Exclusive Interview: UGC CEO Matthew Jackson responds to skepticism, questions towards $1m CS2 tournament — Part One

This week, Ultimate Gaming Championships (UGC) and Global Domination Entertainment (GDE) announced plans to host a massive $1,000,000 LAN tournament in Oklahoma City in three month's time. The suddenness of the announcement coupled with the massive prize pool and ambitious format raised eyebrows in the Counter-Strike community as the scene is all too familiar with newcomers coming into the scene and making promises that are too good to be true.

In this environment of skepticism and distrust, UGC's CEO Matthew Jackson offered to sit down with Dust2.us' Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore for an extended interview covering all aspects of the Global Domination: Invasion event, the companies behind it, and the lofty promises made to the CS community. The interview has been split into two parts, with part one covering the Ultimate Gaming Championships and Global Domination Entertainment, the announcement of the tournament, and the rapid timeline they have committed to for their first CS event, among other topics.

Part two will delve into the granular details of the Global Domination: Invasion, with topics including the event's format, qualifiers, and what are the so-called "Steam Stats" UGC intend to seed the event with.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The interview opened with a rundown of UGC's background in esports, with Jackson explaining that the company began hosting tournaments in 2005 in games like Halo before the 2010s saw the UGC begin to cover the Call of Duty World League, Halo Championship Series, and Gears of War pro circuit for Microsoft. During this time the company began to gather capital while building up their expertise and know-how.

Like many tournament organizers, 2020 and 2021 saw UGC pivot to online offering due to COVID-19, with UGC shifting its focus to collegiate and scholastic esports. Jackson noted that UGC at one point boasted, "20,000 students using the tech and we had over 40,000 registered players in our online tournament ecosystem."

Importantly, Jackson also clarified that UGC has never hosted a Counter-Strike event, however he believes that the CS2 community aligns with his own ethos towards esports:

That game is thriving because of the players and that's really where I think the heart of UGC is. I want to represent the players, the people that actually built the industry, because we wouldn't be here without them.

From our introduction, the topic turned to UGC's capacity to host a significant LAN tournament like the proposed Global Domination: Invasion event after years of hosting online tournaments and scholastic events.

What [are scholastic events like] in terms of the scale of events you've been putting on recently and do you think it leaves you and your team well equipped for a massive tournament like this?

From a technology product perspective, where we're looking at how the tournament tech and infrastructure are functioning, it really helped us.

The tech itself could blanket across competitions. We've got some features in there that I think are really nice for competitors. So on that component, yes, in terms of a large-scale production show, the scholastic space we were not able to execute like we had we were used to when partnering with the major game developers or publishers.

So we honestly didn't try to expand much in the live space. I will tell you there were some moments I would go help host statewide tournaments for high schoolers.

I think our Super Smash Brothers event we helped host had over 500,000 concurrent viewers in the finals. So, little stuff like that which kept me active in the competitive scene and kind of still appreciating what esports is. But in terms of skill set, you know, I think the tech product really benefited from that and that's what we're excited to kind of fire up for this event.

In terms of the large scale event production with my background in architecture, use of CAD, and engineering and working with the appropriate budget, I'm not afraid of putting on a production the size that we see in Counter-Strike.

We have some pretty cool ideas for things, but the thing that I want to make sure we focus on is the player experience and right now with our tournament format as I'm sure we'll get into, we're pushing for a lot of players and teams to attend and we need to make sure we monitor that and and provide a proper product.

How large is UGC's staff and how many are going to be tasked to work on this event?

Yeah, so internally with UGC we have around seven part-time and full-time employees, but then we also contract out different teams.

We have a full development team we contract out. We have a full tournament operation team that we contract out for things. We have our own internal comms and graphics production team that we use. So internal management is around seven people and then we outsource and contract others in the space to help with the other parts that we need to fill the gaps in.

So you would say the company's well-equipped to scale out to do this event? Do you think that the team is ready to return to arena-style events?

Honestly we are so excited. You know I attended IEM Dallas a few years ago and the experience and getting to really showcase the esports entertainment, which is where the Global Domination piece comes in. We are ready to do that. We're hungry to do that.

The scholastic space definitely throttled that for us, but as you know it's an expensive venture to do something at that scale and I am not willing to stick my neck out and say we're going to do something if I don't think we can do it. So, that's why this opportunity is really exciting.

After discussing UGC, we discussed their partner and namesake of the Global Domination: Invasion series — Global Domination Entertainment — a completely new company seemingly spun up for this event. Jackson explained that GDE has a background in hosting concerts, event promotion, and talent bookings, and that GDE's owners come from Mammoth Live, another concert and events organizer.

He also revealed that UGC and the founders of GDE have been working on the event for two years and had pushed the announcement back multiple times to ensure they were ready:

I can tell you that they are genuine guys and I've worked with a lot of people in esports that have wanted to try to make a quick buck or, you know, do something that I personally find offensive as being someone that's tried to build the industry.

These guys had the right approach. They were very cautious with things with me and that's how this relationship started.

This announcement has been met with a lot of skepticism, and that partially comes from the $1m prize pool. What influenced your decision to go for broke in your first CS event?

Over the course of the last two years it has changed. Getting the right kind of funding partners that we have in place and then looking at how we can make our entry into Counter-Strike we felt like that number put us at a caliber to where players could look and maybe maybe want to choose what they play in. We had spoken to Valve about this and we wanted to make sure we met all the guidelines with the prize money.

We thought, you know, we understand we're going to be fighting some other schedules. We are happy to have a flexible schedule and try to make sure people can participate in as much Counter-Strike as possible. But in order for us to make a real impact in the announcement, you know, we felt the million dollar prize pool would put us on the map. We knew we were over going to be overcoming this first time entry. I mean, to be quite honest, if it was $500,000. I think we probably still would face a little bit of like 'who are these guys?'

We wanted to feed more prize money into the CS esports ecosystem and luckily we have the support to do so.

Who is supplying the prize pool and has the money been secured ahead of the event? Are there any concerns that the event finishes and the prize pool won't be paid out or it will take years to be paid out?

The money is coming from joint ventures like privately raised capital. It is committed and it will be paid out. Our objective is to pay out within 30 days after the event has completed for the million dollars. The $300,000 across the territories we want to try to get money paid out before the live event for any cost and things that these other teams may incur.

I have no concerns with the payout. One thing I'll say is, you know, it's a venture that has planned to have multiple of these. So, I'm hopeful from a business perspective we can make that make sense for our partners. That's not to say that none of this is going to happen. This is going to happen. People will be paid. We have the money committed.

We're also getting quite a bit of support from Paycom Center and Mammoth Live in terms of the live event piece. Oklahoma City also has a huge interest in this from a tourism perspective. So they are showcasing it and supporting it as well. So, I have no concerns there.

Like I said, anything that UGC has been a part of that we said we were going to follow through with. I was putting my name or UGC's name on it and didn't think that this prize money would get paid out, then I would not be sitting here talking to you.

You said private individuals, but who are these people and where did they come from?

Personal investors that have had some successes in the last couple of years and they've been known through the entertainment promotion space and had interest in getting involved and provided the funding. You know they believe in this and they think it's a long-term thing that we want to be involved in. Some of them are actually from the Tulsa and Oklahoma City area, so that's another thing they're proud of is bringing it to the area.

Our hope is sponsorships come on... obviously you know this is a business as well. So, we're looking for revenue streams to help offset costs and allow us to put more funding towards the next one.

One big sponsor you did announce at the onset is AMD who are sponsoring the event. Where did that sponsorship come from and what does that entail?

So we have been fortunate enough to get the work with an external communications team, Reverb Communications. They've done a great job at pairing up partners that might be interested in this event. So we had an opportunity to talk to AMD early on. It happened to align with some of their objectives in esports this year.

You know, there's one thing and I again I know we'll get into the format, but we are trying to cater to new players as a feeder for for emerging talent. I know AMD is wanting to focus on kind of the open amateur players and you know how we can serve them better. So it all worked out.

They are currently providing hardware support. So we're very excited to have them on from a partnership level because they are active in the Counter-Strike space. They have players and teams and you know they've been around for a while.

But at this moment it is solely hardware. We're hoping this can maybe emerge into something. You know we have some ideas to do content around up-and-coming teams, showcase teams that may have qualified from a specific territory once they get to OKC and do content around that, but those discussions are still ongoing.

With all of the expenses that come with running an event of this scale, what are your investors and UGC looking for in terms of ROI on this first event?

We are obviously looking for ROI, that would be great. We have some opportunities with specific entertainers and ticket sales that would be outside the scope of Counter-Strike esports that we're looking for revenue streams with.

The ticket sales for spectators we're looking for a revenue stream with. The online team and player pass entry we're looking for revenue with. We're hopeful that we can get a volume enough of all those participants to at least show some stability in the project. We understand that there may be some capital that we have to go into the first one to get our name out there.

I think being community-focused and hopefully helping onboard new Counter-Strike players, especially with the active player base, is reportedly continually growing. That kind of thing that goes back to the format is how we're wanting this to be open for as many players we possibly can service. So we are relying heavily on those revenue streams and the participation of the community. But we also understand we're committed to this. We had a long talk before we started and said we're committed to this.

I'm just hopeful that the community embraces us and after this event we can look and say we need to do another one. Even if it's not necessarily full ROI, we have seen a balance where there can be something, especially since we're all North American based and you don't seem to be a presence here much for I mean besides Fragadelphia who's done a great job building that LAN community.

I think they work well with us and can complement us because they're good at and that's the tournament operations side of things.

The elephant in the room for this event is that the LAN is set to start in three months' time, a remarkably short turnaround for an event of this scale. Does your team feel it's logistically possible to pull off an event in this short of a timeframe?

If we had our preference, we would probably have had a little bit longer runway. We were hoping to be able to announce something January 1st but it has taken a while to get the parts and the puzzle pieces together. I think that the time frame we're at is actually logistically possible and I think that it can still generate a turn out.

From a product level, I'm confident we can deliver what we need to. I'm hopeful the players want to participate. To me, I'm definitely using a a little bit of maybe a different approach in my mindset, but I like the idea of you know the player getting that experience for the next two three months, it might be relatively intense, but that player gets to focus and and compete and see a pathway where they could get featured.

I know I know it's a little unorthodox but we really wanted to have an event this year as well. We had been looking at dates and with the Counter-Strike calendar, it is very hard.

So uh definitely not not our first scenario. We don't plan on announcing three months out every time we do one of these but we felt that we were still within the bounds of certainly logistically being able to do it and we're hoping that players sign up and want to participate.

One significant issue we have to discuss is that international players will likely struggle to acquire visas in such a short timeframe. Is this something that UGC considered when announcing, and what happens if a team qualifies and they can't get visas in time?

Yeah, so I mean to be honest this is not something I had put much energy and thought into. You know from my experience with international players a lot of them had handled that on their own or it was through the pro circuit that they had worked with like in the game development world.

So it is something that you know more consideration needs to be looked into. It is something also that we are willing to help with. If that's something we need to put in to say with an attorney to say that this is what they are doing. The contingency plan will always be to invite who the next possible person would be, I suppose.

There are there are format issues here that we need to that I will need to talk through with our TOs in terms of, you know, if someone qualifies out of their territory and can't fly in, they still technically qualified and earned that spot and those are decisions we're going to have to look at and we will make announcements along the way as as this unfolds and we hear more feedback from the community with concerns. I mean that is something we will have to look into.

That seems very optimistic and somewhat unrealistic. What will happen to the event if multiple teams cannot attend due to visas or other logistical concerns?

We will certainly look for solutions to make sure the teams are well-kept. So, I mean, some things that I can think of would be to look at something alternately later in the year that we could allocate prize money for. My biggest concern is these teams qualifying and not being able to make it when they earn their spot. Also, you know, I'm promoting those teams playing and people coming to watch be another issue. This is something that we're going to have we are going to have to figure out.

You know, I know that's probably not the best of answers, but if a team can't get a visa and they need to play we do have the event locked and this is something we're going to come through. We will do what we can to have the best skilled players that can attend play. I'm hopeful, you know, just doing a quick search, we need to dig into this, but if we will do everything possible to get those visas. I mean, if that's leveraging through some of our entertainment partners, I don't know.

I know that these people have these issues that are substantial and have hosted several tournaments, but our first first answer would be we will do everything possible to get these visas, maybe through the entertainment channel. We can look to see what resources might exist. Uh, secondary is yeah, we want to do right by the players and the fans so we will have to have to address that and make a decision that you know doesn't compromise the event to the level that we wouldn't be able to come back from it.

Our goal is to do another one. We understand this one is rushed. We want to announce one with more runway and more time to get things like this sorted.

You previously mentioned that ideally you would have announced this event at the very start of the year. What stopped UGC and GDE from being able to announce it then?

We didn't have the funding secured yet.

And again, since we're not going to announce something that we can't pay for, we weren't able to. We had been kind of raising capital with the idea that we would get an event this year. We did like the weekend, the Labor Day weekend, I believe, as well. So we were targeting that, but then getting the right pieces in place, getting the funding to where it is committed, it took some time.

That's why we hadn't made the announcement until recently. You know, we all knew it was going to be an uphill battle that we were going to fight, but we want to get active in Counter-Strike esports, and if this is our entry point we're going to do what we can to try to make a good product.

In part two of Dust2.us' extended interview with UGC's CEO, Matthew Jackson answers questions about the event's format, the global qualifiers, and UGC's efforts to acquire Valve ranked status for the event, among other topics. With Jackson in the hot seat answering intimate questions about the event's operations, part two provides a deep dive into UGC and GDE's ambitions and capacity to host such a massive event. You don't want to miss out.