Proposal: Nouns Esports Pod

NounsDAO NounsDAO Proposals
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Hey all, I go by Sasquatch. This is my proposal to start an esports pod in Nouns DAO

Nouns Esports

Goal

Proliferate Nouns through esports initiatives, starting with the signing of a professional Dota 2 roster.

Description

Dota is a multi-decade-old esport that is currently being developed by Valve Software.

They host the single largest prize pool tournament in esports, The International. The latest purse for this annual tournament was around $40 million USD.

To qualify for The International, you participate in the Dota Professional Circuit (DPC) league which takes place throughout the year. This is mostly an online, regional format, but each season culminates in an international LAN called a Major.

One of the first initiatives of our esports pod will be to sign “4 Zoomers”, a Division 1 North American DPC team.

Budget: 35 ETH

  • The majority of this budget will be used to compensate the roster of five players, their manager and coach for the upcoming DPC season.
    • The team has agreed to sign from the day the proposal is voted-in until the end of the third DPC season, July 17
  • We will be working with former player and caster Brax to act as an ambassador and liaison within the Dota community. He will be hosting and casting at least two different Nouns branded Dota tournaments.
  • Some of the players stream individually via Twitch. We will create assets for their on-stream overlay.

Administrative Multisig

  • Brennen
  • Sasquatch
  • Maty
  • Goldy
  • Wag

Deliverables

  • Tournament stream viewership
    • Their most recent series from April 16th has 283,352 views on the VOD via Twitch
    • Live tournament broadcasts regularly have tens of thousands of concurrent viewers
  • Individual stream viewership
    • Some of the players on the roster regularly stream on their own while practicing (hundreds or thousands of concurrent viewers)
  • In game branding
    • Dota allows for DPC teams to have in-game branding through assets placed inside of the game’s landscape. Nouns branding will be visable in game as the team competes.
  • Name branding
    • The team will rebrand from 4 Zoomers to Nouns Dota.
  • Player name branding
    • Player names will include a Nounish sponsor tag. e.g. Gunnar.⌐◨-◨

Future

  • If this pilot is deemed successful by Nouns, potential next steps include signing this Dota roster for an extended term, signing other gaming teams or esports athletes, and fleshing out an esports-focused subDAO.
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We love the eSports! Let’s go

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i think this is a really exciting experiment, and can also lead to opportunities for us in this space across different types of games.

would be great if we can open up lines of communication around expectation/planning beyond the third DPC season / in the event they qualify for TI, we would definitely want to the opportunity to continue sponsoring them there for wider vis

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Great feedback. I am happy to report the team has offered us “Right of First Offer” for the upcoming Major and The International.

The road to TI for the team is as follows:

  1. Achieving a top 2 placement in DPC North America (June 6 - July 17) qualifies them for the Major LAN in Arlington Texas (Aug 4 - 14th)
  2. Performing well at the Major qualifies them for The International.(date TBD)

It’d be great to keep extending their term with Nouns DAO if they keep having opportunities to compete!

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Hello Nounsfolk!

It’s been a month since Prop #68 Nouns Esports passed. I thought it would be insightful for the community to have an accountability report of what we’ve done and how the funds have been spent. Also, a brief mention of future plans for Nouns Esports.

Budget Overview

Total Budget: 35 ETH.

Team Salaries: 20.6737 ETH upfront to the team, consisting of the five players, the coach, and their manager.

Bootcamp: 6.5 ETH to facilitate a practice and competition boot camp for the team in Philadelphia, from June 18th to July 7th.

Incentive Reward: 3 ETH as a bonus for winning the BTS Pro Series event. This is the largest tournament outside of the Dota Pro Circuit in North America. An incentive reward was planned in consultation with the team’s coach - we are happy to reward the team for their victory!

Staff:

  • 2 ETH to Maty for design work. Making our logos, streaming assets, in-game assets, and supporting efforts for the in-game team bundle.
  • 1 ETH to Brax for work as a community liaison and negotiating with the team.
  • .4 ETH to Logical - Social Media - Twitter.
  • .4 ETH to Papaya - Social Media - Twitter.
  • .38393 to Shani - Video editor who is currently making a recap of the BTS Pro Series victory and content related to the upcoming boot camp.
  • .1 ETH to Fari for design work related to the in-game team bundle.

Casting with Noggles

  • 0.54 ETH retroactively rewarded to the casters ET and Kmart - .03 each per game they repped our AR Noggles on the BTS Pro Series official broadcast.

This proposal was envisioned as a pilot for future Nouns Esports activities. The downturn of ETH/USD did have an impact on what could be facilitated via this budget. I chose to focus on proposal execution rather than personal compensation while being in charge of distributing the pod’s budget. I believe the pilot was a success even at this stage, so in the next proposal, I would like to include retroactive compensation for my work.

Highlights & Disappointments

Some obvious highlights from the proposal thus far include the BTS Pro Series tournament victory and now the team’s latest Dota Pro Circuit win over Evil Geniuses with 40,000 concurrent spectators on Twitch! If you missed the series, here’s a recap video made by a Dota content creator (with 140k+ views!).

One of my favorite moments was when the mother of one of our players discovered the Nouns playground for herself and made a new PFP in support of her son who goes by Moo. Another moving occurrence was listening to Gunnar describe the impact of sponsorship in his post-game interview after beating Evil Geniuses, historically the best North American team, earlier this week.

The team has six more Pro Circuit matches remaining, until mid-July. So expect more Dota esports content forthcoming!

The biggest disappointment thus far was receiving our first dose of NFT backlash from a grassroots tournament organizer we wanted to support. Their community chose not to associate with something considered NFT/Crypto related. We expected initial backlash via Reddit/Twitter when signing the team since most Dota players are still unfamiliar with Nouns, but this was our first rejection letter. There are other potential organizational partners for us to be involved with going forward, but this was the best opportunity within our proposal timeframe.

Conclusion - A vision for Nouns Esports going forward

The idea for an intersection between Nouns and Esports started as a casual DM to the Nouner Goldy back in early January. Now we have our inaugural team and our first tournament victory! I have received a lot of support and positive feedback from both Nouners and Nouns Folk in regards to this proposal. Thank you! Big shoutout to Brennen and Maty for their energy as builders, leaders, and active multisig participants.

With the recent announcement of 30 teams (10 more than last year) at the upcoming “The International” in Singapore, and a new tournament to qualify for in Malaysia this August, the Dota team will have abundant opportunities to compete in the coming months. Expanding the Esports Pod and extending our time with the Dota squad will be the next proposal I will bring in front of Nouns! As previously mentioned, this first prop was seen as a pilot - I think Nouns has great potential to be the first “Tier 1” Esports team that’s powered by crypto natives - scaling towards that is my goal.

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This a great reflection!
Thanks for sharing.

I also love the highlights :smiling_face_with_three_hearts::face_holding_back_tears:

Agreed on your retro compensation as well.

Sorry to hear there was backlash from a promising partner, but as mentioned, it’s to be somewhat expected in the near future.

I think it actually may be a positive as it obviously struck a chord and they will not forget the nouns team :wink:

Love where this is headed and the progress so far.

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I wanted to add some updated details as this proposal wraps up (the official ending date is the 17th)

We paid for a second video from the editor Shani - bringing their total compensation to 1.29834 ETH.

Social media support was instead paid for out of pocket, as well as some misc. small costs such as getting Noggles to the players, paying to boost our Discord, and traveling to inspect the boot camp.

The last transaction was sent today, compensating the Noggled casters who had to create their first wallets ⌐◨-◨