Digital

As an org owner who has spoken to probably over 200 potential sponsors in the last four years for my Fortnite org, and signed a handful of them - this is one of the biggest takeaways I have from hundreds of hours of dialogue: Most sponsors prefer to work directly with agencies, talents, and content creators, not teams / organisations, especially in Fortnite. The more prominent creators and players you have, the worse for the organization, as you have little leverage. So what happens then is when you have big stars, they get most of the deals themselves, effectively bypassing the organization. So from the player's and content creators' perspective: On one end you are getting salaries from the org that is paying you considerable amounts per month, but you are also the biggest deals because the sponsors know that it is ultimately the players and content creators who "own" the audience. Until this one fundamental problem and issue is fixed, high end scalability and sustainability of esports orgs, especially in Fortnite, will not happen. There needs to be either a shared ownership / shared accountability type of model or a brand new way of restructuring. FYI - This is mainly from a Fortnite org POV, but I can imagine Sentinels has faced some similar challenges as they have no sponsors on their jerseys, and we have seen the impact Tenz has with for example Finalmouse on his own. The fact that they arent able to monetize their audience is actually nuts, cause they provide unique value through the SEN brand.