E142: Ralf Reichert

Ralf Reichert is one of the true pioneers of esports.He co-founded ESL in 2000 and has seen it grow in to one of the biggest and most influential event rights holders in the world.As will become clear, I come to this conversation with all the misconceptions of someone who never got in to gaming.But by the end, I’m a bit of a convert.I still don’t know much, but an hour with Ralf Reichert has put me straight on some of the redundant cliches people like me carry around with them.This is a conversation I’ve been wanting to have for a long time, but as you’ll hear in the first bit of this interview, it’s not always easy to set these thing up.If you like the Unofficial Partner podcasts, you’ll really like our weekly newsletter, which is read by thousands of people across the global sports business, and is where we talk about the topics and themes that arise from our podcast conversations.We can send it direct to your inbox every Thursday, all you have to do is sign up via unofficialpartner.com, where you’ll also find our back catalogue of over 140 podcasts.Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry. To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartnerWe publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday. These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport. Our entire back catalogue of 500 sports business conversations are available free of charge here. Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify and every podcast app. If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series and live events, you can reach us via the website.