ESL Founder Ralf Reichert: How He Made Esports Big (Schroet Kommando, Counter-Strike 1.6)

Later we received a warning from ESPN to stop using the name ESP, so we shortened it to ESL, which turned out to be the best decision. The Pro Series budget later reached 1.5 to 2 million euros annually. Finland had a 38-year-old prime minister who is a gamer. I believe in many places in our clouded worldview we think we are progressive, but…

Before we played a lot of computer games, we played board games a lot. One was Bloodball, now a computer game – full circle. The biggest star was Griff Oberwald, and I thought he was cool. Also, nicknames should be short and have double meanings, especially in German and English. So Griff was simple and straightforward, and I stuck with it.

Multi-team clans weren't standard then – it was all new. We started as friends, and from a hobby it became ambition to compete. We professionalized, got sponsors. The idea of diversifying wasn't there yet, but we expanded into Warcraft and Counter-Strike early, around 98/99. My role was as team owner, broadening the business. I played maybe a few hundred to a thousand hours of Counter-Strike – far less than Quake – and was never at a competitive level. In Quake, I was never top three in Germany but was among the top 15-30 at times, scaling to top 100 in Europe and top 1000 worldwide. The very top was my brother Benjamin, top 3 worldwide. As a team, we regularly succeeded and were ambitious, seeing it as sport from the start.

Before the clan we just had fun. The clan was a clear manifestation of ambition – we didn't start saying we want to be the best, but there was a new online world and communities, so we joined and gave our best. We invested early in a cool website – what Facebook is today, the SK website was. My brother Benjamin programmed it. We focused on a cool skin, later on international players because borders aren't important. We always thought about performance and sports, coming from football – my brothers became professional footballers. The idea of competition and sport was natural. Financially, around the turn of the millennium, there was some money to be made. In '97 it was just a hobby, by 98/99 sponsors covered costs, then $100,000 prize pools appeared. That's why I eventually left SK and co-founded ESL – to create infrastructure for the next generation to make esports a full-time job. It was a bit early, but the perspective was there.

It was gradual, not a single day decision. SK was still small then. I ran SK while working with ESL, probably from 2000 to 2002. Then I slowly stepped away from SK, handing over operational tasks around 2004-2006, bringing in Andreas Thorstensen. At first it was head vs heart – building ESL infrastructure was important for the industry, and there were many teams. I was emotionally more connected to SK, but it wasn't a painful divorce. Alex basically crossed over – he brought me into ESL and I brought SK in. It was a natural, healthy development. I'm totally happy with it now.

The ambition was to professionalize esports and give players and teams a home to earn money and gain recognition, to not be stigmatized but seen as high performers. Whether it was a league or tournament – we also did CPL and many other things to earn money. We experimented a lot. Today I'd say a tournament is better than a league, international is easier than national. At its core it's always sport and broadcast. Back then there was no distribution – no Twitch, YouTube, etc. We did many things for the first time. The core product became ESL, but the company was originally called Turtle Entertainment and had multiple branches. ESL was first a grassroots dating tournament platform, then step by step became a professional brand. At the very beginning it was called ESP (Electronic Sports League).

Actually, the German Clan League (ECL) evolved into ESP. I was involved in the name finding. Jan Philipp basically wrote an algorithm and asked for 100 names – like Electronic Sports, Cyberathlete, etc. The name 'esports' didn't exist back then. We had a list with Alex, Jan Philipp Stock, Jens, and Björn. We discussed and finally agreed on Electronic Sports League, abbreviated ESPL. Later we got a warning from ESPN, so we shortened it to ESL – which was the best decision, a much better brand. Some German native speakers read it as 'Esel' (donkey) for a while, but that went away. In the US later, ESL also meant English as a Second Language, but that confusion also faded.

Societally it was dramatic – computer games were highly stigmatized in Germany. The parent generation didn't understand. There's still a generation born after 1974 that has a big advantage. It's decreasing and will be almost gone in 20 years. This cultural struggle happens with every new medium – books, music, radio, TV, internet, games. The games market was small, the internet young. We were building a spectator sport with no spectators – that was the simple business premise until about 2010: a viewer was a cost center, not revenue. Distribution was expensive, traditional gatekeepers had the wrong demographics. Financially it was tough, but we kept costs low, worked as an agency to fund our products. We deeply believed it would become a big sport – we knew the crowds would come. Everyone invested immense time without looking at hourly wages. It was a community movement with a hard core of pioneers.

Yes, it's funny. Jens was an IT specialist, Philipp dropped out of architecture, Alex was still studying economics. They were all good at what they did, but from a German perspective of degrees, it was nothing like a Harvard elite squad. I studied at the University of Essen, not elite, and finished my business degree following the minimax principle. I was the only one with a diploma, so I took on finance. We were all autodidacts, learning by doing. That was the whole scene – anyone who could get online, build a server and a website was overcoming complex hurdles. Most of them later became successful professionally. That problem-solving overqualification united us, and 25 years later, everyone has achieved great things.

Extremely self-confident, almost arrogant. The EPS was mainly Alex and me – Alex had a strong sports background. We were clear: we want to build the Bundesliga of esports. Others built LAN leagues. We had a combination of the biggest community platform (ESL website was huge 2002-2004), an online league, broadcast, and live events. Commercially we were professional early, with structures and formats. And we had Intel as by far the strongest sponsor – without Intel, it wouldn't have been possible. Klaus Obermeier and Hans-Jürgen Werner at Intel were visionary and took risks. They believed in the community and built it with us.

I had three thoughts. First, online is more efficient, cheaper, and reaches more. Second, the format created enough attention to become a real event, not just a physical meetup. Third, we could get paid. So I believed in it, but I didn't have the same euphoria as Alex. We brought Intel in and essentially went on tour with esports. It was a fantastic format for the time – we did well over 100 FNGs, and I attended at least 90%. It was like a rockstar life. It built the community faster than just online. It was a unique, wonderful time and I met many people I still know today.

Absolutely. It changed over time. In the beginning, at the Futurep in Cologne with 50-75 spectators, hard costs maybe 10,000 euros. Later in Hamburg at the CCH with 2,000 people and Lotto King Karl, hard costs were around 75,000 euros – almost six figures. A Pro Series season budget later was 1.5-2 million euros, whereas at the start it was 300-400k. So it started small and grew big. The challenge came with the 2010 financial crisis – we couldn't maintain that scale for the limited German market, so we internationalized. With almost the same effort you could reach ten times the audience. That slowly shifted focus from Germany to global, and no one after us managed to recreate that relevance and attention in Germany.

Jens volunteered – he wanted to do it. Nick Adams was the first full-time esports moderator worldwide; we posted a job ad in 2002 at the start of the tour. He sent a funny application video that made us smile. He was just a guy with passion, and he was talented. None of us were trained as moderators – we were all very autodidactic. If you do something often enough, you become good, except for major exceptions. Jens was extroverted on stage, a fantastic speaker, and Nick was a cool guy. They crystallized as the ones who wanted to be in front of the camera and established themselves.

No, I really had no interest. I've changed a bit over time, but I always preferred to leave the external representation to Jens. He had little ambition for it too, but when he left in 2010, I took over the role because nobody else was available. I even enjoy it now because you gain confidence, but I had no interest back then. I was always more about the product – even now at the World Cup, what interests me most is the product; everything else is a compromise I make to make the product good.