ANALYTICS PLATFORM FOR COACHES AND ANALYSTS OF LEAGUE OF LEGENDS TEAMS.

Business ideas can be found everywhere, even in video games. That’s exactly where Merlijn de Vos, Leon Peters, and Finn Tempelaar found their idea for Tempo: a software platform that provides analytics for coaches and analysts of esports teams of the game League of Legends. With their innovation, they aim to revolutionize the world of esports. “We want to be at the forefront of the esports industry.”

Multi-billion dollar market

Skeptical about starting a startup in the esports market? No need, according to Leon: “It’s a multi-billion dollar market. Esports is growing rapidly, but the data analytics aspect is lagging. It’s very comparable to soccer in the early 2000s. Video analytics provided more in-depth insights into the performances of players and teams, and coaches could use those insights to enhance the performance of their teams. The same is happening now in esports.” One of the most prominent esports games in the world is League of Legends: a strategy game in which two teams, consisting of five players, try to destroy each other’s base. As a professional League of Legends player, Finn got interested in the analytics behind the game. He started looking through academic papers to see if he could find anything about it. Finn: “There actually were papers about it. So we figured: if it’s in academia, why not make it into a startup?”

Exceeding human limits

When reading through the papers, Leon, Finn, and Merlijn found out that there was a gap to bridge. Merlijn: “The researchers made an effort to understand the game, but it wasn’t in-depth. And in the esports world, there is often a gap between data-analytics know-how, and knowledge of the game. We do know both, so that gives us an edge. That is why we want to develop a platform where coaches can get comprehensive insights into their team’s performance, using AI.” While these guys have only just started, they know their idea’s possibilities. Finn: “AI offers a plethora of opportunities. Its adaptability is mesmerizing. Currently, there is a lot of data on the game, but analysts now extract that manually. They just note down timeframes, which makes it labor-intensive and tedious. We know that there is a human limit to what analysts can do. We’re looking to exceed it.”

Boiler room

To turn their idea into a business, they decided to participate in the START Program. “It was fun!” says Merlijn. “And very insightful. The program forces you out of your comfort zone. For example, I really enjoyed the pitching sessions.” Finn agrees: “The fact that you have to get out of your comfort zone is my favorite part. The program is like a giant boiler room. You throw in your idea, and you get feedback from all kinds of directions. So you always leave with new ideas.” Leon adds: “We came out of the START Program with even more questions. What’s our core value proposition? Can we keep the data safe? Does our idea work in practice?” With those questions, the team will join the Advanced Program. Merlijn: “We need the confirmation that there is a market for a startup like us to contribute to data analysis within esports.”

Forefront of esports

Even though the definitive name is still up in the air, Finn, Leon, and Merlijn know where they want to end up with their startup. “We want to be at the forefront of the esports industry,” says Finn. “We don’t want to depend on the teams, but we want them to depend on us. Furthermore, most professional esports teams have a similar workflow, so eventually, we want to expand beyond League of Legends as well.” Leon says the first step to get there is to expand their team. “It’s challenging to find people with in-depth knowledge of the game as well as of developing a data-analytics platform. With our current team, we do have both, but given the scope, we’ll need a large development team. That way, we can start developing as soon as we have a robust and fully validated value proposition.”

Merlijn adds: “Software engineers and data scientists are always free to contact us. That also goes for professional esports teams because we want to collaborate with them. When they have a specific data question, we can develop it. With those small steps, we aim to become indispensable in the esports industry. So we can buy thirteen cars and a massive garage,” he jokes. Finn concludes fittingly: “First League of Legends, then the whole esports world!”