Esports industry luminaries Christopher "MonteCristo" Mykles, Bryce Blum and Lauren Gaba Flanagan teamed up to launch Theorycraft, a new Los Angeles-based esports consulting and client services agency, on Monday.
The three co-founders will seek to help teams and brands across investment, creative, content and production strategies, combining previous work that each of them has done during their times with other companies or as freelancers. The company also has hired Nathen McVittie as its creative director. McVittie previously worked for Leicester City F.C. and Bleacher Report and has consulted for brands such as Nike, Disney and Audi (Disney is the parent company of ESPN).
"We wound up in this conflict of circumstances where we had a bunch of different people who were independently doing consulting work in the space, all of whom have related to different core competencies," Blum told ESPN. "All four of us were independently doing work in and around the space, and we just all came together, got to know each other and realized there was an opportunity here to create something where the sum of all of us together was much better than the us all standing alone."
The past few years have seen growth in the creative services and consulting space around esports.
In January 2015, WME-IMG (now known as Endeavor), one of the largest firms in entertainment and sports, acquired Global eSports Management and went on to help launch ELEAGUE with Turner Sports. Creative Artists Agency, Endeavor's largest competitor, has also done client work for Riot Games and Activision Blizzard. Smaller firms, such as Dallas-based AoE Creative and London-based Code Red Esports, have also launched in the past few years.
Mykles, Blum and Gaba Flanagan bring a wealth of previous experience working in the esports industry.
Mykles has worked in esports for more than eight years, working in editorial and, more notably, as a freelance live broadcaster for the likes of Riot Games, OGN and now Activision Blizzard.
Mykles also coached professional League of Legends team Counter Logic Gaming and went on to co-own an esports team of his own, Renegades -- which grew significantly in popularity after Mykles helped launched a branding campaign in 2015. Mykles later sold that team in August 2016 after it was banned from competing in Riot's League of Legends Championship Series for various infractions. Mykles also has consulted for various teams, such as the Overwatch League's London Spitfire, and for Activision Blizzard.
"Any teams that want us to work with them on content or brand identity, we can certainly do that," Mykles said. "We can work on campaigns with corporations who are looking for sponsorships. We help companies target, if they have an idea of which market they want to get into or if they don't understand which market they want to get into, we can help them identify games or audiences that would be more attractive consumers for their particular niche. ... We can help new companies acquire financing, we can help new companies develop a business plan and identify a target market that needs servicing."
Blum first entered esports in early 2015 as an independent lawyer and later in-house counsel and director of esports at Unikrn, an esports gambling startup based in Seattle. Blum later took a job at a consulting firm, Catalyst Sports & Media, where he oversaw their esports projects alongside former Riot Games league operations staffer Avi Bhuiyan, as well as launched his own law firm, ESG Law. ESG represents many top teams and individuals in the industry, including Mykles and others such as Cloud9, Team SoloMid, Team Liquid and 100 Thieves. Blum has also written for ESPN as a freelance contributor.
Gaba Flanagan previously worked at CAA in various creative roles and served as the United Entertainment Group's director of esports. For the past year, she has worked on consulting and creative projects as a freelancer and met Mykles during a project for the Overwatch League and then was introduced to Blum via Mykles.
"Training at big agencies -- and in my opinion, CAA is the pinnacle of client service -- and that's really something I have brought into my freelance life over the past year and will absolutely apply to everything I do at Theorycraft, in terms of level of service that our clients will get and how they're handled and treated by us, which I hope will be at the highest level," Gaba Flanagan said.
"You know, in terms of coming from big agencies, the breadth of clients I've worked with in the past, a lot of my clients have been focused on targeting highly specialized communities," she said. "And that's part of what has made me so successful with esports and gaming, because I have a lot of expertise as both being a participant in the community but also especially how to creatively excite communities that are sort of highly niche or specialized."