Wisdom Gaming Prepares for a 2022 Esports Launch at the Mall of America – twincitiesgeek.com

Esports is an exploding industry, expected to reach over $2 billion in sales by the end of 2022. For those unfamiliar, esports is an industry that pits teams and highly skilled players against one another for prize money. Usually these athletes compete against one another in titles that encourage competitive or multiplayer play such as Call of Duty, CS GO, Halo, Fortnite, Super Smash Brothers, Street Fighter, Overwatch, League of Legends, Hearthstone, or Heroes of the Storm. Think NBA or NFL, but sub in video games. Some might scoff at the idea of gaming being a sport, but people who compete in this industry are indeed athletes. They spend hours training, honing their craft in order to get to a big event and win prizes and acclaim from their fans. Take Ninja, for example, one of the most famous esports athletes in the industry, specializing in Fortnite. He touts a following of over 13 million people just on Instagram. This industry has officially gone mainstream over the past few years with the explosion of gaming influencers on Twitch and even the introduction this past year of Netflix’s new hit show Arcane, which has shown impressive numbers for a show that centers on Riot’s League of Legends universe.

In October 2021, Wisdom Gaming, based in Bloomington, Minnesota, announced a partnership with the Mall of America to create a midwestern hub for esports. The space, which is expected to open at some point in mid-2022, will feature a 120-person studio audience, a second-floor retail shop and lounge/bar area, and pods where fans can play games or stream live. Before this announcement, I didn’t know too much about the company or why it would partner with the Mall of America, so I took the chance to interview Nicole Du Cane, VP of sales and partnerships for Wisdom Gaming. Throughout the interview I was impressed by the level of knowledge and expertise not only that Wisdom is bringing to the Minnesota market but also that Du Cane herself possesses—she seems to have a deep understanding of the industry due to having spent time working in it herself.

Du Cane grew up a gamer and is hyperpassionate about the industry. She comes from a background within the health and fitness industry, and in 2015 she founded Heroes of Fitness, a Twitch stream that focused on her and her husband playing games on stream, providing health tips and breaking up marathon gaming sessions by taking mini exercise breaks in between. Eventually they both became Blizzard influencers and official Twitch ambassadors before Du Cane decided to join Wisdom to lead partnerships and sales for the start-up.

One of the topics we discussed is the difficulty brands have entering gaming, much of which occurs because brands tend to need some education on the industry due to stereotypes they hold of gamers and a lack of understanding of the nuances of the diverse community they want to be a part of. This has tended to put the community on edge as there have been countless examples of brands entering the industry inauthentically. Du Cane addressed the traditional stereotype of a gamer during our conversation.

“You have to fight against that stigma and educate brands that there are more women than they know about,” she says. “It’s not just teenagers, and it’s a large range of demographics and age groups. It’s so much broader than people realize.” She’s spot-on. According to the Entertainment Software Association, the average video game player in the US is 31 years old; 55 percent of gamers are male—not the overwhelming majority some stereotypes portray—and there are nearly 227 million players in the United States, which is about 81 percent of the total US population. She expands upon the importance of not just gaming, but also esports, given how young and captive this audience is.

“That generation [Gen Z and millennials] is stereotypically the cord cutters and the ad blockers, the people who are not seeing traditional marketin,” Du Cane adds. “They want to be spoken to in an authentic way, and where they are spending their time is Twitch, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, so you have to reach them there and have to do it creatively. It’s not a passive form of entertainment; it’s an engaged form. If you can become a part of this as a brand or company, that’s incredibly valuable.”

Helping brands understand gaming and esports comes with being involved in the industry, but Wisdom Gaming is not really a consultancy. The company is a leader in esports production and handles things such as creative production and services, and it supports marketing activations for brands that want to get into esports and gaming. Du Cane details, “It’s a tricky audience to talk to in the right way. These audiences have a no-bullshit meter.” This is why Wisdom has supported brands like Jack Links as they entered the industry, as well as how it became a close partner of Riot Games through the Giant Slayer community and through assisting with esport production and events for some of their titles like Legends of Rotera, Wild Rift, and Teamfight Tactics (TFT). Additionally, Wisdom has its own professional esports team, Torrent, that focuses on Rocket League and Apex Legends.

Throughout the conversation, I was intrigued by the connection Wisdom has to the local Minnesota school community and how the company is cultivating local talent and working with high schools across the state to encourage gaming. Du Cane explains, “We work very closely with the students and the administrators to create after-school programs. Eventually, we want to provide them exposure to the different aspects of esports, including talking to the pros, access to production experiences, and maybe some classes related to health and wellness.” This relationship with local schools has exploded in numbers, going from about 10 schools to around 45 in the course of a year, showcasing the interest in gaming of younger students in Minnesota.

With the Mall of America partnership, Wisdom has been looking to establish a larger presence in the state of Minnesota. “It’s the biggest shopping and entertainment destination in the US. They already get over 40 million visitors per year. Building this space was a shared goal between our two companies,” Du Cane says. “The Midwest is a growing region, and it’s been traditionally underserved. We want to build a hub here for local fans to come weekly and go to watch parties, go to the bar upstairs, and come to the VIP experiences or the big 10,000-people rotunda events.” She additionally elaborates on aspects of the space that get this Twin Cities Geek writer ready to carve out a night and visit when it first opens: it will include a second-floor lounge, a bar for food and beverages, streamer pods for influencers when they are coming to town, and hospitality areas including team rooms to provide the best possible experience for talent that’s traveling to the venue. Du Cane indicates that the space will focus on Riot game titles as well as Rocket League, but the hope is to be able to showcase as many esports titles as possible, such as Apex Legends and Fortnight, as well as showcasing matches between local teams like Version1 and Røkkr.

Du Cane emphasizes that when the location opens, the safety and well-being of the staff and guests will be a top priority. Wisdom will be constantly checking and adapting its COVID policies to adhere to guidelines from the CDC, the Minnesota Department of Health, and the Mall of America. I personally am excited about the venue and am looking forward to visiting the space. Wisdom has shown that it’s an expert in the industry, and I, for one, welcome more gaming companies in the Twin Cities. There are a lot of gamers in the community, and it’s about time that Minnesota gets a little bit of the industry here as well.

To get more information on the space and on Wisdom, be sure to follow Wisdom on Twitter or LinkedIn.