NIP Hicham Chahine: "It's business as usual, but on the marketing side, we have consolidated it."

Yeah, so this year at NIP, we're doing a little bit different. Obviously three years ago we merged with ESV5, creating one of the largest, if not the largest, esports organization in the world. And what is unique about that is NIP Group is actually two esports teams. It's Ninjas in Pyjamas, which a lot of people in the West are familiar with. But what not many are familiar with is eStar, which is the mobile gaming team in China, which is also one of the largest mobile gaming teams in the world. And things take time, but this year finally we have put the brands together not only as NIP-eStar but also as all the competitive rosters. So through the qualification circuit and making it here, we have several teams that made it, but in total 19 teams over 16 games have been in action. So it's been a massive achievement and for us, I think the scale of what we do is different than last year where we just were Ninjas in Pyjamas competing in PC and console games.

So for us it's not very different than what we've done for many, many years, right. The strategy of NIP has for a long time been we're going to be in every single game that's relevant in the biggest market of that game. So for us we've been solely focused on building competitive rosters over a long period of time. Talent scouting, the resources going into it, and making sure that we at any time have a good competitive roster in any game title that we do. So it's business as usual, but obviously on the good marketing side, on the brand identity side and so on, we have consolidated it. Given that this is one of the few events here where we are able to bring all NIP and all eStar rosters together in one competition and compete as one club versus it just being Counter-Strike or League of Legends or Honor of Kings and so on. So for us, more competitively, we're doing NIP things. We are here to win games and on the brand and marketing side it's been extremely exciting to be able to put it all together from a large group level.

I think it's already helped a lot, and it all started when it was the addition last year, right? We in esports were coming out of what was a downturn for the industry as a general. And the big news and the big splash and the big efforts that happened surrounding the happening of the Esports World Cup got people talking about esports again and talking about it in a more positive way than they had. So I feel like not only this year, but even last year, Esports World Cup was one of the reasons that esports became something people were talking about again. So it's obviously the same this year, right? The event is just about to kick off. All eyes are going to be on what's happening here through the summer. And it's just one of those great cornerstone things which pulls an industry together and makes sure that we are of interest to people around the world.

That is a super hard one. I don't — this is going to be very unpopular coming from me, but I don't think I would go pro in Counter-Strike, even though many would expect me to give that answer. And the reason is I watch so much Counter-Strike, right? If I want to go pro, I think I would go pro in Street Fighter or Tekken. And the reason is for me, that's childhood memories, right? You grew up playing it. I was decently good in those games. But my skills are just not raw enough for FPS type of games, right?

Yeah, I think if you look at NIP, we recently announced that we are moving our global headquarters to Abu Dhabi where we're creating 250 to 300 jobs over the next five years, consolidating essentially everything we do globally. There are a couple of reasons for that. One thing is that we do believe that the Middle East is one of the largest frontiers of growth for video games and esports in general going forward. But also gaming is starting to connect to other industries, right? You look at blockchain, you look at AI, you look at various things of the tech space, which we are more and more connected to, where the region is becoming a hub. And it's great to be in that hub, not only because we're looking to do something in the market, but also because you want to be present where things are happening. But also for us, we now operate nine offices on four continents around the world. If you look at the Middle East geographically, it's bang in the middle, right? Time zone wise, it's efficient. Travel wise, when people are getting together, it's great. And if you look at the map, it's in the middle of the world. So that is actually one of the biggest reasons that we did choose it.

So hopefully, yes, exactly. Let's hope it leads to somewhere, you know. Perfect. Thank you very much.