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NBA 2K LEAGUE DRAFTMarch 5, 2019Brendan DonohueNew York, New York BRENDAN DONOHUE: Thank you for your interest in the NBA 2K League. We're ecstatic, our second-ever draft for the 2K League. As you will soon see, it's a day full of excitement and energy. For the 198 players that qualified, we're thrilled. They went through a very, very challenging tryout process, and they earned their place here. This year is unique. This year they are competing for one of our 75 open spots to join the 2K League. Our process was a little bit different this year. We had the normal Combine process. We also had our first-ever international tryout that we did in Hong Kong. And obviously we have our returning free agents from season one. That's exciting. Of course, the other big thing with the players this year that's new and better is just the continued diversity we're seeing in the league. We have 22 players representing nine countries outside the United States that are part of the group [of draft prospects]. We also have two women in the draft pool for the first time ever, which is exciting for us. We're excited about all of them having the opportunity to join our teams. A couple things that are new to the league this year. One is we are welcoming four new teams: Atlanta, Brooklyn, L.A. and Minnesota. You'll notice we're also shifting our season a little bit. We are [starting] a month earlier, but in addition to that, we are actually shifting to a Wednesday through Friday format versus Friday and Saturday. You may have seen last week that we also announced we're going to be rebroadcasting a game of the day. Every time we have a game Wednesday, that next day on Thursday we'll have a game of the day. We're going to rebroadcast it in Europe to continue to feed our global audience. The other big [change] is that, as you know, we played all of our games last year out of Long Island City in New York. This year, we will be taking one if not two of our tournaments on the road. We love that energy in the studio, and so we think it's a great opportunity for us to bring that on the road and let more markets experience that. We think that is just really the first big step for us in getting out in the open, too, to kind of grow the league in other markets, and that includes globally. We think there's a great opportunity for this to be a global league, and so whether that's players, as we're seeing today, whether that's for fans and whether that's actually -- international franchises, which we think is on the close horizon. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Q. What are you focused on for the future? BRENDAN DONOHUE: I would say what we're focused on most is just continuing to scale the league and continuing to grow our audience. I think you'll continue to see us do more. Certainly Twitch is an amazing partner for us and they air all of our games. You're going to see us test new channels and new audiences because we think we can scale this in a much bigger way and also continue to feed that global audience. Q. You mentioned expanding markets and generating fan interest. There's a lot of interest in gaming in the Texas area, specifically San Antonio. Your thoughts about expanding in that area of South Texas? BRENDAN DONOHUE: You should ask the Spurs. I think the Spurs, they've been very actively talking to us. We're not sure where they are right now, but they're an amazing organization and they'll join when they're ready. Q. You mentioned the league's continuing efforts for diversity and expansion globally. Why is that so important? BRENDAN DONOHUE: I would say the reason it's important is because we truly believe that a more diverse player pool is a stronger player pool. Our sole goal this year was to get the best 126 players on the planet playing 2K and playing in the 2K League, and all we're trying to do is unlock those opportunities. That's one of the reasons why we did the invitational in Hong Kong. We're going to continue to do more things to honor the best players in the world. Q. Can you talk a little bit about the selection process for international players? How did that work? What different stages they had to go through? BRENDAN DONOHUE: Essentially they went through the same stages as everyone else. We had our Combine open, and many international players qualified through the Combine process. So they were some of the best players in the world in the Combine, and they qualified through that channel. We did, however, add the APAC Invitational to potentially identify some other players who might not have had the same access or ability to try out through the normal process. We're going to continue to iterate and find other ways to unlock the chances for great players to be identified. Q. What has been the reaction from the Dallas and Houston franchises? How has that been? BRENDAN DONOHUE: It's been amazing. I'll credit Dallas, first of all. The investment they've made, I don't know if any of you have seen their practice facility, it is remarkable. It's one of the best spaces in the league. It's an amazing esports amphitheater, or theater. In terms of the pickup, our No. 1 overall pick last year, Dimez, he's the most followed player in the 2K League and he was playing for Dallas, so clearly he's been well accepted there. Q. Is there any interaction between these players and the real players from the teams they represent? BRENDAN DONOHUE: Sometimes organically it happens. The good thing -- we don't have to influence it, but you've seen it's been fun to see some of our players interact with the NBA stars. Obviously they're their heroes as well, and the cool thing is that the NBA players, they organically love the game. They love the 2K game. So it's kind of a cool thing to see those two worlds interact. Q. Has it happened like -- played each other on the PlayStation? BRENDAN DONOHUE: Yeah, I think a couple years ago, you may have to ask Chris from 2K, but a couple years ago they did. Some of the best players in the NBA played against some of the best 2K players, not 2K League but 2K players, and it was pretty ugly. Q. How did you end up as the head of the NBA 2K League? I've been working for the NBA in some way, shape or form for 22 years. I spent 12 years on the team side and the last 10 at the NBA league offices. So this opportunity presented itself. It kind of married my two worlds. I love the game, both the NBA game but also the 2K game. You come to my house long before this league existed and you'd find gaming chairs, with me and my son hanging out on the weekend playing. So there was that piece. And the NBA -- I spent over two decades on the business side of the NBA. So two things coming together. Q. I was going to ask if you have a kid playing NBA 2K right now. BRENDAN DONOHUE: Yes, I have a 13-year-old who is starting to catch up to me. I'm getting a little nervous. He thinks he's better than me. Q. Which cities might you take this to on the road, and does it depend on what facilities they have? BRENDAN DONOHUE: It does. We now have a current RFP process right now. We have multiple cities and venues that have expressed interest and raised their hands about hosting one of our tournaments. We're just going through the process of selecting one. Q. It'll be this season? BRENDAN DONOHUE: Yes. Q. Last year Adam Silver said that to address the diversity issue, you were going to form a task force. Do you know what the task force did to address the issue? BRENDAN DONOHUE: We did a bunch of things. First off, we created a focus group of executives to actually help try to identify if there were barriers. We did several focus groups with current NBA 2K League players. We did it with the best-known 2K women players we knew about. In addition to that, we also conducted a study. We're doing research on women and esports as well as women and their association and their relationship with the 2K League. One of the things we did find was when we talked to the best elite women players who played 2K -- everyone wears a headset when they're playing, and sometimes if they identified their voice and they were female, they stopped getting passed the ball. As a result, this year when we thought about our tryout process, we wanted to make sure -- when we looked at the analytics, we wanted to analyze how good someone did when they had the ball in their hands, what they could control, how effective they were, how big of an impact they had on the game when the ball was in their hands. Those are things we identified. And we're glad we are. Listen, this is just the first step of many. And similarly, that's why we created [the] APAC Invitational, to make sure we were giving the best players in the world a chance to be found. Q. What would your pitch be to someone who is not as familiar with the NBA 2K League but is a fan of the NBA? Why should they follow this league and get interested in esports? BRENDAN DONOHUE: I would say come to the studio. Come to the studio and experience that energy, that passion, that competition. It's the elite playing. It's the best in the world playing a game, and that's really interesting to watch. No different than any other traditional sport. Q. Is it safe to say the next 2K coming out, because you have females now in the draft, would they be able to actually create a female player inside the next 2K like '20 so we can really see what they look like virtually on the court? BRENDAN DONOHUE: I know that's definitely on 2K's map. They can speak to what year that will happen, but I know it's in their plans for sure. Q. When it comes to just the overall draft process, let's say someone gets injured or something like that. What's the backup plan if someone decides that they don't want to do it anymore or they drop out? Is it just the next person comes right in? BRENDAN DONOHUE: We haven't seen that. But we'll do it the same way we did last year. So last year Indiana had a player that left, and as a result we basically went to player 103. Shockey, he was that next person up based on the Combine results. So we'll have a very similar process. Q. You touched on it a little bit, about measuring success in Twitch numbers, but is there a specific number that you guys are looking to hit that is a measure of success? BRENDAN DONOHUE: Honestly, not really. I think we don't view this as a one-year plan. We think this is a long-term play. For example, we have a whole audience in Asia. There are 40 million people that are playing the 2K franchise that we haven't even talked to yet. That audience is still untapped. So some of it depends on how quickly we can distribute our content to people who are excited about it. Q. You mentioned other platforms. Can you give us a hint to what some of these other platforms might be? BRENDAN DONOHUE: Sure, no real surprise. It's the ones you would think. We want to develop our channels on YouTube, on Facebook, on Twitter, and while it may not be necessarily all live games, it's continuing to engage our audiences. Q. If I could follow up regarding the San Antonio fan base. San Antonio has recently opened up an egaming theater located on the southwest side. How does that factor into them getting a franchise? BRENDAN DONOHUE: I wouldn't say we look at San Antonio as a franchise. I would say San Antonio will join the 2K League when they're ready. We would love to have the Spurs join the league, and so we fully expect it to happen at some point. The fact that there's actually development of an esports arena in that market just makes it more likely. Q. I don't know if you have a salary cap or you can talk about this, but what is the average salary that these kids are going to make? BRENDAN DONOHUE: It's all very spelled out. You can find it online. It's anywhere from $33,000 to $37,000 salary, depending on where they were picked, and if they're a returning player or a new player. But in addition to that, they receive housing from the teams. They receive health benefits. There's a 401(k). In addition to that, which is the biggest part, there's $1.2 million in prize money. That's based on performance in our tournaments, in our playoffs. Q. Knicks won the first championship last year -- BRENDAN DONOHUE: That's correct. Q. New York is not there usually in real life -- BRENDAN DONOHUE: I can't speak to that. What I would say is Knicks Gaming winning last year is amazing. I don't know how familiar you are, so the last tournament of the season was called THE TICKET. It awarded a playoff spot to a team that won that tournament. The Knicks were actually I believe the second-to-last seed going into that tournament. They won that tournament, which got them an entry into the playoffs, and they ended up upsetting everyone and winning the championship. It was an amazing story. What I would say about them -- Q. Maybe it could be inspiring. BRENDAN DONOHUE: 100 percent. It made it a perfect scenario for THE TICKET. I would say what they've done an amazing job of is organizationally they are laser focused on building an amazing team, and they had an amazing team culture. From top to bottom, they did a great job. Q. We know there's a player from China, so do you think China is a big potential market to explore? BRENDAN DONOHUE: Yeah, I don't think there can be a bigger understatement today. I think it's an enormous opportunity, and we're thrilled that he is in the draft pool. In fact, we found him through that APAC Invitational. He was sensational. Just seeing him, it was amazing to see him communicate with his teammates and use his translator to communicate with his teammates. We think there's an incredible opportunity as a league for us to really unlock that opportunity to talk to fans over there. Q. Do you think a Chinese company would want to sponsor or be a partner to the league? Do you think it's possible? BRENDAN DONOHUE: Definitely. The template is already built. You look at the NBA, there are 13 regional offices around the world. So we've had that template we've used previously. There's absolutely an opportunity, and we would love to help brands amplify their brand through the 2K League. Q. No impact from the trade war? BRENDAN DONOHUE: No. Q. Have you guys decided where you're going to have the tournaments played elsewhere? And then are you still going to continue to have the games played in New York? BRENDAN DONOHUE: We are still going to have games played in New York, out of Long Island City, out of our Brooklyn studio. We have not chosen the cities yet. We're actually right now in the middle of the process of finding those cities and looking at the RFPs and taking them into consideration. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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