Compared to its US-based neighbors, the Canadian esports scene doesn't have the same scale of lucrative prize pools and talent depth, but anyone who's been to a sold-out Air Canada Centre for a League of Legends game or witnessed the year-over-year crowd increase of the Rainbow Six Siege Canadian Nationals can certainly tell you which way Canada is trending: it's north.
To match what Ubisoft Canada’s Esports and Communications Manager Adam Climan calls a significant boom, Ubisoft Canada spends a lot of time reaching out to the burgeoning community on a grassroots level, casting a large net of community initiatives like the FAM program to bring in more players, fans, and organizations. He says the company has also consistently improved its production quality from an esports perspective, which may have a direct relationship with why the player count for Rainbow Six Siege keeps trending upwards as the game finishes its fourth year on the market.
Given how geographically vast the Canadian market is - especially in terms of the distances between large metropolitan areas - marketing the burgeoning esports scene represents a unique challenge north of the border. To encourage an accessible environment, Ubisoft launched the aforementioned FAM program this year, which involves fun initiatives to reach out to gamers of all skill levels by helping host events in the usual Canadian hot-spots like Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, but also in oft-overlooked locales like Barrie and Regina, too.
Marketing An Esport is Different Than Marketing A Video Game
By all accounts, the esports scene is growing at an impressive scale in Canada. Of course, success in the world of esports marketing isn't so clearly-defined: one can't simply count game sales, Climan says, because not every esports fan will actually play the game themselves:
It’s different than marketing video games. With video games it’s pretty clear in terms of how the industry has been operating for years and years now, but esports is different because you’re not necessarily selling a physical game anymore, right? I mean, you can watch esports without necessarily owning Rainbow Six – but we’d love if you do – but the idea is that you’re excited behind it, right, you’re excited about watching the matches and getting involved with the fun and the excitement, just as you would find going to a hockey game. You don’t have to own hockey equipment or a team jersey to appreciate a game.
When it comes to the future, Ubisoft is showing no signs of slowing down when it comes to esports or Rainbow Six Siege itself: the company is still adding several new in-game operators each year, introducing new maps, updating old ones, and ensuring content both new and old stays balanced. The company has experimented with timed events like Outbreak and Showdown, and has also recently switched strategies in terms of player retention by introducing a battle pass.
These all help push plenty of in-game microtransactions to keep Rainbow Six Siege profitable, but it's the game's strength as an esports title that drastically increases its reach. The rise of Siege has coincided with a significant esports growth spurt in Canada, though the vast majority of its top competitive players will depart the local scene to pursue opportunity elsewhere. For Climan, the only way for Canada is up:
My vision is that we have an awful lot of players in this country. Players of Ubisoft games, players of other titles, but Canada is a gamer’s market. One of the things that always boggled my mind is that for esports, we have a lot of great games that are developed in Canada, but so many of these players are gravitating to pro leagues that are US Leagues. Really, what I’d like to see is more Canadian teams play in Canada and grow.
Tournaments like the Rainbow Six Canadian Nationals only allow domestic players to compete, helping to build a sense of Canadian identity and giving players north of the border a tournament of their own to develop and compete in. Of course, players competing in the Canadian Nationals are free to compete internationally in other leagues like the Rainbow Six Siege Pro League or the Six Invitational. The difference in prize pools is significant: this year's Canadian Nationals prize pool was 15,000 CAD, while this year's R6 Invitational prize pool is a staggering 2,000,000 USD, with profits to professional teams being buoyed by a revenue-sharing initiative from Ubisoft by way of in-game cosmetic item sales.
It'll Take Time For Big Money Prize Pools to Come to Canadian Esports
With money like that on the table outside of Canada's borders, the Canadian scene certainly has a lot to do if it wants to attract the same level of dedicated competitive talent, but Climan believes all of this will come with time:
I believe in the coming years you’re going to see a boom for Canada. We might be a little bit behind the US and some of those other countries, but you’re going to see the Canadian market step up. You’re going to see more players come up and about, and more players grown in Canada, whether they choose to stay or play for other teams, that’s up to them, but I definitely think that you’re going to see the Canadian market emerge as a stronger competitive scene with better teams, more organizations, more franchises, and a more robust offering of esports overall.
It's not like there's a shortage of Canadian talent: Troy Jaroslawski plays for Evil Geniuses, Davide Bucci for Team Reciprocity, and Bryan Agema for Rogue. There are countless others. Should Canada one day host local Rainbow Six Siege franchises that compete for bigger prize pools, it isn't hard to imagine players like them suiting up for a professional Canadian team while new local faces rise to prominence, too.
Climan's vision of a stronger competitive scene as a whole tracks with recent developments north of the border, especially for the Toronto esports scene in particular: it now hosts professional franchises for both Call of Duty and Overwatch, with the former being unveiled just two weeks ago. Whether the professional Rainbow Six Siege circuit will eventually result in more Canadian expansion remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: brick by brick, Ubisoft is contributing to a domestic esports culture that will help the community thrive for the foreseeable future.