How eSports Player Scouting Works

Credit: YouTube

For many gamers, getting paid to play video games is the ultimate sign of success. You get to live in a mansion in the suburbs of Los Angeles, New York or London. Your day revolves around playing your favorite PC games and only leaving the house for essential breaks.

To spice things up, you get a paycheck from your team and sponsors every once in a while. Unfortunately, getting scouted to join a successful eSports team is exceedingly challenging. And even when you get signed, you have to prove you're worth it to remain employed for long.

Discover the competitive process of scouting eSports players below. Find out what your chances of becoming a pro-gamer are and how to fast track the process.

Solo Queue Players in League of Legends

League of Legends scouts have the easiest job in the eSports business. They don’t have to travel around the world to discover new talent. Neither do they have to watch thousands of Twitch streamers to find the most talented among them.

Instead, they focus on League of Legend’s tiered list of the best players in the world. Dubbed solo queue, players are ranked based on a wide range of factors, including their skills, roles, and the number of wins.

These days, LOL also features duo and flex queue ranks to display the best duos in 2V2 tournaments and flex for teams of up to five players. The positions serve a purpose in matchmaking, but they are also crucial to scouts.

If a team wants to hire a new LOL player, they can check the top-ranked players, watch their streams contact them. In many cases, eSports teams don’t even audition the best-rated Solo Queue players. They sign them immediately.

Contacting Streamers

Imagine getting a call from Astralis after they watched a few hours of your CS: GO streams and liked them. Or the San Francisco Shock calls you to join their Overwatch B team after they spot you on YouTube.

These encounters happen frequently, at least to budding streamers with unique skills. Many A-list streamers, of course, get more opportunities and calls to team up with eSports organizations.

But because they demand high pays, organizations that use Twitch to scout players lookout for upcoming streamers. Sometimes they also ask viewers for help through surveys and social media polls.

For example, a scouting team could run a Twitter Challenge asking users to nominate their favorite Dota 2 player. And to popularize the surveys, they offer gifts to whoever gets the most retweets or likes.

Advertising

A quick online search on "eSports jobs" returns thousands of results. Some of the offers regard managerial, marketing, and accounting roles. But lots of them are invites to apply for pro-gaming positions.

Advertising works efficiently because it’s a two-way system. On the one hand, the advertisers are interested in talented players. On the other, thousands of interested pro-gamers are looking for the same jobs.

Advertising also works in the iGaming industry. Many new casino sites 2020, in particular, want to become the operators of choice for casino streamers and regular gamblers. But because they are relatively unknown, they use adverts to scout new customers.

The beauty of advertising is that eSports teams can assess a player’s skills online. If they are impressed, they can help the player traveled to the team’s headquarters. If they don’t like the player, they pass on them without needing to waste more resources.

Networks

These days, scouts for all major sports don’t travel around like they used to. They don’t attend live football, basketball or rugby games just to watch a youngster in action. The same applies to eSports.

In this age of the Internet, networking is the most important tool in a scout’s life. They have dozens of contacts spread out around the world, including competing scouts. That way, they exchange ideas and give one another leads on where to find the next recruits.

Fortunately, not every gaming company needs extensive networks to find players. Casino businesses are better off advertising and using content marketing to find customers. That's because their customers already want their services. They are just not sure which specific company to work with.

Against that backdrop, you can read the latest information about CasinoPlanet to learn how this operator new and loyal customers. Cue, it uses irresistible bonuses to help players bet on games without using their cash.

Poaching Successful Gamers

It's a vice. It shouldn't be happening, but poaching is prevalent in the eSports world. And until teams cooperate to end it, financially well-off organizations will continue to poach talented gamers from smaller teams.

For clarity, poaching describes the illegal hiring of players contracted by other companies. It happens when there are no laws to punish organizations that do it. Luckily, it’s less prevalent in 2020 than it was five years ago.

However, there are still companies that target frustrated pro-gamers with promises of better pays. It’s wrong because it threatens fair play in eSports, meaning financially endowed teams can harass smaller businesses as they wish.

Conventions

Some large eSports organizations hold talent conventions where teams can meet up with potential pro-gamers monthly or annually. Usually, gamers attend the events free of charge, but teams help sponsor the conferences.

In the US, annual scouting conventions have held establish dozens of eSports teams through players who met at the events. Sometimes they also help gamers forge networks they can use to better their future careers.

Scholarships

At least twenty American colleges now offer scholarship opportunities for talented eSports players. The qualification process starts in high school. A few elite gamers are picked and get their fees paid for as long as they play and win tournaments for their sponsoring colleges.

Besides colleges, many eSports organizations are using the same approach to nurture young talents. It’s a better approach than poaching or paying millions of dollars to sign proven talents.

However, it's a relatively expensive system. Teams with young talents in the companies must cater to their educational, health, and financial requirements before they start to compete professionally.