SVG Sit-Down: PUBG's Everett Coleman on Producing Esports in a Pandemic, Storytelling for Battle Royale Games In a normalizing world, plans are to apply lessons learned during COVID By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Friday, June 25, 2021 - 10:30 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
As one of the most popular videogames on the planet, PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS (PUBG) has had a growing footprint in esports over the past few years. In addition to tentpole global events like PUBG Global Invitational.S (PGIS) and the PUBG Global Championship (PGC), game developer PUBG is currently in the midst of the PUBG Continental Series 4 (PCS4) with regions competing in the Americas, APAC, Asia, and Europe.
PUBG's Everett Coleman: It's less that the broadcast philosophy and workflows have changed drastically [during the pandemic] and more about efficiency and finding the most streamlined ways to communicate.
When the pandemic hit in March 2020, PUBG pivoted quickly, transitioning from in-person (offline) events to virtual (online) tournaments. The PUBG Global Series was canceled, and the PUBG Continental Series (PGS) online competition was introduced. PCS proved to be highly successful, serving fans' appetite for live esports content during a challenging period. Then, earlier this year, PUBG made its grand return to offline events with 2021 PGI.S in Incheon, Korea.
PUBG Head of Esports, Americas, Everett Coleman oversees all of PUBG's esports operations in North America and Latin America. He sat down with SVG to discuss how PUBG's esports strategy has evolved, lessons learned from producing live events in the pandemic, the launch of a new studio at its Santa Monica offices, the challenges of storytelling for a battle royale game like PUBG, and what's ahead for PUBG in 2021 and beyond.
Tell us a bit about yourself and your background in esports.
I call myself a product of the industry because esports is my entire world. I've been in esports for 13-plus years and worked across 30-40 different videogames. I've been able to see the entire spectrum and every angle of esports. I started out as a competitor when I was a teenager, then got into team managing and coaching and, eventually, team owning. A few years back, I joined ESL when they opened their ESL America office in Burbank.
I've been at PUBG for about 2 years. I originally came on as part of a global team that built the esports ecosystem in 2019, including writing the original draft for the global rulebook of PUBG esports. I helped shape the global ecosystem and served as an intersection between all of the regions to help guide league operations, project management, scheduling, and other logistics.
How do you describe your current role as head of esports, Americas, and PUBG's activity in 2021?
Today, my primary focus is to head the Americas division of esports, which is North America and Latin America. This was a big year for us because we made the strategic decision to merge North America and Latin America.
This year, we've had a great mix between first-party online events, third-party online events, and our big global offline events: the PUBG Global Invitational.S (PGI.S) at the beginning of the year and the PUBG Global Championship (PGC) at the end of the year. It's my team's responsibility to fill in the schedule between those two tentpole events, and we've done that with our online first-party event in PUBG Championship Series and our online third-party events in ESL PUBG Masters. Performance across both of those series qualifies teams for PGC at the end of the year.
What did your esports tournament and live-production operations look like prior to the pandemic?
Prior to the pandemic, we were launching a global series of offline events, called the PUBG Global Series. We had several cities around the world picked out to host big offline events like what we produced in 2019. Regional qualifiers would have been executed across several regions, and the top teams would have attended the global events. These events would be the key moments throughout the year and build up the story arc on the way to a massive global championship. Once the pandemic hit, we shifted the focus from those big offline-event moments to big online-event moments.
How did the onset of the pandemic impact your operations?
The biggest change was transitioning from our plans for the PUBG Global Series into creating what became the PUBG Continental Series.
We were very far along in planning for offline events. We had already booked travel and venue, and the event was only a couple weeks away. Some of the other regions had already completed their offline qualifiers, and our NA, LATAM, and OCE teams were going to be some of the last teams to qualify for the event that was going to happen in Berlin.
When the pandemic really hit, we made the decision to postpone the global events as well as the remaining regional events until we could figure everything out. Eventually, the global event was canceled, so there was no reason to do an offline qualifier. We did pay out the prize pool to all the teams that would have qualified for the global event because we wanted to reward those players for all their hard work and make sure they were taken care of, knowing that the impact of the pandemic would be so significant.
At that point, we transitioned into the PUBG Continental Series (PCS), and everything moved online as we started up again.
How did your production/broadcast operations have to adapt once online play began?
We had to rely on cloud-based solutions for all of the broadcasts. It took us only 30-60 days to spin up an entirely new annual plan and broadcast workflow, which is pretty amazing.
At the time, we were in the process of building an in-person production studio, but that had to
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
SVG Sit-Down: PUBG's Everett Coleman on Producing Esports in a Pandemic, Storytelling for Battle Royale Games In a normalizing world, plans are to apply lessons learned during COVID By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor 
