In episode 230 of the Knup Sports Show, Ryan Knuppel sits down with Mike Vela, the visionary behind PlayerX, to explore how his dream turned into a cutting-edge, next-generation fantasy sports platform. They dive deep into the rapid growth of esports, the innovative technology behind PlayerX, and how it’s set to revolutionize the fantasy sports industry. Tune in to discover how Mike’s unique blend of tech expertise and passion for gaming is paving the way for a global, immersive fantasy sports experience.
Ryan Knuppel
Hey, what’s going on, everybody? Ryan Knuppel here, Knup Sports Show, episode 230. Hope you’re doing well today. We are just a week away from NFL season. We have college football this weekend. At the time of this recording, I am super jacked for football. Hopefully, you are as well.
Man, what a great time of year for sports. We are all excited and itching for this football season to come. Hopefully, you had a great summer. A little bit of housekeeping before we get going. As you guys know, we interview amazing guests doing amazing things in sports business, and we have another amazing guest today. So, I think you’re going to be excited and hopefully get to know this person well after this show.
But first, a little bit of housekeeping. If you plan on going to SBC Summit in Lisbon, that is September 24th to 26th. Man, we are less than a month away from that event. We’re proud media partners with SBC. Love pushing their events. Love attending their events. I personally, unfortunately, will not be going to this event. I’m super, super sad that I will not make it to Lisbon. It’s supposed to be the biggest gaming show ever. So hopefully, you’re going to make it to that show. If you haven’t got your tickets yet, make sure to use this promo code. It gets you one of the best discounts in the industry. So, make sure to use that. It gets you a nice little discount on your ticket.
I will be down in Miami for their next event, the Latino America event in October. More on that to come later. All right. That’s enough housekeeping for today. Let’s get into the good stuff, the stuff you guys want to see. Let’s get episode 230 rolling. I’m going to go ahead and bring on my guest.
Mike Vela
Today, we have Mike Vela of PlayerX. Mike, how are you, my friend?
Ryan Knuppel
How are you, Mike? Thanks for having me. Amazing. Amazing. How are you there in the Midwest today, Mike?
Mike Vela
We’re doing good. It’s hot in St. Louis right now. It’s a little toasty. Probably be another 100-degree day, but that’s why we moved down here. We love the heat.
Ryan Knuppel
You’re not getting any sympathy from me on the heat. I’m down in Orlando, Florida, and there is no sympathy in the summer months. It gets hot as heck down here in Florida.
Mike Vela
It’s hot. We just came from Florida a week ago, and it’s definitely a couple notches hotter than it is here.
Ryan Knuppel
Oh yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, Mike, I’m excited to get to know you a little bit and really dive into PlayerX as well, and I’m sure the audience is as well. So, why don’t we jump right in? First off, why don’t you give us a little background about yourself and maybe a little bit of your business history that led you to where you are today?
Mike Vela
Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Thank you, Ryan. So, I grew up in Northwest Indiana, right outside of Gary, Indiana. I grew up playing video games and surrounded myself with computers at a very, very early age in the early 80s. I got really good at it. I wound up going to Purdue University, studied technology at Purdue, tested out of computers. Then I got out and started an IT career.
I started doing large business system integrations for Fortune 500 companies and other companies around the country. Got really good at it. Got really good at real-time data integration. A lot of big companies want to know where data is coming in and out of their businesses. And in that journey, I started my own company and had multiple clients, multiple guys working for me.
It brought me from Chicago, where I was at, to St. Louis. And while I was on a project here in St. Louis, I had two clients here locally. I had a dream. I woke up from that dream, and I saw in that dream fantasy sports playing like an Xbox game. When right now, fantasy sports is a spreadsheet experience. It doesn’t really move. You don’t have any highlights. You don’t have any action. Some applications out there can’t even talk to your friends. There’s no celebration moment. The celebration moment is initiated by you instead of initiated by the platform. A lot of gaps were in fantasy.
I’ve been playing fantasy for 20 years now. I was really good, again, at video games, really good at computers, really good at fantasy games. And then this dream happened and that set me on this course. We’ve been doing it now for five years. We had our beta launch for the Super Bowl, which was very successful. It was a very proud moment for me. The application started. We had a showcase of NFL athletes, esport professional athletes, and also content creators. PlayerX is designed in a way as a next-generation fantasy sports application. But we’re starting off with esports, video game competition. And that’s what really is exciting people—to be able to see more of what esports is and how people engage with it. And then building it around a fantasy solution that’s non-gambling, kid-family friendly so anybody can play.
Ryan Knuppel
Amazing. That is a first on this show. A business started from a dream. A business started from a dream. You never know how a business idea will come about. I think I’ll chalk that one up to a first on this, but that’s amazing. That’s cool. Thank you for sharing that story with us.
Mike Vela
No problem. It was delivered to me in a special way. I woke up in the middle of the night and I said, “Wow, why hasn’t anybody done this yet? This is possible. This is within the realm of technology.” And of course, being in tech and building big environments and systems, I knew that I could do it. I knew that I could do it and I have the guys that are in place with my team and also partnerships that will be able to help us succeed and propel PlayerX to a global fantasy solution. And that’s really what we’re going at.
What we’re doing, in regular layman’s terms, is what you probably saw in the casinos 20 years ago, right? When you walked into the casino, you looked at the slot machines. What did you see? You saw a mechanical arm pulling chains and gears to give you a mechanical result.
Ryan Knuppel
Mm-hmm. That’s the state of fantasy sports right now. It’s very spreadsheet. It’s very mechanical. There’s nothing really going on other than that same delivery. Now, what do you see? You swipe a card. It’s all digitized. There’s lights. There’s sound. There’s animation. There’s graphics. There’s real video game animation built into slot machines. We’re building real video game animation and real video game technology along with live video feeds into PlayerX.
Mike Vela
Very cool. Very cool. I’m going to pull up the site here alongside of us as we talk through a little more deeply about PlayerX. My first, I guess, very specific question is, so you already mentioned you’re starting with esports. You’re starting with esports. We all know fantasy sports is all over. Every sport, every esport, everything. What made you choose esports as your starting point for this venture?
Ryan Knuppel
So with the technology solution, it really takes off when we add in this additional layer of immersive experience. The fans want to be able to watch their player. The fans want to be able to watch that game that that player is in. All these things started to roll and we started to formulate, really, what’s the true vision of PlayerX? It’s being able to watch the game from that player’s perspective. That’s our next technology leap. So how do we do that? Well, we’re perfecting it right now with esports.
Esports has five on five, five guys versus the other five guys, and their individual monitors are all there, but no one can ever see those individual monitors. You’re only looking at the broadcast that’s being delivered to you. Our goal is to actually have the user select the individual monitor of that player when they’re going through it so they can actually look at their perspective, their game. And that’s what we intend to do with IRL Sports, too, in the future.
Mike Vela
Explain that a little bit because that’s where my brain was heading on the actual sports, like live sports. I totally see it with esports. That makes a ton of sense. And I think it will really take off heavily because there is that, you know, the screens and everything. There is that live action happening. How do you relate it to real player sports? Fantasy sports in general. Explain that concept a little bit. I know you’re not quite there yet, but I’m sure you have the vision and I’m sure it’s in motion.
Ryan Knuppel
For sure.
We often talk about helmet cams. We often talk about line judges, people on the sidelines, on the field, other cameras that are maybe in the goal for soccer. All of those things are going to come into play in the technology solution and the technology stack that we’re building right now. We’re starting with esports to go back to that first question because that technology is available. We’re able to get that video. We’re able to get that data.
And that’s another thing, too. We have a global exclusivity to some of the best esport titles in the world. We did a bunch of research, obviously, before we jumped into the esport market to determine how we could get the PlayerX platform to work in this immersive data and video fantasy solution. And in order to do that, we had to partner with this great company that’s in Germany. They’re called Grid. They’ve been amazing. And they get the data and video real-time from all the tournaments. So we’re able to give that and deliver that to our users in a fantasy solution.
Mike Vela
Thank you for that. I think that really helped paint the picture in my mind. Don’t take my question as me thinking, why did we start with esports? Because I totally understand that esports is here. It’s emerging. It’s growing. It’s huge. Speak a little bit maybe to that market in general, just the esports market in general, because I think we all kind of got kind of excited around the COVID years, right? Oh, esports is here. What’s the esports thing? And maybe, you know, from a just high level, just talk side, esports is kind of like a little quieter right now, maybe. Talk a little bit about that growth of that market and just how huge it actually is, because it truly is, if you dive into that market, it is a monstrous market. So talk a little bit about that.
Ryan Knuppel
Yeah, monster. So, you know, going back to how I was raised, right? I wasn’t allowed to play video games with coaches and teachers and parents, right? They didn’t want you to play video games. It was something I had to hide, something I hid from my fraternity brothers, my teammates when I was at Purdue. No one knew that I was really good at computers. No one knew that I was really good at video games. That was something that there was a stigma to it back then in the 80s and 90s.
Then as we got into the 2000s, people started to kind of change that. You still couldn’t even tell your boss that you were playing video games all night. That was super frowned upon. It started to become mainstream. People started to get very popular playing them. The younger generation started to actually do competitions around it, started to blow up, started to get bigger. And then it became something cool in the 2000s and then later. And now it’s pro sports players are engaged in it. And that’s really how we’re building our brand around professional athletes playing video games and esport competition at the same time.
A bunch of guys around the brand right now in the NFL and other retired NFL guys have seen this emergence of esports get bigger and bigger and bigger globally, right? It’s going to outpace every sport in the world. It’s the fastest growing sport in the world when we collectively put them all together. So here in the United States, we only have about seven to eight percent of that market share. The other ones are in Asia, Europe, the UK, and then Latin America. The Americas.
So this massive global market was too huge to ignore. One, two, no one’s really provided them a fantasy solution where they can play, stay, and watch. There’s a bunch of places you can go and see it. And that’s also another confusing part about esports is it’s very fragmented still. There’s no real one place to go and look for some of these games and players and fans and stats. That doesn’t really translate yet. So we looked at that market and said, this is an underserved market that’s massive and continues to grow exponentially every year.
Ryan Knuppel
I always tell the other people with the brand that investors and partners, the kids are coming, but no one’s prepared a place for them yet to play. And that’s what we’ve been doing. And that’s what we’ve been working for, working forward with the PlayerX brand.
Mike Vela
Amazing. Let’s talk a little bit about that and where you’re at in the lifecycle of PlayerX, right? So as we pull up the website, which, by the way, a very, very sharp-looking website, I must say. So congrats on that.
Ryan Knuppel
Thank you. But I noticed right away, request invite. I noticed down here, maybe in beta mode, talk a little bit about where you’re at from a lifecycle of the product, one. And then two, who would enter their email here? Who is this for? Who needs to come in and be a part of PlayerX? A couple of questions that are wrapped into one.
Mike Vela
Yeah. So let’s go in reverse. Who is this for? It’s really for the Gen Zs and the Gen Alphas. We created this brand, this platform for the next generation of fantasy players, for the next generation of gamers that are emerging that want tech built into all of their solutions. They want games built into all of their solutions and all their brands. So we’re doing both of those things.
Right. The other question that you had is, why or who would go there for that site, right? We want everybody to come and enjoy it. We want everybody to come and engage with the brand. There’s going to be so many cool features that are injected into the fantasy solution that really don’t exist right now. So we’re adding another level of technology that’s never been done before in any sport, not to mention fantasy sports. And then we throw in esports in there. So that community, we’re growing it, obviously, there.
In the lifecycle, going back to the first part of that question, our beta launch and our foundation was successful. We had Apple approve our software and our code for their platform, which is great. So Gen 1 was great. We opened beta, tested it, was great. Very proud moment for myself being a tech guy. The tech solution assigned everything automatically. We had this really cool showcase that we had at the Lee Steinberg Super Bowl party, which was last year in Vegas. We were the title sponsor for this Super Bowl party. And then we had the app working during the party. So people that weren’t there were able to dive in and look and be able to stream it, look at it and absorb it.
Now we’re getting ready to launch the fantasy solution, which is much more complex. As you know, fantasy solutions, you think that they’re a spreadsheet behind that, but there’s a lot of data that goes into that. A lot of projections go into that. A lot of organization goes into that. So we’re ready for our launch phase right now. And we intend to launch at the end of October of this year to be prepared for a great 2025. We have two sport games that are working right now, which is CS Go and Valorant. Those are the two games that we’ve chosen to start off with, but the future is many, many more games. We would love to have as many as possible. The company goal is to onboard 20 unique esport titles in the next five years.
Ryan Knuppel
Cool. Cool. That’s quite a goal. And I think you always have to have goals to try to reach them, right? I mean, that’s what we all do in business. So that’s amazing. And I know you’ll get there. I want to shift gears a little bit here, Mike. We’ve talked a lot about the tech and a lot about who this serves and what it does. Let’s shift into the business side a little bit because we all know there’s another piece of this, right? You can have the best tech in the world. You can be in the app stores. You can be all over it. How do you get attention? How do you get attention? And so speak a little bit about how PlayerX is going to get in front of this audience and maybe more from a business side. What are you doing to get some marketing and some attention on this thing?
Mike Vela
Yeah, that’s a great question. You really have to show up for this younger generation. You have to be there for them. So you can, obviously we can educate, we can tell them, hey, this is what we’re doing. This is how we’re doing it. Come check it out, right? So we’ve been doing a lot of showcases and a lot of sponsorship promotion to esport events. We’re actually doing one next week. We’ll be in Salt Lake City with Space Station Gaming. A little shout out to Space Station Gaming. They’ve been great guys. They’ve been a big brother to me in this whole evolution and journey. And so is Optic. Optic is another gaming org in Dallas. Shout out to Optic too. We wouldn’t be there without either one of them really helping us along this journey.
Space Station has invited us to come out again to their Halo event. Halo is still a really popular game here in the United States. It’s a game that we want to onboard in the future to the PlayerX platform. So we really have
to go to a lot of these places and show the audiences and the users that we’re here and this is how we’re building a place for them to come and play and engage with their friends and with their family members.
So we’ve been doing a lot of that. We just came back from New Orleans with Drew Brees’ Pickle Fest. Drew’s been an amazing partner here. He asked us to be the gaming partner for Pickle Fest. We’ve signed up to do that for a multi-year event. And next year, we’re going to make it even bigger. We’re actually going to have a competition there next year. This year was just a simple showcase. We played NCAA 25 and Call of Duty during the showcase and everybody really loved it. We streamed it live. We have a webcam that streamed live and we also put it in the metaverse live at the same time. That’s going to be what we’re going to do from now on with all of our tournaments and showcases that we’re going to provide as a technology solution on the PlayerX platform.
Ryan Knuppel
That’s cool. I love when you start talking the metaverse and the future tech stuff. I love that.
Mike Vela
It’s the future. Watching games from people’s perspectives. That’s where we’re headed.
Ryan Knuppel
It is. It is. It is the future. All right. Now I’m going to show my total uneducation here. What the heck’s Pickle Fest?
Mike Vela
Yeah, so I said it to a couple of people. So Drew, along with many, many other sports stars and celebrities, are into pickleball.
Ryan Knuppel
Okay. Yeah, I thought that’s what I related it to, so okay.
Mike Vela
Yeah, fastest-growing sport in the world, sports, esports. Fastest-growing sport here in the United States. By far, pickleball. And Drew owns a pro team. Drew has also been a competitor in pickleball. And it’s a benefit to benefit New Orleans and the Brees Dream Foundation. And we put our hand up and said, absolutely, we want to be involved with this. It’s something that’s important. It’s important to the people of New Orleans. And it’s important to us to showcase what we’re doing. And again, that education piece and being there with the audience that’s there. So it was a pickleball tournament. And my team, myself, and another content creator, we had best costumes. So we did win a prize there. And Drew actually gave me one of his jerseys signed from him there. I wanted to put that on the screen here for the show. And it was amazing to be with Drew again. We’ve been with each other a few times now. And to be a part of something so special like this, it’s only the second year that they’ve done this. Next year is going to be even bigger. And like I said, we want to have an actual real esport tournament, a proper esport tournament there next year.
Ryan Knuppel
Amazing. Amazing. Yeah, I’ll have to keep my eye on that. Yeah, pickleball is just exploding. Exploding. That’s a whole other topic for another day.
Mike Vela
That definitely is. You could definitely spend a whole show talking about pickleball.
Ryan Knuppel
I know. I know. Big deal. It is crazy. Well, Mike, you seem like you have it all put together. You seem like you have all the answers. You seem like you really are doing well, obviously have a lot of experience in business, a lot of tech experience, which really helps drive a company like this. But we know that’s not always the case. There are always issues and needs and challenges and things of that nature. Maybe speak to the audience now. What’s some things that PlayerX is looking for as they grow, as they move into the next phase? What’s some help you guys might need or some things you guys might be looking for that maybe somebody in the audience may help or may know somebody that can help you guys?
Mike Vela
Yeah, thank you very much. Obviously, I knew a lot about tech and I knew a lot about running tech businesses. Did not know a lot about running a large global business like this that we’re developing and building it to scale to that level. Some of the things in the gap here are our potential sponsorships. How we’re going to get people to advertise on our platform. That’s going to be massive. We need more of that. Right now, we have Verizon as one of our key partners. They’ve partnered with us. They saw it and obviously, right away, gravitated towards it, especially being a non-gambling, kid-family-friendly platform. Well, the world needs more of that right now. And we’re looking for partners that align in that same like-minded space. Doing it for the kids, essentially, is what we’re kind of going into when I go through a lot of the discussions with our team and things like that. That’s a key to the success moving into 2025—partnership opportunities related to the brand. That’s something that outreach always doesn’t get, knowing that we’re a new company.
The journey has been very difficult too, by the way. Like you had mentioned, hey, I got here in this five years, but I had help from a lot of people because it’s very, very hard to do this. It’s a challenge to start a company and have these aspirations to go global and scale it to this level. And the lift has been heavy, but we have a lot of people that are helping in that partnership area.
Ryan Knuppel
Very cool. I feel like I could talk to you all day about this. I have so many other thoughts and questions around this. So hopefully, someday we can sit down at a conference or at an event, and I can just soak in more from you because I feel like I could talk about this stuff forever.
Mike Vela
It’s right. Yeah. Yeah, it’s definitely something that’s changing the world. It’s a phenomenon. And no one is really innovating on the fantasy side. All the fantasy apps, as you know, are the same as they were 10, 15, some 20 years ago. None of them have changed. The only change that’s happened is gambling online. And as we know, that leaves a wake of younger individuals online that are left behind.
One, two, it’s still not legal in every state, so that’s going to take years to get that on the national level that, you know, obviously, the gambling entities want to get that. But we’re developing this a little differently. We’re developing it like a true video game in this respect. But you’re able to pick your favorite players and have this immersive video and data experience in a technology solution.
Ryan Knuppel
Amazing, amazing. Well, Mike, for lack or sake of time, I guess we’ll call it. I know you’re a busy man. Let’s wrap this thing up here. Where would people find PlayerX? How would they get a hold of you if they want to get a hold of you? Throw out some channels of communication that we can put in the show notes.
Mike Vela
Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. Please go to playerx.gg. You can sign up today. Also, too, I’m on Twitter, at WCFMichaelVela. We also have playerx.gg on Instagram, too. You can go there and message, DM message any one of those applications that are there, and we’d be able to get a response back to you if so. And also, I’m available. My email address is Vela, my last name, at worldchampionfantasy.com.
Ryan Knuppel
Cool, cool. Very cool. Mike, I really appreciate your time here today. Any last words, anything we didn’t mention that maybe you were itching to talk about before we get off here?
Mike Vela
Yeah, no, I think we covered our next event that we’re doing. We’re also going to be in San Antonio in October at the Six Flags E6 Esports Arena. We’re going to be sponsoring a Big Ten SEC shootout for esports on October 4th and 5th. If I’m not mistaken, that’s Friday, Saturday in October. That’s another big event that we’re doing with one of our partners. Another shout out to Gordon Hinkle, who is organizing all the land and all the competition area for that event. So that’s another real big event. We really want to cultivate the secondary initiative to cultivate the collegiate athlete here in the United States.
As you may know, and some audience members may or may not know, we’re giving full rides to kids to come to universities to play video games. That’s a big deal. And that’s a big deal to me. That’s a big deal to me being a Midwest guy and going to a Big Ten school like Purdue and wanting to cultivate that collegiate athlete. And we’re going to be doing a lot of sponsorships and tournaments with the collegiate athletes moving into this latter half of the year and then early in 2025.
Ryan Knuppel
Love that. You’re gonna have to make your way down here to Orlando. I know the Full Sail University has a big esports arena that they built a couple of years ago. And I think that’s, I can’t remember what they call it, the Fortress or something like that, but it’s supposed to be pretty cool. And they’re doing a lot with esports and here in Lake Nona area. I mean, there’s a lot of esports talk and some different facilities. So it’s growing. The industry is growing, and you guys are at the forefront of it and really trying to change the game and the fantasy side of that, which is amazing. So, Mike, I wish you all the luck. And if there’s anything I can do to help, please feel free to reach out. I’m excited to watch your journey and hopefully have you back on this show in a year or two. And let’s be on like number 330 and we’ll talk a little bit more about.
Mike Vela
That’s great. That’d be awesome. That’s great, Ryan. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Ryan Knuppel
Yeah, I really appreciate you coming on. Thanks, Mike, and we’ll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.
Ryan Knuppel
All right, that was Mike Vela, episode 230. Man, what a cool company. What a cool vision. What a cool solution they have for, you know, really taking fantasy sports, fantasy esports to the next level. So I urge you to go out to playerx.gg. Check out what they have going on there. Get signed up for whatever they have, all the social media stuff, any list that they have out there. And then from a business side, feel free to connect with Mike, as you hopefully saw. Seems like an amazing person. That was my first time actually chatting with Mike. So excited to get to know him a little bit better as well as we all go down this business journey in these crazy sports industries together.
All right. Hopefully, you enjoyed episode 230. I am Ryan Knuppel at KNUP on most of the channels. Feel free to reach out to me. If you have other guests you’d like to see on this show, please just reach out. Let me know who you’d like to see, who you’d like to hear from. We love to talk to people doing amazing things in sports.
All right. That’s all we got for today. Take care. Stay safe. Enjoy football. It’s coming. It’s here. It’s not coming. It’s here. So enjoy that. And we’ll talk to you all soon. Have a great night. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.
Relevant Guest Links
- Learn more about https://playerx.gg/
- You can connect with Mike Vela on LinkedIn.
- Here are some social handles… @WCFMichaelVela Twitter, @playerx_gg Twitter, @playerx.gg insta, and on YouTube @player.x
More Knup Sports Links
- I refer to Knup Sports often in my show. That’s our sports passion site. Check out KnupSports.com here.
- If you are looking for sports content services you can find more information on the Knup Solutions website.
- Listen to more episodes of the Knup Sports Show.
- Want to be a guest on our show? Setup a time that works here.
- Subscribe to the Knup Sports Show on iTunes here.
