While many people still hold prejudices and consider “game to be useless”, a Vietnamese-American guy has created the world’s second-largest eSports company.

In Shark Tank Vietnam, episode 3, calling for capital of Divine Corp – startup eSports (e-sports) gained much attention as well as regret for viewers when not receiving a nod from any “fat fish ” One of the reasons that most sharks offer is the fear of negatively affecting the physical and mental health that video games bring.

Not only with sharks, many Vietnamese people still have an unfriendly look and have not recognized eSports like other sports. And when young people in the country love e-sports often labeled “mischief”, “lack of healthy”, in the United States, it is a young man of Vietnamese descent who has built up the company with the second largest value. world in eSports industry. He is Andy Dinh, also known by the grave of the game as Reginald.

Make money thanks to games from 19 years old

Andy Dinh was born in 1992, in a nine-member family, working class in Campbell, California. Getting acquainted with the legendary Alliance at the age of 16, the young man was soon attracted and decided to follow the call of passion.

Better known as Reginald, the young man quickly climbed to the top position on the world rankings. Since 19 years old, Dinh has earned more than 20,000 USD from electronic sports tournaments. In particular, in 2012, winning the League of Legends second season finals earned him a bonus of $ 15,000.

Andy Dinh was honored by Forbes in the list of top 30 under 30 games.

Although famous, he was not collected by any team. So Dinh and his brother Dan decided to create their own community website and make money from guiding other players. He even devised a live broadcast of matches, long before ESPN and Amazon broadcast legendary League competitions.

Soon after, Dinh dropped out of college and borrowed her parents 5000 USD to continue business investment. The website he manages solomid.net attracts millions of visitors, helping the young man pocket about $ 60,000 per month.

In 2009, Andy Dinh established a professional team called Team SoloMid (TSM), performed and profit from his website. In 2013, Dinh retired from his playing career, stepped back to focus on business, training and management.

Dinh and some members in TSM.

The second largest eSports company in the world

Not merely a team, Dinh has developed Team SoloMid into a company with professional and professional training and business orientation.

In July 2018, he received a $ 37 million Series A grant from a group of investors including A-list venture capitalists Bessemer Ventures Partners, Hall of Fame NFL, Steve Young midfielder and home. NBA championship three times – Steph Curry. Dinh uses this money to double the workforce to 100 employees and build a 25,000m2 training facility and the operation office in Los Angeles. This is the place to generate revenue through sponsors’ money, events for fans and training gamers, …

Team SoloMid also has its own rules and strategies to bring the company to sustainable development as many organizations in other industries, including 6 key elements: sharing and commitment to goals, maximizing potential, prioritize performance, ponder more to learn faster, pursue action and find new contexts.

The company also regularly recruits new factors to strengthen its position. In early 2018, a gamer superstar, Ali (19), signed a contract with TSM, becoming a member of the Fort Fortnite team.

Dr Pepper is one of TSM’s sponsors.

Team members will practice together in the shared house, about six to nine hours a day. They also live, eat, sleep and relax together. Besides commanding and training, Dinh is not afraid to cook, cleaning up for his legendary Alliance team. He currently has a full management team, coaches and pay for League of Legends players salary of up to six digits.

Manage 39 players, organized into 7 teams, Team SoloMid is currently the leading and most recognizable brand in the world of eSports. Under the leadership of Andy Dinh, TSM’s team won first place in the League of Legends in North America, with six championships. This is also the only name eligible to participate in all the first seven World Championship (World Champion Ship) and the first ten NA LCS finals.

TSM’s team won at the NA LCS Summer Finals in 2017.

Currently TSM has more than 60 million followers on different social networks, 2017 revenue is about 21 million USD. In 2018, Team SoloMid was valued at USD 225 million by Forbes, is the second largest eSports company in the world. Despite being behind Cloud9 in the value ranking, TSM is the only name currently collecting positive cash flow. .

The revenue of the entire eSports industry is about USD 906 million in 2018 and is expected to reach USD 1.65 billion after 2 years. Looking only at Asia, eSports has been recognized and become a competitive sport at 2018 Asiad or Seagame 2019. This is also a potential market, there are many areas to develop in the future.

Tuong

According to Young Intellectuals / General