During the ESL UK Premiership Finals at MCM ComicCon, ESI caught up with Adam Heath, MD of RNR-eSports, the parent company of Reason Gaming. At the event he saw his CS:GO team finish second on Friday, before Reason’s Overwatch team claimed the UK title on the Sunday.
Esports Insider: So you took two teams to MCM in CS:GO and Overwatch. How difficult is it to organise?
Adam Heath: It’s not been that bad as far as events go – we’ve done events much bigger, with more teams and more Europeans coming in. The time frame was a bit tight though, with the teams qualifying just two weeks before the event. So trying to get the right flights, talking to everyone and trying to get everything in line was quite stressful. It’s made more difficult as we are organising it around some of the guys’ playing or working commitments. We got there in the end, though. With a bit more notice it could’ve been cheaper and better. There was a few nasty flights on the way home, some players didn’t get back until the early hours of the morning.
Esports Insider: Reason’s been an organisation for a while now. How’s it grown since you took charge in 2012 and where do you see it going from here?
Adam: As for our growth plan, Reason are mostly focusing on new games, as well as keeping up with the classics – CS:GO, and your MOBAs etc. We don’t have a team in League of Legends or Dota 2 any more but we are still keeping an eye on those scenes. Also coming out of nowhere there’s Brawhalla, where we’re seeing a World Championship for $100,000 (£80,513) taking place. We have four of our guys flying over to the US for that. There’s suddenly a lot of these more unheard of games bursting onto the scene that are making a lot of money from the growth of esports. These titles are trying to build their way into the scene, so we’re hitting the ground running with them – supporting and chatting to them to help them on their way.
It’s sort of really helped Reason make its mark as an organisation that welcome anyone, no matter what game they’re from. It doesn’t matter what size your title is.
“There’s suddenly a lot of these more unheard of games bursting onto the scene that are making a lot of money from the growth of esports”
Esports Insider: So alongside MCM, you’ve also got your female team competing at ESWC. How has that been?
Adam: We’ve got a manager over there, who’s responsible for making sure everything’s good with the team. As I’m over here, my contact is fairly limited. From what I’ve heard so far, everything’s gone pretty smoothly. We’ve made it through the group stage and are doing fairly well in the Quarter Finals. They’ve put in the work and are a dedicated team. They were more of a logistical nightmare as they’re from Russia and Ukraine, so we had a few visa issues to be sorted. Flights from Russia also seem to be few and far between so that was a bit of a nightmare. Again, we got there in the end and are really happy with them so far.
Esports Insider: So looking to 2017, what is the future of Reason Gaming?
Adam: 2017 will be interesting, mostly because of a couple of titles we’re currently talking to. Overwatch has become our main game, mostly down to our successes at Insomnia i58 and now here at the ESL UK Premiership.
We’re not really sure where we’ll be with our UK CS:GO side though. We had a team at the beginning of the season but that didn’t work out and they joined a separate roster. We picked up Vexstar to ensure we honoured sponsorship commitments so the team at MCM is a mix. They’re not sticking together after this tournament, even though we would have kept them on.
In our other titles, we’re not too sure. We still have a fair number of titles under our belt, but it is very quiet in certain esport scenes at the moment so we’re just waiting for 2017. It’s been busy this year for events so I’m sure next year will be just as busy.
Some of our Hearthstone squad will be competing at DreamHack Winter at the end of November. We also had Firrlo go to GigaCon and the World Championships and come 8th at both of them. Then we also have the rest of the team who are sort of following in his stead so that’s also going really well.