Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson has revealed Creator League, an esports tournament system featuring eight top influencers that will see them and their fans compete in a series of different tournaments over the opening season. However, despite announcing the league as part of his latest video, MrBeast himself isn’t actually involved with the tournament.
When the info for the Creator League arrived in my inbox my first thought was that this was finally the news of MrBeast getting involved in esports, something he has said previously that he is interested in. But upon further investigation, MrBeast isn’t actually involved other than being paid to announce the league and give away some of his chocolate to those who buy in.
The Creator League does feature some of the biggest influencers in the world, so why they chose to spend a ton of money on getting MrBeast to advertise it seems a bit strange, when just using the people they have signed up would create a massive buzz around the product. But the team at eFuse, who are organizing the league, seem confident it is money well spent.
“We wanted to amplify with one of the biggest megaphones, if not the biggest megaphone, in the world with MrBeast’s reach,” says Matthew Benson, founder of eFuse. “You’re absolutely right, these creators that are a part of the Founders Edition and the first season of Creator League are probably more than capable themselves, but if you’re gonna go for the big shot and a big splash with this cool opportunity, might as well make it as big as you can go. So that was kind of the mentality.”
The Creator League is a tournament series that will feature teams led by top influencers. There are some big names involved, although some of them are not exactly veterans of the esports scene. There are some names esports fans will know with OpTic Gaming being represented by Seth “Scump” Abner and Hector “H3CZ” Rodriguez, then Fortnite pro Cody “Clix” Conrod is also involved. Then there are a few personalities who create gaming content, but not necessarily in the esports space such as Minecraft player Sapnap and the streamer collective OTK. TikTok star VinnieHacker is best known for his non-gaming TikToks, but does play a lot of competitive games on his Twitch.
But there are a few influencers who seem a little out of place, iShowSpeed is a streamer who will occasionally boot up FIFA for a few games and IRL streamer CdawgVA sometimes streams some games, but both of their main content areas are well away from the esports space. And perhaps the strangest inclusion of them all is TikToker and musician Bella Poarch.
These creators will each lead a team in the Creator League, which kicks off with a Fortnite custom map tournament. There is an open qualifier for the tournament, which features a $50,000 prize pool with the top players getting a spot on their favorite creator’s team. After the open qualifier is done there will be a launch show where the creators will draft their teams, and from there the league will get underway with the final of the first split taking place in early October with a $200,000 prize pool.
However, creators do not have to actually play in the tournament if they don’t fancy it, so it may just be a lot of fans competing. At a minimum, the creators will actively manage their teams and broadcast games on their channels.
A key part of the creator league is the Community Passes, which you can buy for $19.99. Each creator in the tournament has their own pass, and you can only have a pass for one creator, although you can buy multiple passes for the same creator if you want.
The pass gives you the ability to vote on some areas of the tournament, including the players that are signed to the creator’s team, the rules for the competition and what format future tournaments will take. There’s also the promise of exclusive access to the creators, including Discord servers that feature AMAs and potential in-person experiences with them, although specifics have not been revealed. There will also be weekly community tournaments for pass holders and giveaways, but unless you are really good at Fortnite or very lucky they might not offer much value.
I’m struggling to see why you would want to buy one of these passes when the initial tournament qualifier seems to be open to everyone and all the action will be broadcast for free. So $19.99 for some voting power, access to smaller tournaments and the potential to interact with a personality seems a bit steep, however, the team has said they know they need to offer value for people who buy these passes.
“I think what we’ve tried to do is wherever you fall on the spectrum of your competitive skill or your fandom, we want to provide value to you in some form,” says Benson. “So there’s all kinds of different value adds and at the end of the day it’s a decision that individuals have to make, but we feel confident. And I think another point that’s important to know is the value that’s listed [on] day one is not the value that is like stagnant, we’re always going to be adding more and more and more to try to prove out the value.”
No doubt the Creator League will bring in a lot of viewers purely on the star power of the people involved, but if it wants to have any kind of longevity then I expect they will have to add more value to the $20 passes, otherwise, they may quickly have a lot of people who feel they didn’t get much out of their purchase.
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