SVG Sit-Down: Misfits Gaming Group's Ella Pravetz on Reaching the Evolving Esports Audience, Staying Authentic Esports' scrappiness' and informality offer lessons for traditional sports media By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor Wednesday, April 7, 2021 - 4:02 pm
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As a tier one esports organization with teams competing in League of Legends European Championship (LEC), Overwatch League (OWL), Call of Duty League (CDL), and others, Misfits Gaming Group's media-production team is constantly churning out fresh content to serve the fans.
Last year, Misfits Gaming announced the opening of its new 18.000-sq.-ft. corporate headquarters in Boca Raton, FL. Although the pandemic has forced many on the Misfits media-production team to continue to work remotely, the Boca Raton office is equipped with a brand-new fully equipped production studio complete with Blackmagic Ursa Mini 4.6K and Sony A7iii cameras, as well as a Maverick 2 Pro drone.
With the LEC and CDL season in full swing and OWL set to kick off next week, Misfits continues to ramp up its production operation to serve its hundreds of thousands of fans and subscribers across YouTube, Twitch, and social platforms.
SVG sat down with Misfits Gaming Group President, Media and Branding, Ella Pravetz, who oversees a team of 15+ creatives from production to social media and design across three brands: Misfits Gaming (LEC), Florida Mutineers (CDL), and Florida Mayhem (OWL). Pravetz discussed the Misfits content-creation ecosystem, how her content strategy varies from one social/digital platform to another, her belief in the YouTube trickle-down theory, how to engage with players and tell their stories authentically, and what the mainstream media-production industry can learn from the esports sector.
Misfits Gaming Group's Ella Pravetz: If you create really strong long-form content and different series on YouTube, that can fuel a lot of the social [platforms].
Tell us a bit about your production operation and how it has evolved since your arrival.
Misfits was founded in 2016 with the [League of Legends EUW Challenger Series] team, and I joined in 2017. Back then, I was one of the first creative people hired on the European side, and we didn't have a studio; we just stayed in the gaming house and covered the team. We've grown a lot in just the last four years.
[Previously], half of us were in Berlin covering League of Legends, and half of us were in L.A. covering Overwatch League. I eventually took over the role of overseeing all the different brands and creative teams and was [tasked with] how to create the infrastructure for that. Since then, within my department, we've created a design team, a social-media team, a production team, and a postproduction team.
[In 2020], we created our headquarters in [Boca Raton], which is where we are based now. Things have been in flux a bit with COVID, as our needs have changed and most of my team is now working remotely. I'm one of the only people [onsite] in Florida for any needs we have. But our new office is starting to open up, and we're moving in more equipment and furniture. We have a new studio space that I'm currently working out of and putting together the equipment room. It's still in the really early stages, but we're already seeing a lot more efficiency compared with the past.
How do you create and distribute content differently for the various social and streaming platforms?
I personally believe in the YouTube trickle-down theory: if you create really strong long-form content and a variety of different series on YouTube, that can fuel a lot of the social [platforms] and other areas. YouTube is one of the best tools we have in terms of searchability and engaging new audiences.
If you do a great long-form series, the memes and segments that we make in those series will often become the content you see on social. So those long-form series can give you micro-content for everything else.
Misfits Gaming Group has a brand-new production studio in Boca Raton, FL.
But getting to the point where you can fully do that is very hard, because each YouTube channel should probably have five to seven 10-minute pieces come out every week on top of smaller features. Multiply that by our different channels [for Misfits Gaming, Mayhem, and Mutineers], and that starts to add up fast. That takes a lot of time and investment.
How can you maximize your time and investment to get the most eyeballs possible without breaking the budget?
I believe, if you really want to be successful on YouTube, you have to categorize your content by how people engage with it.
First, there are people who engage by browsing. That translates to [creating] click-worthy titles or thumbnails that show this is a compelling story or segment so you want to click on it.
Second, there is the searchable [audience]: people [who] are literally searching for something specific. We have to think about what people are searching for within esports, and often that is [educational] content that show you how to improve gameplay, teaches really good lessons, and shows trends that are happening today.
And the last [category] is content for fans and subscribers. What do people who already know [esports] care about? That might be recapping the LEC [match] or focusing on what players they already love are doing. It's more celebrity-type content [serving] people who are already emotionally attached.
Our team comes up with different concepts based on those different audience categories. What are the click-worthy topics or searchable terms for each audience? And we come up with concepts for different series and either develop them ourselves or work with our partnerships' teams to try to get them branded and paid for.
How do you engage play
