Kevin Chou, the founder of KSV eSports, at a pace, formed team after team for major esports games such as League of Legends, Overwatch, and PLAYER UNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS, and he's also revealed that he's interested in branching out to mobile esports. 

On the 9th of January, a day before the 'Overwatch League Media Day', Kevin shared his thoughts regarding his expectations of his team, Seoul Dynasty, and Blizzard's revenue-sharing policy. 

In addition, Kevin talked about his relationship with his players, his thoughts regarding WHOAU, and the Overwatch amateur league that will soon take place in Korea under the KSV brand. He gave only thoughtful and honest answers.

The following is the full text of the interview done with Seoul Dynasty's team owner, Kevin Chou.

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The regular season is just about to kick off. How satisfied are you in terms of the team status, how prepared they are, etc?

The team arrived in the U.S. on Jan 3rd, so it has been four days. They are working very hard in terms of practice. They’re one of the top western teams – I feel very good, I feel we are in great shape and our roster is very strong. The very first match is looking to be tough; we will be playing against the Dallas Fuel. The top team power ranking puts Seoul Dynasty as the number one team, [and we’re] happy to have achieved that result at this point.


Have you been to the gaming house for Seoul Dynasty?

I have not been to their new house. I watch my team a lot – mostly online though. There is also a training facility at the Blizzard arena, which I go to often. When the team is training, they go into the practice building to train. The training facility’s local area network, which is on the tournament server, is a very high-performance server. We actually encourage players not to train at the team house but at the training facility.

I’ve seen the pictures of you with your players. How is your relationship with the players?

My relationship with the players is good. I cannot speak directly with them, but Kuki and Tobi have decent English, so I get to talk with them a little bit. They like to eat a lot, so we have meals together. About the picture you are referring to - I took them out for KBBQ in Seoul.


Which player is the friendliest?

All of the players are incredibly respectful. A lot of them are shy - sometimes, it is hard to interact with them. I am trying to get to know each of them.

I had the chance to spend time with Tobi recently, which was good. I also got to take Gido to a Black Pink concert. Although his English is not good, it was good to spend some time with him.


Seoul Dynasty was formed off of the Lunatic-Hai roster. As for WHORU, who could not join the roster because he was too young, can we expect to see him as a Seoul Dynasty member next year?

WHOAU is not 18 yet. He is 16. So we cannot sign him next year. We have recruited other good DPS as well, which includes Wekeed, Munchkin, Bunny, Fleta - we are happy with the DPS players that we’ve been recruiting. We still have a lot of respect for WHOAU. We will continue to [maintain our] relationship with him until he is old enough to compete in the Overwatch League, we would love to discuss with him at that point.

Each city-based team is provided a unique license to host up to five amateur league tournaments per year. What are Seoul Dynasty’s specific plans for this? If you are proceeding with this, can you provide some specifics? When is the official announcement going to be made?

We definitely want to host amateur tournaments in Seoul. Right now, we are aiming for late summer and fall, or even winter. Right now, all of our focus has been on just getting ready for OWL, but as the next few months go by, we will be actively finalizing details for the amateur league. The OWL season goes all the way into July. After July, we will be in tournaments in Seoul.


In the August 2017 interview with Inven, you said you would “try out new and innovative revenue approaches.” Can you provide some details on this reforming process of KSV’s revenue structure (e.g. preparation process)?

Our revenue has been growing very quickly. We have multiple revenue streams right now. I will say that right now our revenue streams have been mostly what the top sports teams in the world do. We are trying to do the basics on the revenue side. This includes sponsorship, media deals, and streaming deals. On the sponsorship side, we are announcing one tomorrow - a major sponsorship with NETGEAR. NETGEAR will become the title sponsor of our Overwatch team. We are very excited for this. They are a great brand for us to work with; they have the very best networking equipment that a gamer would want to use for gaming. They will be on the jersey. When a fan buys a jersey, they will buy the jersey and have the official sponsor on the jersey as well.

We also have two other sponsors that we are in the very final stages of signing. We will be announcing another sponsor next week, and another one probably the week after that. We are working with some of the very best global partners. The essential part of our strategy is to become a global esports company. We have our Overwatch team competing in the US right now, our LoL team competing in LCK Seoul, and we are talking about competing in China as well… When we work with business partners like NETGEAR, they are very interested in reaching a global audience through the sponsorship, and we saw that the sponsorship package is a premium price in terms of value.

I think it’s much higher than I heard any other Korean team being sponsored for. We are looking at streaming deals with a Chinese company as well as a US company. There are going to be big streaming deals, media deals with a global audience. Right now our revenue is from these two streams. Innovation stems from the fact that the approach taken is on a global basis, not just from Korea.

Are you satisfied with the Blizzard revenue sharing policy?

Blizzard League has set up a very good revenue sharing structure. It has announced big sponsorships with HP and Intel. Tomorrow they will be announcing a major sponsorship partner. The revenue stemming [from this] is very significant. I am very happy with the revenue share that is happening at the League level as well.


KSV has completed forming professional teams across every major esports game: Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and League of Legends. It appears that it has successfully formed the body of a major esports brand. What are your future operation plans as an integrated brand? Are there other major esports games you are looking to acquire?  Your current portfolio of games and players is heavily Korea-focused. Are there plans to include teams of games like Dota 2 or Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which is very popular abroad, to your portfolio?

We are evaluating 2 other esports, so in 2018 you will see us launch new teams as well. We are actually looking for another team launch. We are happy with HOTS who has won the gold cup in China. Then our LoL team as well, who will be starting very soon in the LCK. Our PUBG team is by far the number 1 team in Afreeca TV under KSV title. We have hired some very great people to run our esports business. We also announced our hiring of Jihoon Lee from kt Rolster. Bringing in the best of esports from everywhere. We are bringing in talent from outside of esports to do sales and marketing.

Dota and CS are not popular in Korea. I love these two games. We don’t have immediate plans right now – It’s very difficult to find good teams in Korea to compete on the global level right now and [especially since they’re] not that popular [in Korea]. If we look to China, they have very good teams and the games are very popular. We are looking at two teams – Dota 2 and Counter-Strike are not the games we are looking at right now.

We cannot reveal what the two are. One is a mobile esport.


Any last words for the Seoul Dynasty fans?

One of my key philosophies as an SD owner is to interact with fans in Korea as often as possible. We will be streaming every single day. Fans will come on and watch our stream, twitter, and Instagram to help support us, interact with us, and tell us what we can do to connect with SD while they are in the US.