, it's still changing, and it's only going to get bigger.

Having heard the four party cooperation announcement from Blizzard, KesPA, GomTV, and OGN, what's ideal for MLG in terms of how the Korean market plays out from here?

LC: Not only do we have a strong partnership with KeSPA – signed, sealed, and delivered if you will – but we also have very deep ties and a very strong relationship with OGN, and obviously we're working very closely with Blizzard at a lot of levels, too.

Regarding the Korean scene, let me be clear: We're not interested in operating in Korea. That's not why we are partnering with KeSPA, or talking with OGN. It has nothing to do with that.

Could you elaborate on the OnGameNet thing? There's nothing official I've heard.

LC: There's nothing official about it, we've been talking, we've known the OnGameNet guys for a long time. I've known them since 2005 or so? They're a bunch of really cool, really sharp dudes. I think that some of the stuff they're doing around League of Legends among other things is pretty awesome.

But there's nothing official there, we just have a strong relationship with them. Just periodically we throw things across the pond and see what happens.

A lot of people are concerned about too many Koreans in leagues. Add another 200 Koreans or so from KeSPA... Even if not all of them are good, another ten at the top would kill off the foreigners who even had a chance. What do you guys think about that situation, if it should come to pass in that kind of worst-possible-scenario way?

AA: I always want to have the best players playing in our events, and I want to create an environment where our seeding and our tournament structure places deserving players into brackets or pools based on performance and not through subjective invites. I want the tournament environment we create to allow the best player to win a match, and the best player to win the tournament. Regardless of nationality or anything else, that is the cornerstone of our league philosophy, and I don't think that has anything to do with more Koreans in the bracket. As a fan of competition, I don't think that should turn off people.

But like we said earlier, bringing something that's been present in Seoul to North American, to create that environment there, hopefully we'll be able to come up with ways to have the Western scene potentially have similar things that happen in Korea to create that farm system, that ecosystem where players can train. Where they understand that lifestyle is required to compete on that level.

LC: At least from MLG's perspective, we pay travel right now for 16 players to every single Pro Circuit championship. So that's 48 flights right there, flights, hotels, meals, expenses. Each Arena is 8 to 32 players, that's over 200 flights and hotels total. New York hotel rates being what they are, you're talking about over half a million dollars in travel. But there's only so much money we can afford to do that with until we start growing up.

The concern of there being too many Koreans in this, as Adam said, our league is about the best player winning, regardless of nationality. The skill level of Koreans happens to be higher right now, then I think that's on everybody in the Western scene to try and elevate skill level in the West. Some of the things we'll be announcing with KeSPA will hopefully help that.

But it's also just a little bit silly to say that there's nothing but Koreans there, because that's patently untrue. There's 272 players in our regular Starcraft II tournaments – Anaheim will be slightly less because we're also doing the US nationals with Blizzard there – but that's a lot of players. Now what happens in the final 16, in the championship bracket? That's skill driven. That's about who's a better player.

AA: I think we'll continue have a global mechanism of qualification into events. I think one of the things we are going to have to talk about internally down the road is how strict will we be with what region you can play in. Can you play in North American qualifiers from Seoul, etc. That's something we need to talk about internally, but that's something I can see where we make sure that regions are represented accordingly at events. Once they're there, the best man wins.

LC: Yeah, that's how Blizzard does the World Championship Series. You can only play in a nation's qualifiers if you have a passport from that nation or a citizenship.

Would it be right in saying that you believe that your core audience, for the most part, doesn't care so much about a player's nationality, race, or what language they speak – it's more about pure skill.

LC: I think a fan is a fan. Whether you're driven to be a fan of someone because you think that they're an amazing player, or for example, because you like Lebron James' personality, that's up to you, that's an individual choice.

But the league, is about skill. Fandom is a completely different thing.

AA: If we ran an event in Sweden, I'm sure that the fans there would want DreamHack Stockholm to happen again, where ThorZaIN wins, regardless of whether people think he's the best player in the world or not.

I think you're right, regional fans are super important to this, and that aspiration [for national heroes] needs to exist, but like Lee said, as a league we want the best player to win regardless of nationality.

But you're not a purely competitive league, you're a business. And from a business standpoint, you want the most fans, and to get the most fans, you need to figure out what the most fans want.

AA: As a business though, it really delegitimizes the idea of the league, if we're being too subjective in who we invite.

So as a business, yeah, we do want more fans, we want to have the regional favorites at our events. But as a league, the cornerstone of what we do has to be sacred. If that's not sacred, then we have nothing to stand on.

Okay, any final comments you'd like to make?

LC: Since we started off on the topic of the MLG-KeSPA partnership, we're really excited about the relationship and where we can take this with them. Also, this is an equal relationship. I think the popular perception out there right now is that one party is getting more out of it than the other, people feel like there's an advantage to one side, but it's very much an equal partnership..

AA: What's going on with this partnership, what we've already announced, this is the infancy of this relationship in what we're going to do together. The stuff that we're talking about doing later on is going to be really awesome for the scene.