Maincast: a story about the importance of finding the right investor

Currently, esports broadcasting company Maincast owns about 95% of the rights to broadcast in Ukrainian, and the company's market share exceeds 60%. The successes are obvious, but the path to them was thorny and went through problematic investors, a pandemic, and a full-scale war. Read on to find out how Maincast Studio came to be and what business lessons it has learned, as well as about the role of Maksim Krippa.

First there was defeat

Esports appeared in Ukraine just a few decades ago. The formation of the esports community began with enthusiastic fanatics and computer clubs. A striking example of a personality born for esports is Vitaliy V1lat Volochai, who did not choose between sports and computer games but became one of the esports gurus in Ukraine.

At the beginning of his career, Vitaliy Volochai managed to work for three years at a company that organized esports tournaments. In 2013, he decided that it was time to do justice to his favorite business of commentary and created the RuHub esports broadcast studio.

A little bit about the name. Nowadays, the naming of Volochai's first company seems strange, to put it mildly. But in 2013, most of the esports broadcasts in the post-Soviet countries were in Russian. In one of his interviews, Volochai even cites figures: back in 2020, the DotA competition gathered 1.2 million people watching in Russian, and only 800 people watching in Ukrainian. The name RuHub contained a reference to the language of broadcasts and the essence of the studio, which was created in the image and likeness of similar American and Swedish hubs for commentators of esports matches.

A year later, the successful RuHub company decided to scale up, and this naturally required funding. They managed to find the money from what seemed to be partners from Russia. The investors came and started to put things in order: first, a branch was created in Moscow, and then they started to harass the head office in Kyiv, which was called a subsidiary, despite its primacy.

The beginning of the end was the military aggression of 2014. Vitaliy Volochai decided that he could no longer continue working at RuHub, which he had created, and sold his part. It was also agreed that Volochai would not create competitors for RuHub. That's how a bet on the wrong investor turned into a failure.

New investor and renaissance

In sports and esports, it is impossible to do without the experience of defeat. However, the leader is the one who turns defeats into experience and moves on. Together with his partners, Vitaliy Volochai decided to try to enter the market for the second time, and in 2018, Maincast Studio was founded.

The guys had experience, professionalism, a team, and even equipment behind them - enough to start, but not to grow. And the painful question of finding an investor arose again. This time, they did not want to go to foreign partners, so they started looking for their own, Ukrainian, investors. And although some of them had the funds, it was difficult to decide to invest in a developing market.

Eventually, they came up with a proposal to Maksim Krippa, whose interests at the time did not include esports. Negotiations and persuasion paid off. Investor Maksim Krippa decided to take a chance and became a shareholder of Maincast - the lucky ticket was in his hands.

Chances and challenges

Investor Maksim Krippa quickly realized that he liked esports and would like to continue investing in the industry. This is evidenced by the fact that by the end of 2018, Maksim Krippa decided to invest in the esports organization NAVI.

But despite all the successes, there were also crisis moments. In particular, the covid that shook everyone. The confusion did not last long, and after a while, all the advantages of investing in esports became apparent. Maksim Krippa risks were justified: while other assets and companies were rapidly stagnating and going bankrupt, the esports segment remained afloat.

Maincast registered positive dynamics in terms of the number of views. People tried to fill the first months of forced isolation with spectacles - esports gained new fans and decent viewership. However, it was difficult to maintain interest for a long time without offline events. In addition, advertisers began to wind down their activities, and sponsorship contracts are known to bring broadcast studios the bulk of their income. At this point, Maincast was once again convinced of the importance of having a reliable investor and partner in the person of Maksim Krippa.

Hold on to enthusiasm

Sometimes macroeconomic and policy factors strike, sometimes they create opportunities, but there are times when they shock and literally kill. February 2024 cannot be called a crisis. The level of frustration, shock, and tragedy in Ukrainian society and business is beyond measure. It is very difficult to live, let alone work, when explosions are going on around you. But Maincast passed this test with flying colors - the team did not let up.

While executives and investors, including Maksim Krippa, were looking for ways to stay afloat and spending money from the airbag, commentators were working on enthusiasm from home and hiding places.

However, the owners and shareholders were concerned not only about how to ensure the current operation. An important challenge was the language issue and maintaining a patriotic position. The entire Maincast team decided to abandon the Russian language of broadcasts. It was a logical, justified and necessary step. How can we continue broadcasting in Russian when some esports players have gone to the front to defend peaceful cities, when the shareholder Maksim Krippa fully supports the patriotic direction?

At the same time, how to give up the rights to Russian-language broadcasts, for which millions have already been paid, while retaining the rights to broadcast in Ukrainian? Negotiations with the rights holder lasted several months, but by May the issue was resolved. Since switching to Ukrainian, Maincast has increased its audience in the segment by more than 1000%. This is not only a business success, but also an important political victory.