225 million gamers who do not watch sport. They live inside it.

A lot translates, especially on the live-event side. ESL runs more than 26 events globally each year, with sold-out arenas in Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, Melbourne. The lessons on fan engagement carry across. Formula One had the spectacle and the entertainment layer figured out, and gaming can learn from that.

But gaming has the chance to take that further because the audience is digitally fluent and knows how to move between digital and physical worlds. The connection from people playing on our platforms through to attending our events is a category-specific opportunity.

We reach more than 225 million gamers a year. The audience splits close to 50/50 by gender at the wider gaming level, though esports skews more male, partly because the talent does. The average audience age is around 26 and a half, compared with 40-plus in Formula One.

The defining feature, though, is that the community stays in the category through life. Someone might start as an active player, transition into a viewer when they stop playing, become a content creator, attend events. They do not fall out of gaming. The lifetime engagement is structurally different from most other entertainment categories.

The correlation between video games and violence has been pretty thoroughly myth-busted. What you really see in team-based games like Counter-Strike, which is five against five with distinctive roles, is the development of soft skills that matter in life and in the workplace: teamwork, communication, strategic thinking. There is a reason a lot of gamers go on to have careers in STEM.

The reaction times are genuinely elite, too. We ran a comparison once between professional Counter-Strike players and Formula One drivers, who are the elite of the elite in reaction tests. A lot of the gamers were faster.

The clearest separator is whether the brand has a clear storytelling strategy and intertwines genuinely with the IP. Brands that come in looking for a traditional sponsorship model, pure brand awareness, tend to fall flat. There might be awareness, but the sentiment around it is not necessarily positive.

DHL is a favourite example because we have people in our arenas at Dota 2 events literally chanting their name, which I have never seen happen anywhere else in my career in sport. They earn it because their activity goes beyond the logo. Gucci built a storytelling piece with us called Gucci Legends, telling the stories of icons within gaming with a luxury lens that brought both brands together. Intel makes products the audience genuinely needs but cannot always afford, so they give back through giveaways and Twitch drops. The pattern is the same: give something to the community, with a long-term commitment.

Traditional sports fans are used to advertising. Jersey sponsors, LED boards, the whole vocabulary. The gaming community is not. They will notice everything, and if you disrupt the ecosystem too much, they will call you out and they will not enjoy it. The discipline is making sure you are adding value through every step of whatever you do, beyond placing a logo in front of them.

Go in with a long-term plan. People say dip your feet in. I disagree. If you dip your feet in gaming, you are bound to fail, or at least to see it as a failure, because you cannot compare it to any other entertainment category in terms of what you are trying to achieve or the results you might generate.

Go in with a long-term strategy, a long-term investment plan. Work with experts. Develop activity that is authentic to the community. Do not act like an awkward corporate partner who wants the brand to be in there but wants to sit outside it. Get fully involved, with different IPs, different elements of gaming. If you nourish the community, the community will love you back.

Gaming and esports is a wide spectrum, so brands have to narrow down which subcategory they belong in. A Nike already deep in traditional sport might be best suited to EAFC. A tech brand wanting something edgier might fit Dota 2 or League of Legends. The choice is consequential because the audiences inside each subcategory have distinct expectations, vocabularies, and patience for brand presence.

We want to connect the dots outside of the gameplay itself. On FACEIT we have social features so the community can come together digitally. On FACEIT Watch the viewer is in control of the content, not the broadcaster. Unlike linear TV, you choose what player to follow, what angle, which replay.

Physically, the events are where long-term loyalty is built. We want people to recognise and connect with ESL, Dreamhack, FACEIT as brands they trust. Dreamhack is the clearest expression of how gaming sits inside wider culture. You see children at the latest Super Mario release, veterans who have played Tekken for years, all interacting alongside new music, fashion, cosplay. Gaming intersects with many cultural pillars at once.

The most important skill is the ability to translate what the numbers are saying into actionable insights that mean something to brands. I want people who can storytell with data, who can visualise it, who can evoke emotion, even when they are not actively selling.

At Formula One we used dwell-time research, GDPR-compliant, by connecting to people's Wi-Fi pings to identify how long they were spending in each part of the circuit. That work directly informed the layout of every circuit. If we wanted merchandise to sell more, we placed it next to the food section, where dwell time was highest. Twenty-four different circuits, each with a different layout, all configured against actual fan behaviour rather than guesswork.