Zone Startups Profiles: Esports Tickets
In this ongoing series, we celebrate our newest companies, give some background, and show where they’re headed.
This week, we have an interview with Arwina, CEO of Esports Tickets, an all-in-one destination for esports and gaming events.
The Founder
Arwina Mogul, CEO
- Previous startup, Daily eSports, dailyesports.gg acquired by Enthusiast Gaming
- Worked with AMD, RedBull, Logitech Gaming, Cineplex on social media and gaming event projects
- Consulted, recruited and developed strategic plan and business models for the world’s first esports theme park
- Former Case Manager for the Region of Peel and City of Toronto
- Supported the social media plan for Region of Peel’s “2035” vision
- Leads multiple gaming groups with thousands of active members
Tell us a bit about yourself
I’ve founded Esports Tickets in March of 2017, although the idea of having an Eventbrite for gamers has always been in the back of my mind for the past few years.
My education is in social work. I worked as a case manager for the Region of Peel for five years before esports and gaming. As a case manager, I was responsible for disbursing public funds to clients who are requesting financial and employment assistance. However, I’ve always had a passion for gaming and technology.
I grew up learning and using PaintShop Pro, Photoshop, HTML, CSS, cPanel, and more for commissioned and passion web design and development projects. I have also been a gamer my whole life, including MMOs, shooter games, RPGs, etc. 2002 was the earliest year I believe I was designing and developing websites—and I have proof! From 2012 to today: this is when I really took it up a notch to get involved in esports. From organizing online tournaments with over 200 teams to selling out a theatre at the TIFF Bell Lightbox for one of my gaming events, everything was done for my love of gaming, esports, and the community within it.
My most recent position in esports is when I flew to Doha, Qatar and developed the strategic plan for the world’s first esports theme park, recruited a team of esports experts, and built an event calendar for the theme park. I was there for six months before returning back to Toronto to start Esports Tickets.
Describe your company: the short version
Esports Tickets brings accessibility to esports and gaming events, programs and activities to people all over the world.
Describe your company: the long version
Esports Tickets is looking to help gamers find online and offline tournaments, events, and other types of gaming activities locally and internationally. There are hundreds of ticketing websites with an esports section and hundreds of thousands of esports and gaming websites with an events section but there wasn’t an existing platform that fuses these two features together. As gamers ourselves, we always felt the pain as organizers when we would jump from different ticketing platforms and lose customers and, as fans, when we would miss out on an event since there isn’t a dedicated platform for esports and gaming events that we can use.
Describe your ideal customer and their use case
Our ideal customer is an esports and gaming fan between the ages of 18 and 35 who is interested in a variety of video games. The fan is interested in playing competitively and attending events to meet other like-minded gamers. He or she is an avid gamer that goes on our platform to check out events happening locally or online. The fan finds our platform useful because he or she can always check live and upcoming events and won’t miss out anymore on events they’re interested in attending.
How is your company different than your competitors?
As a company, we’re taking a bottoms-up approach to our userbase. I understand how the esports and gaming communities work when it pertains to their events, partnerships, and socials. I am genuinely passionate about esports and gaming as a community; I am not an outsider looking in, but a community leader who has my users’ best interest in mind.
I’m experienced in developing communities from scratch to thousands of members and millions of reach. I’ve secured high-level sponsorships for my esports and gaming events, which gives me the edge over my competitors. I’ve had conversations with organizers who have said “Finally, it’s about time we have a platform we can use and the team behind it knows exactly what we’re going through and what we need.”
It also helps that we are the first platform to bring events, ticketing, and gaming together!
What do you hope to accomplish while at Ryerson Futures?
During our stay at Ryerson Futures, we’re looking forward to bonding with other startups in the program, securing partnerships, and raising funding for our startup within the next 3 to 6 months. Between 6 to 12 months, we hope to recruit talent, receive further advice on new challenges, and further secure partnerships.
What are the one or two hurdles you must overcome to succeed?
Being able to scale and become the event platform for gaming and esports events. As an event platform with the goal to raise event awareness and bring accessibility to events, we want every gamer to use our platform whenever they want to engage with others online and offline.
Where do you see your company in five years?
Being acquired by a ticketing or media/entertainment company. Being used by the majority of gamers all over the world to look forward to the next event they’ll be participating in. To see opportunities being created within the esports and gaming community through the use of our platform such as new career paths, esports training camps, growing existing communities, and more.
For more information, visit the Esports Tickets website.