DUUL, an online contest and tournament platform which gives amateur gamers the chance to compete for prizes and sponsorships much like professionals, has announced that they have launched a national eSports contest platforms which is meant to “connect brands to gamers.”
DUUL uses a system of “direct data connections” to their game servers to both determine winners and to minimize cheating. In the last month, they have paid out a total of $3000 in prizes.
Gabriel Kruse, founder of DUUL had the following to say about the new platform:
“DUUL is on a mission to grow the eSports experience for gamers everywhere, we believe eSports is a participation activity first, and a spectator sport second. eSports has been in public view for the last decade, but has really begun to pick up speed in the last 4 years.
The League of Legends world championship Held at the Staples center in Los Angeles, CA in 2013 was sold out of tickets in 2hrs. This year (2016) it took less than 18 minutes. Spectatorship has climbed to ~180 million viewers worldwide causing many advertisers to spend an expected $1 billion to reach this market in 2017.
Some brands like HTC, are currently placing their bets in professional team ownership and live event broadcasts, much like someone would own the Seattle Mariners, Dallas Cowboys or L.A. Lakers. The largest eSports team sale this year was for $100 Million. But, some games have specific rules around advertising and what teams are allowed to promote which products that are related to games other than the one they are on the professional team for.”
DUUL provides interested brands with metrics like cpm, cpc, cac, etc, so they can work together to create better metrics for both the company and the campaign.
Kruse added:
“DUUL is reporting fantastic growth numbers with 500% increase in daily growth, 50% of their total daily traffic is return, boasts a session duration time of 13 minutes [with twitter at 10 min. and Facebook at 21 min. respectively] and has created contests that have had over 2000 entries with prizes like Newegg gift cards, Corsair gaming peripherals, Energy drink/supplement companies, and lots of Steam gift cards and League of Legends currency.
We recently hosted a live Overwatch event at the Microsoft store in Scottsdale, AZand are always looking for more brands to represent in the space.”
