Juniors

Canva founder Cameron Adams joins Mogul board to upscale commercial growth of eSports

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By George Tchetvertakov - 
Canva Esports Mogul Cameron Adams ASX ESH

From left to right: Mogul’s managing director, Gernot Abl, Mogul’s newly appointed director, Cameron Adams, and Mogul’s chief strategy officer, Mick O’Kane.

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Cameron Adams, co-founder of billion-dollar graphic design company Canva, has been drafted into the ranks of media and software business Esports Mogul (ASX: ESH).

Mr Adams will join the eSports company’s board as a non-executive director and is expected to provide specialist expertise in helping Esports Mogul to establish high-profile revenue-generating partnerships and attracting a broader global fan and gamer audience.

Mr Adams sports an illustrious career in tech development and digitally focused businesses having led the development of Canva as well as working with tech giants such as Atlassian, NEC and Google.

He has also contributed to the foundations that underpin modern web design and has been asked to speak around the world at events such as South by Southwest, CeBIT, Webstock, TEDx and RISE.

However, his biggest success has been with software as a service graphic design company Canva which he started with Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht in 2012 – a business that is now worth close to US$3.5 billion (A$5.1 billion) having been labelled as an “Australian start-up unicorn” seven years ago.

In essence, Canva is a graphic-design tool that simplifies the creation of attractive content by implementing a simple drag-and-drop format while providing quick access to photographs, vector images, graphics and fonts. Its masterstroke is that it appeals to both amateur as well as professional graphic designers with the company’s revenues topping $23 million annually and attracting as many as 300,000 paid customers to date.

Esports Mogul said that Mr Adams’ experience in scaling technology businesses and developing billion-dollar digital products would be a significant asset as the company seeks to be the premier online eSports destination for gamers, fans, teams, influencers, publishers and organisers.

In tandem with today’s announcement, Mr Adams got his tenure at the company underway by declaring that Esports Mogul’s product is “unparalleled within the eSports market” and that he intends to improve the service further while introducing “new monetisation opportunities” made available following the launch of Mogul’s ‘Branded Hubs’ concept earlier this year.

To demonstrate its branded hubs offering, Esports Mogul signed a partnership agreement with South East Asian talent agency Tier One Entertainment last month. The deal means Esports Mogul will become the exclusive platform provider for all Tier One influencer and streamer online tournaments with revenues to be generated from memberships and subscriptions.

A similar deal was also agreed with Team Secret just days earlier, an eSports entity that operates seven teams with pro players from 15 different markets.

The duo said it intends to develop team-branded competitions and a premium membership program with a designated hub to be made available via Mogul’s platform in the near future. The hub will offer Team Secret-branded global tournaments across several popular eSports games as part of variable skill tournaments over the next 12 months.

Playing for eSports market share

Currently, Esports Mogul owns and operates the mogul.gg tournament platform, considered to be the “world’s most advanced pure-play online eSports tournament and matchmaking platform” with automation for major eSports titles, including in platform chat and streaming functionality.

The company is currently focused on upscaling and extending the reach of its platform by attracting involvement from established eSports teams, tournament organisers, influencers, community groups, game publishers and gamers.

Esports Mogul said it wants to offer an all-inclusive service that caters for players of all skill levels while maintaining a “centralised eSports offering built on an industry-leading tournament and matchmaking platform”.

It is expected that Mr Adams will provide the expertise and acumen required to steer the company into establishing commercially lucrative partnerships and agreements that will ultimately see its platform more widely adopted and recognised by the gaming community worldwide.

“Cameron’s confidence in Esports Mogul’s success – and the incredible value he can add to accelerate that success – is a testament to the accomplishments achieved to date,” said Gernot Abl, managing director of Esports Mogul.

“We’re excited to have Cameron on our board and look forward to working closer with him both at a Board level, as well as Cameron being able to provide invaluable mentoring and guidance opportunities to our team,” Mr Abl added.

Moreover, the addition of Mr Adams may only be the start of Esports Mogul’s talent recruitment drive.

According to the company’s chief strategy officer Mick O’Kane, there could be further appointments in the very near future.

“With Cameron now joining the Mogul Board we will continue our strategic review with the benefit of his guidance and network, including considering further board appointments over the coming months,” said Mr O’Kane.

This morning’s news helped Esports Mogul shares to jump 40% up to $0.014.