Despite everything that distinguishes eSports from analogue sport: The enthusiasm of the fans is the heartbeat in both worlds. Fans are an essential part of the competition culture, they provide rousing emotions and are key factors in the value chains of professional leagues.
Building a dedicated fan base is therefore also important for eSports teams. In order to be a reliable partner here, to make attractive offers and to create a lot of identification space for their own fans, the young SIM Racing team from BS+Competition, in cooperation with BMW Motorsport, sought advice from students at Macromedia University.
The starting point for the one-semester practical collaboration was research into the current competitive situation and a detailed description of the team’s own target group. Building on this, the students, led by Prof Dr Mo Badr, Alexander Roth and Nanette Willberg, developed ideas for the strategic development of player personalities and for community building. A further requirement came from the partner BMW Motorsport: the fans of traditional BMW Motorsport were also to be included in the measures in order to open up the experience dimension of the eSports teams to them.
In addition to creative methods such as design thinking, the students were required to use classic project management skills such as time/measurement planning and bugdet planning. At the end of the semester, they presented their communication concepts to a high-calibre jury at BMW Motorsport. A final training session with one of the Esports stars crowned the successful collaboration.