I started my career in esports in 2013 as a complete outsider. I didn’t know a single person working in the industry, and I didn’t even intend for my career to go down this path. I often reflect that I fell into this career and then I ran with it. That all started with a series of whitepapers forecasting the legal future of esports vis-à-vis the legal history of traditional sports. I was lucky enough to have many of those white papers float to the top of the League of Legends subreddit, people in the esports industry started reaching out to me about doing their legal work, and I began to more actively seize the opportunity before me.

For a lawyer, avid gamer, and die hard sports fan, this was a dream come true. Except I never actually dreamt it because even my imagination didn’t believe this path could exist.

That dream did have its tradeoffs. I had to work the more than full time job of a “big law” associate while doing everything in my power to better understand and engage with the esports industry. I had to build credibility in an industry that was rightly skeptical of outsiders based on past experiences, but I also had to fight for the chance to do this within the law firm itself.

While I had some advocates within that firm, the institution largely worked against me. The marketing department hated what I was doing. Many senior partners wanted me to end the sideshow so I could get back in my office and bill more hours. They took every opportunity to let me know.

I look back on this and realize it was the toughest period of my life. I slept very little. My mental and physical health deteriorated. My relationships with the people that mattered most to me suffered. But while I was in it, I found a seemingly endless well of energy because of my love for esports and what they were becoming. The same magic that defined my childhood as a sports fan was present in esports, no matter how many people watched or the budget for the event. I wanted to do whatever I could to help bring that magic to life for more people–to see the opportunities in the space grow. It wasn’t the career path I set out to take, but there was no doubt in my mind it was what I wanted to do with my life.

—

Today, most people think of me as the first esports-focused attorney. This has certainly been the largest part of my career. I wrote the industry-standard player contract from scratch, negotiated on behalf of teams for their entry into every Western “franchised” esports league, worked on many of the largest sponsorships in the space, and so much more.

I’ve also done a significant amount of consulting work during my tenure in esports. My consulting clients have typically been non-endemics–parties throughout sports, media, and entertainment (sports teams and their ownership groups, brands, family offices, etc.) looking to translate whatever it is they do to the esports space. This work helped me establish a more holistic understanding of the esports space because I learned to see it through the eyes of enormously successful business people from other industries.

While many of my peers have spent their entire esports careers working at a single entity, within a single game, or focused on a particular type of business, I’ve spent a decade working across the entirety of the industry. I’ve done legal and consulting work throughout every major esport and many smaller scenes. My work has touched on virtually every aspect of esports businesses, including all the key stakeholders.

Despite our recent struggles, I still believe in the esports industry. Deeply. We have a bright future ahead of us, but in order to reach it we need to be honest about how we got into this mess and think more critically about how we get ourselves out of it. This series of essays is a starting point for that conversation–hopefully it will jumpstart a broader discussion with leaders throughout the industry so that we can all learn from one another and rebuild together in order to ensure esports will thrive for decades to come.