Proposal to create esports sponsorship fund and future proposal framework

[Grand]

I’d love to start a discussion here about creating a $RLY fund to test out sponsorships for esports tournaments. Ideally, I’d like us to setup a framework to streamline future proposals for tournament sponsorships. I think this would be a great way to introduce larger twitch and esports audiences in general to the benefits of the Rly platform and network.

Some ideas to kick off a framework, though it’d be great to whittle these down to be less burdensome but still achieve the goal of ensuring an impactful grant which I would initially call out to be onboarding new creators, users and building brand awareness.

If we accept that a framework would be useful, please consider these ideas as a starting point.

Timeline: Proposals must be submitted prior to the tournament start date.

Viewer count: Instead of requiring some threshold, perhaps we could require the proposal to list the average or current viewer count on Twitch (or alternative platform/ viewer metric).

Prize cap: $RLY amount not to exceed x $RLY or usd equivalent at time of grant. This could vary a lot and I think we could leave this open to be exceeded if the potential of the sponsorship was greater. For instance, a LOL sponsorship would likely have a higher threshold to be accepted or meaningful. As RLY price stabalizes, might become best practice to list this in just $RLY?

Prize distribution: Should we consider a cap to the number of accounts this would be sent to? Would it be practical to distribute to tournament organizer or representative directly? This might be a category to be left more broadly open to the discretion of the proposer to best fit the tournament/team/player structure.

Point of contact: An introduction must be made between a tournament representative and Rally administrator as a prerequisite to final approval after the proposal is complete. Fraud prevention.

Sponsorship recognition requirements: …would love input here. Ideally whatever structure is in place to recognize sponsors for the given tournament at different sponsorship levels. Important to list this here so RLY holders can have information at hand to judge how impactful this will be in terms of visibility.

Rally network Creator: At least one Rally network creator must stream the game in question. In house expertise that can speak to the community in question about the benefits of the platform, and demonstrate the uses.

Example Grant could look like:

Heroes of the Storm CCL
Timeline: Missed the boat I believe.
Viewer count: 3.2k viewers, 2.6M followers Twitch
Prize Cap: Proposing 4K USD in $RLY
Prize Distribution: 1st place team: 2.5k, 2nd: 1k, 3rd: 500
Point of contact: whoever it would be.
Sponsorship recognition requirement: Listing on website alongside sponsors, callout on stream as part of prizepool, casters are informed of the sponsorship.
Rally Network Creator: Fanhots

So, probably said this twice already, but I really feel some framework will help more come forward with proposals for esports sponsorships that can get the word out on RLY.

Cheers,
Grand

[mvellank]

Very cool idea and thoughtful write-up for how this could work. Sponsoring tournaments is obviously a tried and true thing for various brands, so worth contemplating for Rally. However, I have many reservations about the ROI of this approach as someone who’s been on the frontlines with creators/brands. Let me paint the counter-argument for the sake of discussion in this thread.

• Extremely high effort - I like the idea of using $RLY grants in creative ways, but doing something like this is operationally intense. Rally would have to hire folks just to execute on this. There’s contracts/paperwork with the tournament organizer, tournament logistics, tracking rules / team registrations, tracking contract fulfillment, payout logistics, etc. As a reminder, Rally is not a traditional company and so it’d be better to focus on more scalable uses of $RLY grants IMO. Put another way, if we were to execute on this, it’d directly impact time we’d be spending pitching other potential Rally creators that could be much higher ROI
• Low ROI - Rally doesn’t benefit from generic sponsorships like an energy drink sponsor might, i.e. a user decides to buy the energy drink after seeing the sponsorship. Creator Coin is a more complex offering (at least today), and typically requires a warm referral and/or phone call pitches to educate creators on how Rally / Creator Coin works. Based on my experience, we probably won’t get any inbound creators from a sponsorship. However, we may get some users interested in the Rally project as a whole by virtue of having to claim $RLY and learning about what it is.
• Category focus - the Rally team already has great relationships with eSports orgs, Twitch streamer agencies, and gaming brands. We have a network of advisors pursuing these relationships for Creator Coin, and we don’t NEED a sponsorship to connect with esports players directly. Also, while eSports/Twitch is a great space, we’re getting a lot of pull into other areas like crypto influencers, brands, and Discord communities. Depending on where we see heat in the coming months, we may want to re-evaluate where to allocate $RLY grants for maximum effect.

Taking a step back, IMO sponsorships fall into the category of top-of-the-funnel marketing, which is more useful when there is a clear conversion funnel. I think Rally will get there, but it’s a bit premature to focus on the top part of the funnel at this point. Rather, all of the community’s energy should be focusing on identifying creators that will lean into Rally and establish clear use cases / case studies for others to follow.

[Grand]

Legit reasoning across the board. Your team has clearly thought deeply about if, how and when to pursue something like this. Thanks for sharing your thoughts here. With your perspective in mind, I’d agree that now is not the time and Rally will be better served with the community pursuing our top priority of engaging creators that will lean into Rally.