#57: Tobias Gooden on Crypto Esports

Tobias Gooden is the CEO of UltimoGG, a game-changing Esports tournament platform that allows gamers of all skill levels to compete on an even playing field.

In this conversation, we discuss:
- The growth of Esports
- Play to earn (P2E)
- Crypto x Esports
- Partnering with Birmingham City FC
- Fan Tokens
- ULTGG token
- Building in public

UltimoGG
Website: ultgg.io
Twitter: @UltimoGGesports
Instagram: ultimo.gg
YouTube: Ultimo GG

Ben Husted
LinkedIn: Benjamin Husted

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CoinPoker

CoinPoker is a revolutionary blockchain technology-based platform that was developed by an ambitious team of poker lovers.

CoinPoker uses USDT as the main in-game currency and CHP as in-game fuel, offering all benefits of the crypto world alongside. CoinPoker also features instant and secure transactions using USDT, ETH, BTC, or CHP tokens and no KYC.

CoinPoker users get huge promotions, as they give away thousands in fiat value each week. CHP is the currency of the CoinPoker economy providing players with exclusive benefits and supports future developments delivered to the CoinPoker community.

Play some hands, collect wins, and cash out in Bitcoin, Ethereum, or CHP!

Twitter: @CoinPoker_OFF
Website: coinpoker.com
Telegram: @officialcoinpoker

Transcript

Matt Zahab: 0:08

Ladies and gentlemen, your fan of Esports you will absolutely love this episode. We are back with another dual guest episode for today's show. We have the CEO and CEO of ultimate GG eSports. First up, we have Tobias Gooden, co founder and CEO at ultimate GG. Tobias has been the CEO of ultimo group for the last three years, focusing on white label solutions and bringing traditional sports organizations in the esports along with commercial strategies and indie game developers, prior to ultimo. He spent the last 20 years in financial marketing focusing on investments pension and debt restructuring. Last but not least, partner in crime we have been hosted ci o at ultimate GG bet has worked within the entertainment industry for 16 plus years and was an artist manager for one of the UK's leading music engagement companies based in London for nearly a decade and saw the huge growth in Esports in gaming and knew he had to join. Fast forward five years down the road. He's still in the industry and has been working with ultimo for four years, where he handles all ops and marketing. Tobias and Ben, really pleased to have you on Welcome to the crypto news podcast gentlemen.

Tobias Gooden: 1:21

Welcome out. How you doing?

Matt Zahab: 1:22

Having an absolute blast? Lovely day in Toronto right now? You guys are in the beautiful UK whereabouts are you

Ben Husted: 1:28

right now actually to pay school South End, which is that way from London Maya geographies. absolutely terrible. But yes, we've got a bit of a studio set up here where we shoot all of our like weekly content with our content creators and whatnot. But yeah, thanks for having us, Matt. Super excited to get into everything today.

Matt Zahab: 1:45

Very excited to have you on as well. That is a beautiful studio. My goodness, you got the get the sound pads in the back. You got the big tech mics. Absolutely love it. And you guys are all tatted up to I love the I don't know, I don't know what he taught myself. But I did a good sleeve. So kudos to that.

Ben Husted: 2:02

We all we all the punk rock of Esports

Matt Zahab: 2:07

I love it. There's so many different angles, I'd love to take this conversation. And I think a good way to start would be the creme de la creme of the show, which is gaming and eSports. Ultimately, do your companies really tackled that and you guys have an incredibly bright future ahead. gaming and eSports has really taken off over the last, you know, 18 months because of COVID. And understandably so when people are locked down, the industry is going to grow like crazy, of course, but also going to do, but eSports was taking off before that as well. And I want to start there. Why did it blow up even before COVID? What about eSports? And gaming? has really made it go to the next level?

Ben Husted: 2:45

Yeah, sure. Well, look, I'll take that one. Obviously, as you've rightly said, over COVID eSports, specifically, completely boomed. It's an absolute monster now, it has been in other regions really within that. I mean, eSports has been around for good 1520 years now. I think it is with the likes of Starcraft, one over in Korea and whatnot. But I think it's just, I think within gaming itself. Anyway, within that there has always been a bit of a stigma within gaming, right? It was always for, like the nerds. It was it wasn't sociable. It's for people that would sit in a basement and not really talk to anyone. And I think just the education that's come out kind of come out over the past few years and just realize that gaming isn't this devil, right? It's actually a very social thing. Probably one of the most social things you can do. I mean, most of my friendship group we've actually met online through Xbox Live and stuff like that. And there's a lot of other people around the globe that will actually say the same thing really within that. So I think eSports is always been there. I think it's just been more widely accepted, the more education people have received from it as well. Obviously, careers have been popping up through this with the likes of Dota two or fortnight really kind of flying that flag within that and kind of showing these huge substantial kind of prize pools and everything like that, like more so than actual traditional sports competitions and whatnot. So that really driving that into the press, I feel has kind of opened a lot of doors for for gamers and eSports enthusiasts really within that. And it's it really is a global thing. I personally think the UK has been a little bit slower than some of the other regions, especially Southeast Asia and North America and places like that. However, we are very much catching up with the times at the moment. I mean, eSports now is a household name and has been for a few years really taken a while to get there. But yeah, I think a big part of that really is just kind of the educational side of it really in the younger generations. Really kind of getting into that and showing that there's actually a career path not only creating games, but actually playing themselves.

Matt Zahab: 4:47

Yeah, you're being on there again. You know, when I was growing up, I would love to play either NHL or FIFA or Call of Duty or whatever, you know, the good old days I don't do that anymore, but I very much miss it but my parents would always be like What are you doing? You're wasting so much time and like now these you know, little Jimmy can be like mom, I could I could be filthy rich playing this video game. You know, let me do my thing. So they got a good point, right?

Ben Husted: 5:10

Absolutely, absolutely. And to be honest, I'm jealous that I was born two years 10 years too early to be honest, my fingers are dumped on what they used to be right?

Tobias Gooden: 5:18

Yeah, my mate Matt put it this way my my 12 year old niece, she's actually protesting a couple of games for us outside the studio at the moment on one of our big screens. So she's gonna help us kind of develop a bit of a script for Intel. So I mean, she's got her own YouTube channel, she games, you know, 16 hours a day. So yeah, it's, it's a huge, huge space. And it's, it's, it's exciting. You know, we are definitely, you know, I'm not saying we're at the apex of it all. But you know, we're definitely kind of, you know, there's something there. You know, there's, there's definitely a fire that's been in the UK and globally, for sure.

Ben Husted: 5:55

I think one of the big parts about gaming and eSports as well is it kind of transcends generations. They're like, statistically speaking, like an Esports demographic is 14 to 36, which is insane. That's a huge demographic within eSports, right, that's not even gaming. I mean, I know people that the 50s and their 60s, it still absolutely love gaming. And then you've obviously got teenagers, younger kids playing games, like it's, it's such a transcending thing as well. And I think that's, again, going back into kind of the esports thing, why it's got so big, is because the community is just absolutely substantial.

Tobias Gooden: 6:33

It's huge.

Matt Zahab: 6:34

It's incredible. And it's something that again, I'm very passionate about I def, it's, it's an escape, right, a lot of people will go for a run or go hiking, and you get that sort of out of body experience. But again, I remember playing Call of Duty and I'd start playing at 8pm. And midnight would come around and my mom would be like, what are you doing still up, you know, it's like four hours can go by like that, whenever you can pass the time that quickly. It truly does mean something. And fast forward to today. There's, you know, a part of Esports and crypto and blockchain in general, that that is really taking the world by storm that is played earn. You hear this term all over the place. And candidly, I didn't even know what it was two years ago, if you would have told me you played her. And I would you know, you can put the pieces together. It's only three words easy enough to understand. But it that word has become a phenomenon. It's almost like the metaverse now you hear it every single day on Twitter, interviews, social, you name it. And that term has become incredibly popular for a good reason. But I want to just touch on this point for a bit. Can you guys touch on how ultimo is really knocking down on the whole play to earn economy right now?

Ben Husted: 7:34

Yeah, sure. Okay, so part of what ultimate GG is is an Esports hub. But it's an Esports platform, I'll give people a bit of a background as to what we're actually achieving here within that. So there's a bit of a fundamental understanding of it. So ultimate GG is an in development eSports platform, we are basically looking to be a one stop shop, an Esports hub, if you will think of it as a tournament gaming platform, along with the video streaming and video sharing mechanic within that as well. So we've wrote like, within current your gaming and eSports and content creation needs, you can't do that all in one place at the moment, right that you have to go to multiple different platforms to use that like those kinds of bits as well within that what we're building is a platform, and a community, a global community where you can literally just come to ultimo GG, and you can essentially do anything you want within that. What are kind of our mantra, and our mission really is here is that we feel that the esports industry is broken. It's very much similar to other entertainment industries, where only the top 2% of the top 5% actually earn anything out of it. Right, like

Matt Zahab: 8:43

exactly,

Ben Husted: 8:44

exactly when like unless you've got like a partnership with a particular platform. Unless you're on the front page, it's very, very, very hard to kind of get noticed and reach and within eSports as well, not just only content creation, because a lot of these guys and girls get picked up through their streaming platforms, right, because they already have an existing audience. And that's how they get kind of get into those teams. So it's, it's it's really like catch 22 vibe going on within that. And we don't think that's fair. We don't think that's right. I mean, a lot of our team are made up of content creators and gamers themselves really, and we've noticed this for years and that there hasn't really been any competition. I feel like the larger platforms have got a little bit lazy within it. And I think historically, you can see across any sort of industry when there's a bigger a bigger platform that is has had market dominance for so long. That's when it disrupts people get people get sick of it, right. And this is very much the punk rock ethos, I guess is what we're really going for. that's fundamentally what we're doing. Like our fundamental mission is to democratize eSports right and give content creators and gamers a viable revenue stream really within that and that happens through our platform and with our crypto GG

Matt Zahab: 10:00

And the coin is absolutely incredible too. We'll get to the coin later on down the show. But you know what started the whole plate around revolution. Like, you know which game was the first one to really kick that off?

Ben Husted: 10:11

I don't know, to be honest. Do you? Do you know? Is that a trick question?

Tobias Gooden: 10:15

No, I am a historian.

Matt Zahab: 10:18

I honestly have no clue part of me thinks again. I'm not gonna say it's fortnight related, but I know the fortnight skins when people were spending, you know, hundreds, if not 1000s of dollars on different skins and little easter eggs within fortnight. I think that was one of the things that really kicked off the revolution. But no, I candidly, I have no clue. I know, xe infinity was one of the big ones in the crypto space. But on the traditional just regular peer to peer gaming eSports side, I really don't know.

Ben Husted: 10:47

Well, I mean, there's certainly games for for fortnight within that asset. One of the probably the biggest publishers that really drove that, I guess is steam through their marketplace as well. Yes, for games like cs go, all those kinds of bits Dota Dota. Two, however, fortnight kind of like boil over to the Western world, I guess I'm really like focused on microtransactions, digital assets, skins, battle passes, all those kinds of things. And now you basically see them pretty much in any game, right? Even even the the games you pay for not even free to play all have microtransactions and digital assets within that. So

Tobias Gooden: 11:22

yeah, so in some way that they've, they've been trailblazing for for us, because you get trapped in their ecosystem, they have no real, no real world value at all. So they keep you kind of playing in the game.

Matt Zahab: 11:34

Right.

Tobias Gooden: 11:34

But then so if we could integrate our currency within our own platform, and it has a real world value, then, you know, it's an easy transition for, you know, gamers of, you know, various ages to, you know, to, to want to embrace the, you know, our currency and, you know, take it to the next level.

Ben Husted: 11:53

Yeah, just leading on from that as well to pass, I think is a strong point, that thing, that's why crypto and gaming go so well together, because gamers have been used to spending money on digital assets for

Matt Zahab: 12:04

Yes,

Ben Husted: 12:04

years, right. And that's only getting more prevalent within these games as well,

Matt Zahab: 12:09

that whole learning curve. And that, you know, adoption phase really isn't that large, because gamers do tend to take risks and are trying a lot of new things and are always exploring within games. So they sort of have that, you know, integrated within them, it's part of their fibers, going back to the inception of ultimate GG, you guys are both very switched on, you're in the space. What was the reason behind creating the company? Like you both knew eSports was going to take off or already was but what was the actual inspiration behind creating the company?

Tobias Gooden: 12:38

Oh, well, oh, the the, the Genesis and the origin of the company was was created created by a chap called Mark Adams. And he came up with a concept and he was heavily involved in the extreme sports space. And unfortunately, he he died about how many years ago was it?

Ben Husted: 13:00

I think it was three years ago,

Tobias Gooden: 13:01

but three years. And, and so he'd created ultimate Andre. And it was a, an event space company over in Asia. And that's where there Ben first got introduced to the company. So these guys were putting on multiple events over in Southeast Asia. And unfortunately, he died. And the original investors, you know, because they knew me from previous, you know, business dealings, they they said, Look, you know, we need, we need somebody who's pretty smart and can turn this round. And then, you know, I bought some a different, I suppose, a different perspective, because I didn't come from the gaming world, it allowed me to take a more of a 360 overview and see exactly kind of the maybe the gap, so I wasn't so intricately involved in it and allowed me to kind of think, right, okay, well, that was good. This is better. Let's look at a more of a network marketing effect and how can we do it? So we then we pivoted to online and then COVID strike. So, you know, it was kind of allowed us to focus solely on the online attributes and what we're bringing to, to eSports. And then, you know, we looked at the obviously the cryptocurrency to, to power the, the platform that we're the we're in the process of developing. So that's really kind of where we're out, the genesis of the company was, you know, was formed in around 2016. But from a passion of gaming, and then obviously, my reason what interested me as well was my, my son, and it brings on to the, you know, the the kind of monetization of gaming You know, he was probably about 13 he was up all night and, and, you know, I looked at my credit card statement one day and it was 100 quid 800 pounds down, you know, nasty kid, what's happening, you know, in the beginning when he set up his call of duty account, you know, we said Oh, yeah, you know, maybe like 20 quid here, there and everywhere and obviously You know, he needed these skins he needed this garden, you know, I was thinking, Well, you know,

Ben Husted: 15:04

you do need them.

Tobias Gooden: 15:05

Yeah, you're right. Yeah. And I just thought, Well, you know, and then it happened again as well, then I was speaking to my cousin, and his son ramped up about 1600 pounds on his credit card. So I think, well, there's, there's definitely something in this eSports for sure. And when the opportunity came, when the original investors came to me and said, Look, to buy us, you know, you know, we want you to step in, we need you to, you know, get this back on track again, and, you know, you know, and kind of bring it together. And then, you know, I jumped to the opportunity, because, you know, it's, it's definitely the well, it is the largest entertainment sector in the world. And it's, it's not going to go anywhere, for sure.

Matt Zahab: 15:43

It's a great story, by the way, in my apologies to hear about your mate.

Tobias Gooden: 15:47

Yeah, not as that well, you know, that's unfortunate, but you know, this, but in his memory, we, you know, we we kind of, you know, we drive on, and we you know, we move the project forward. And, you know, we're, you know, we're just kind of, you know, just, you know, cracking on with it

Matt Zahab: 16:05

100%. And I'm sure he's very proud of the legacy that you guys are creating as well. You talked about building a legacy online and building a community online. Now. It's also a incredibly tough problem in regards to building an offline too. And one of the keys into that one of those gateways is partnerships. And your team partnered with Birmingham City Football Club, world class Football Club, one of the best. I'm I have so many, I could talk to you guys about this for hours on hours. I've, I'm telling you. I'm I'm so curious to understand, I get the why behind this. But how did the pitch look like in their boardroom, when you're pitching to their board about, hey, we're going to create this eSports part partnership, there's going to be a multitude of utility. Like, I just want to know how that conversation went down. And what were they most concerned about? Was it more of a, hey, we needed a new revenue lever was that we want to create more community more kinship? What were what were the reasons why they agreed to the partnership with you guys?

Tobias Gooden: 17:09

Well, I think, originally, and that there's been a huge disconnect between the age demographic of I would say between 11 to Yeah, maybe slightly younger, where they don't want to go to the games anymore. And you know, that they almost kind of, you know, dad, dad wants to bring them along, they're not bothered and they want to play games. Okay, fair enough. I mean, that's just the modern, the modern way. So because we've identified it fairly early, and it allows us to build that community element in the minute when we approached the clubs. It hasn't been much of a struggle, you know, it they the lightbulbs, the light bulbs going on, and it's kind of like, yeah, we can absolutely see how eSports is going to going to bridge that gap. And then obviously, once COVID here, and a few of the other teams and we put some tournament's on as well for for other clubs. And, you know, the kind of the momentum got bill and was building and, you know, they, they now it's just, you know, it's it's an open door, me, Birmingham been amazing to work with, you know, they've been really open, really enthusiastic, you know, they've given us, you know, a lot to work with, as well from, you know, building out a fan zone within within the stadium as well, which is going to be really cool, where we can do activations and, you know, do live broadcast away days sort of thing from, you know, what we do here in the studio in in South End. Yeah, I mean, it's been amazing. Now, you know, some of the bigger clubs have been looking at doing their own token fan token.

Matt Zahab: 18:52

Right. Well, you've seen Chili's and Associates, they've dominated that whole market.

Ben Husted: 18:57

Absolutely. Yeah. So yeah,

Tobias Gooden: 18:58

yeah, I mean, they have, but it's still quite a quantum leap for a lot of clubs to, you know, to get there to get their heads around. So, you know, for us, you know, we're not in that league, and we're not in that league to win the championship. So the league parent is the Premier League, right? However, you know, they're very open. And you know, that there is a big funding gap as well in you know, the championship, and even some of the clubs in the Premier League, you know, they're, they're bound by financial fair play rules, and so on and so forth. So, this is definitely an opportunity for the clubs to look at how they can work with the crypto cryptocurrency and bring it into their ecosystem. And it's, it's just how we position ourselves but you know, slowly, slowly, you know, we were using eSports to build the community, get the fan engagement, heavy on education as well. Just bringing the fans up to speed on you know, what is a cryptocurrency? Me? We go to most of the games, you know, we we have hospitality. So we sitting around talking to people and, you know, how do you how do you explain to a layman, you know, was a bit like Bitcoin, right? Yeah, I've heard of Bitcoin. Yeah.

Matt Zahab: 20:11

Okay, it's very tough. And if they if they don't want to learn as well, it makes it more difficult. You know, you gotta you gotta want to learn about it too.

Ben Husted: 20:19

Well, that I mean, that's essentially our job within that that's through content that's through building the narrative within the club, and kind of leading on what Tobias is just saying, I think what we're just for anyone that doesn't really understand the whole fan token thing, or it's only just started seeing a big difference of what we're doing within these clubs, with those tokens as well as that we're actually building out an offering before that, right. We're starting the narrative within the club's audience already, right. So we're already showing value add to to this offering, right? So there's events in the ground, there's online tournament is content creation with some of the Birmingham players other like Midlands streamers, and implements is that kind of thing. So we're kind of building this narrative from the start, rather than kind of going down the more salesy currency route, I guess within that, so almost from the get go, you're going to be saying, oh, okay, let me into a new sports now. That's, that's cool. That's awesome. Okay, there's a cryptocurrency related within that, okay, I can see tournament's. I can see content, I can see educational pieces on both eSports and cryptocurrency. And this is really building the narrative within that because although that audience is substantial, I mean, Birmingham is the second largest city in the UK is absolutely massive, right. And it's an international city too, as well. Not all of those fans are going to know about crypto, not all of those fans are going to know about eSports there's gonna be a huge percentage of them that are however, that is our job to kind of educate people and really bringing people on that journey from not really knowing what eSports is to not necessarily even playing it but to become an investor in either alt GG or a particular fan token alongside the club's really within that. So it's all about really education again, as Tobias was saying earlier in building that narrative

Matt Zahab: 22:05

and sports in general, like not not talking about eSports actual sports football, just like you said Birmingham, second largest city in the UK. What would you say the population of Birmingham that is aware of the football club? Like 99? Yeah, 9.9. Right.

Ben Husted: 22:20

They all die hard.

Tobias Gooden: 22:23

It's, it's unbelievable that I mean, there's two clubs in the in in Birmingham, Aston Villa, actually, recently just done a deal with the Chili's. And there was big blowback on on their Twitter straight away. Westham was another, another club that rolled it out and they had to sever their partnership with them. That was last year sometime because the fans just they didn't understand why they need to have a token to have a vote. They just the education was wrong. So you know, you can always learn from people's rollouts and think right, okay, well,

Matt Zahab: 22:57

good point.

Tobias Gooden: 22:57

They didn't they didn't bring the fans along in the beginning with it. And you know, it's their bad at the end of the day. And I mean, some of the European clubs, they adopt things a lot quicker. I mean, you know, a lot of the European clubs, especially some in the bundys League, for example, there, it's all their Esports teams are fully funded by the the bundys League itself. So they give each club a certain budget well, and allow them to build the teams, they completely get the, you know, the growth of Esports where, you know, in the UK because we invented football. We still kind of drag our feet a little ridiculous. Yeah.

Matt Zahab: 23:35

No, it's the old traditionalist thing. But no, it's just crazy because you guys are literally, you are bringing crypto to millions of Birmingham fans around the world who didn't know about crypto, it's such a, it's such a cool path that you guys are trailblazing and Tobias. I just want to go back to a point that you spoke about two three minutes ago that still been circling in my mind. It just blew me away. The fact that dads and moms parents are having trouble bringing their 13 year old kid to a friggin world class football game. Are you kidding me? Like how much stimulation you need, you know, like, what, what is more stimulating than a championship level football game? Like that's, that's something that even me I'm 26 years old. And I could never think that if my dad was like, Hey, we're going to a hockey game or American football or football or baseball whatever. Like I've never said no. And now you have kids saying no, like that's bananas.

Tobias Gooden: 24:26

Yeah, I think I think it's something to do with with the the kind of attention span the way things have been to still the main you know, kids watch Tick tock, and you know, you've got you know, dopamine dopamine Yeah, so, you know, maybe for Chrono longer form sports to survive, maybe the trunki later or just go straight to a penalty shootout right.

Matt Zahab: 24:55

Fill fill the stadium with 50,000 fans for a 10 minute shootout.

Tobias Gooden: 25:00

Listen, you could have four teams play you could have to each end. I mean, you know, you could really, you could, you could get to the league in a weekend right go down. That's fine. Move on.

Matt Zahab: 25:10

It's true though, but that that's one of the reasons why eSports is taking off and speaking of Esports, sports and anything sports betting related. Gentlemen, if you guys are sports bettors or poker players highly recommend checking out to coin poker.com our friends at coin poker have created the world's premier crypto poker and sports betting platform and was developed by an absolutely incredible team who is very switched on and knows what they're talking about. The US USD t stable coin as the main in game currency and CHP variant token as in game fuel, offering tons of benefits. Fast instant secure transactions using tether Ethereum Bitcoin or CHP tokens. If you want to fly under the radar, there's also no KYC. Again, absolute treat, wouldn't be surprised to see Korean poker also partnering with a bunch of championship and Premier League teams moving forward. One of the best parts is the mobile app whenever I'm on the go, I'm a sports gambler more so sports better win. So sports better not Gambler, more so than a poker player. But still, whenever I'm on the go without my phone, play a couple hands of Texas or that on a cheeky Birmingham match and emceeing the GG signs hopefully all over the place. And again, huge shout out and Big thanks to our friends at coin poker incredible sponsor incredible app, highly go check out. And that is coin poker.com. Then antivirus back to the show with you to hear so many questions that I have. I want to get into the coin. Now. It makes sense why I create a coin. They're doing incredible. It seems like every crypto company on the sun is creating coin, it's great way to build that community. Two great way to offer fractionalized ownership into a company and when people ie the general public feel like they're part of something, they're going to act as a true fan, you're going to take advantage of that 1000 true fan rule. They are going to do everything you want. They are going to be there for you at all times. I know these are some of the reasons why he created the coin. But I'd love to hear from you two gentlemen yourselves. What is the purpose of the alt GG token.

Ben Husted: 27:10

So the purpose of the OG GG token is to essentially power the platform and our partners ecosystems, right. That token, of course can be bought as a cryptocurrency. But it also can be earned. It can be won through the platform. So it could be one through competing in tournament's winning and tournament, it could be an for creating content that gets like substantial engagement. It could be by actually engaging with your community and even watching ads as well, which is which is pretty mad. There's an NFT marketplace, it's other digital assets that you can use within that. And although we will be using fear on the platform itself, we have to be very socially aware a lot of gamers are young. So we obviously the last we want to be doing is pushing cryptocurrency on on the young and of course, and we're gonna have very strict barriers in place for that as well KYC processes, and also just educational bits and pieces on the website as well for that, including crypto boot camps, that kind of thing, right. But the purpose we're using really using the token is going back to what we were saying before is we are well I don't know if we said it. But I mean, it's very ambitious project, we are literally looking at World Domination within the esports. industry. We really want ultimate Gigi and Gigi to be the name on everyone's lips when they think about eSports. Right. And we needed a currency that is global. Right. So we obviously certain regions, different companies have different rules and regulations, different currencies, different world affairs, all those kinds of bits and pieces. We wanted someone that is completely flat where me in the UK can do the exact same things I could in say North America or Africa or Southeast Asia or India or wherever it is really in the spirit of kind of bringing our community together and all kind of like having the same thing and being a level playing field within that. I think the opportunities with crypto and blockchain are substantial. and the value adds that you can kind of get through that. Just one thing in particular is obviously Of course NF T's within that as well. Being able to peg or tether our token to other potential football club or partnership tokens as well. Obviously increasing the utility and value of ltg as well within that. So I think using a cryptocurrency over traditional fear, just it just opens up so many different opportunities for us globally. Yeah, I mean, it also gives us scalability at the same time, and also the different adaptations and the way that we can actually develop our token different offerings. You know, we're we're fairly creative. I mean, we're currently in the process of, you know, of looking how to, you know, create child coins off our existing chain, which will obviously have huge benefits. And launch capabilities for, you know, particular clubs that we're doing, doing deals with as well. But we're also, you know, I was left a meeting earlier where, you know, I was in talks with a US investment banker. So, you know, we're creating a lot of interest at the moment. With, with with what we're doing. And these guys are, you know, former Goldman Sachs guys, so yeah, we're, it's, it's is a good place for sure.

Matt Zahab: 30:25

Gentlemen, that was a phenomenal answer. Normally, I, you know, have a couple objections or follow up questions in regards to that, but you flush them all right out the window. So kudos to that. One thing about the coin that I absolutely love, and you guys are one of the few companies who do this. Obviously, when when someone releases a coin, they always have a white paper and a white paper. And both of those are available on the website. But normally, you have to look around for or at least go through to find the tokenomics. You guys put that right on your website. So like, again, when I'm looking at someone's coin, I go, Okay, I want to see what they're made of honestly, who's getting what, how greedy is the Team B and what's happening? What are the plans? Like? What is the future? What's the roadmap look like? You guys put it right out there. It's smack in the middle of the website. I know you're a big fan to building and public. Why exactly did you do that?

Tobias Gooden: 31:07

So Good question. And there's a numerous reasons within that. Obviously, we well, we launched on the by Nance smart chain. For those that don't know, obviously, especially recently, it's quite a there's a lot of rockpools going on within the crypto community right now, at the moment, not naming any names, of course within that. So what we wanted to do from the start is just build trust with an audience. Although we've obviously have a rich four year history of being a company which is open for anyone to see on any of our socials, our websites, our partners, websites, etc. There's literally four years of content within that, we thought that it was paramount that we build trust from the start. So we did numerous newest raise, for example, putting the tokenomics on that. We're fully docs team, you can kind of see us here, we're only obviously part of the team itself. For the first I think two weeks, we did ama's every every day for two weeks. We still do them three times a week now at the moment. There's lots of video content of all of us really within that. And it's just about building trust. I think educating our partners as well within that, right, because sometimes going to a partner, especially with particular news pieces come out of negative press around the cryptocurrency industry in general, you obviously have to build that narrative within a partner or brand to show that look, that's not what we're right. So I think it's just super important that we Yeah, we just as honest and transparent as possible within that. And I think that's really, really like Shawn through our community as well. And I think it's very, a lot of people can see that we are honest, genuine and transparent within this, and just totally front facing. And to kind of back that up, obviously, as you can imagine clubs like Birmingham City FC, either with PlayStation asis and the likes of those before, right, like they become

Matt Zahab: 32:59

you want to see that they want to see that, you know, like, That's huge. That's a huge objection that they'd have when you're meeting for the first time. And it's like, they already know about you, you're good to go.

Tobias Gooden: 33:07

Exactly. Exactly. That took the words out of my mouth, man. But it's a very important thing. And we're still very much front facing throughout this entire period, for sure.

Ben Husted: 33:15

Yeah, I mean, I think what struck us when we first launched the coin is, was the kind of here's an analogy. I love devices analogy. Might not be too much pressure.

Tobias Gooden: 33:32

I mean, for example, I think people get caught up in the hype. And then they, you know, they, they, they, they go ahead and they make a purchase. And then then they do their due diligence, and then they kind of panic, and then it's too late, and then they start flooding. This is look at me looking at other projects in the past, right? Okay, so all of a sudden, they invest because they're excited, then they check to make sure that they haven't made a mistake, and then they can't find the thing, then they go into panic mode. So what we wanted to do was go right, okay, this is us guys, check us out, have a look at us look at the tokenomics you can have a look at all our websites or social proofing, you know, we have just created this four year facade to, you know, to lead you guys down a garden path or rapport. Yeah, exactly. And it's just, I mean, it does make his, you know, anxious as well at the same time because there's other people that sell fake groups and so on and so forth. It makes us angry as well because, you know, we've got trademarks on our brands and everything else. But you know, I mean, we could spend all our time getting super angry, all we can do is make ourselves more transparent and you know, we love our community. And it's, you know, it just inspires us as well how, how supportive they been a long, long our journey so far and how interested they are in it all and, you know, actually inspires us to, you know, do the 16 hour days at the moment as well. You know, I was a young man when I started now. I'm actually 16 I

Ben Husted: 35:02

yeah, absolutely shameless plug as well. Obviously, it there's a lot of scammers out there within crypto, I would always say do your due diligence within that. But I think we were probably one of the first cryptocurrencies to actually refund people that were done with the scam, we funded$45,000 of our community who were done in a scam really within that. And in the first few days, obviously, there's scandal that's completely out of kind of other people's hands within that, but I think what we've kind of really done again, is just build that trust and stability, like where we're honest, is, is held within our community within that, like, one thing that we've done very differently to other tokens is actually establish credible partnerships from the start. We haven't just gone in with huge influences from the start all of this kind of thing to kind of fizzle out within a couple of weeks, right? We are probably one of the most stable coins are the by Nance smart chain, if you look at our charts, and and that's just doing actual, real tangible partnerships that offer real utility to the token, like we're thinking long term here, although, of course, we want to be making money and we want our holders to be making money along the way. Absolutely. But we've got a long term goal in this, we want to change the industry, we want to disrupt it, right. But we want to be, we want to be here in the next 1020 years, for sure. And that's a big part of what we're doing. And that's that's the kind of the route we're taking really within it.

Matt Zahab: 36:24

And kudos to that. And one of the best things about building and public too is the compound like the compound interest you get from building and public as exponentially if you put yourself out there, be transparent and take those risks. Like you know, you're going to wake up that one day and boom, you went viral. And it's not because of one post made, it's because you did things in public for months or years in a row. So kudos to that. couple more questions for us before we wrap up here. I'm very curious. I want to hear some some hot takes just like some some black swan events, crazy hot takes. I've always had this heartache where like, what would happen if FIFA came out with a coin like eSports? Or like what are fortnight was like, hey, what there's gonna be a fortnight coin. Do you see any of these crazy Black Swan events happening? Where a massive company is going to just come in and blow the whole space up?

Ben Husted: 37:08

Yes. Us.

Tobias Gooden: 37:12

Other than us? Yeah. I

Ben Husted: 37:14

mean, the moment EA don't like crypto they hate it

Matt Zahab: 37:19

makes no sense. They could make they could make billions and off flicker sweat. Yep, I don't get it.

Ben Husted: 37:24

Okay. And then, you know, there's other other publishers who are quite cool with having an association of sponsorship wrapped around it, and maybe, you know, maybe they might be the, you know, the company that we can help them. But I mean, like I said, I was on the phone earlier to, to some partners over in the States. And, you know, there's a potential acquisition for us to take advantage of a really cool driving game, that this there's this available to be, you know, potentially, you know, bought. And that would allow us then to actually have our own cryptocurrency within an existing game already. So, you know, we could be reversed for sure. I mean, these are the kind of, you know, because we've been around the finance industry for a long time. And, you know, are my other partner over and over in Asia? No, he's been in the investment world for, you know, for 30 years. So, you know, we've got, we've got some good black books, and because we're, we've been stable, you know, people can see where we're going, they're getting super excited. Some big funds are just loving what we're up to at the moment. So, yeah, I mean, you know, it's a, it's an exciting time. So the answer to that is we'll create the Black Swan event.

Tobias Gooden: 38:48

I do think, yeah, I do think it there will come a time where it will. There's a lot as Tobias rightly said, there's a lot of different publishers who are kind of pushing more grounds within that, but like, it's the same, I guess they're just waiting for the right time within that there is a certain element of wild west to crypto. And it's I think it's up to it's up to teams. It's up to the brands and cryptocurrencies themselves, really to educate and really move that forward. But there will become a time where it does for sure. I mean, they're already essentially doing it within their gaming coins or vbucks, or for coins, or whatever it is, right. Like that is that's just cryptocurrency within their own ecosystem, right. So it's only a natural progression. And it kind of goes back to what we were speaking about earlier, gamers are already switched on to buying digital assets and used to it right. So it will happen. It's just a matter of when,

Matt Zahab: 39:41

like, imagine a card coin or a FIFA coin. Yeah, like Well,

Tobias Gooden: 39:45

I mean, they exist but just within the ecosystem, like you could totally see it happening, right?

Matt Zahab: 39:50

I bet it just there's such a it almost makes no sense to have. It does make sense, but it would make a whole hell of a lot more sense to have it in the metaverse so then it because you Got that cross functionality, you can bring it over to everything. majan like going into decentraland and playing FIFA and decentraland, right with your man tokens and your FIFA tokens, and your all GG tokens like you know, mixing it all together. I'm curious, do you guys have any heartaches in that in the metaverse aspect? In regards to eSports?

Ben Husted: 40:18

Yeah. I mean, the metaverse, I've obviously I've looked into it. I mean, it is sort of Ready Player One style, isn't it? You know,

Matt Zahab: 40:27

it is yeah,

Ben Husted: 40:27

I'm waiting for that time. From this, I think because there's, it's quite political between publishers, that's, that's the main problem is very fragmented. You know, one of the things we've spoken about is almost doing like, an Olympic Games of Esports, you know, based somewhere, for example, over in Saudi Arabia, or, you know, or in Qatar or somewhere where that magnitude where they can house, and they've got the infrastructure to actually roll that out. You know, and they've got the air conditioning for the inside buildings as well, which is healthy. So something of that magnitude is saying we've spoken about and try to put some work in models together, but it's, it all comes down to the publishers because, you know, they've got their little piece of, you know, their world, and they don't really want to let it go. I mean, I suppose, you know, Sony, like steam valve, they're, they're a little bit more relaxed. But um, you know, the rest of the guys are kind of, you know, falling out all over the place.

Tobias Gooden: 41:30

I mean, obviously, the idea of it is incredible, right? Having that just fully free like digital world where you can essentially do anything really within that. It very much is like Ready Player One in that sense, where obviously, everything's free within that. But of course, there's going to be entities that monetize stuff in basic pieces in that for sure. It's really exciting. I still think it's super early days with metaverse stuff. I don't think it's fully fleshed out in that I think there's some great companies out there, they're doing amazing things, really cool, creative things. And I think it's really gonna pave the way for just more creativity within that particular space. But I think it's probably, it's probably gonna be a while for AAA games to kind of get into that, of course, is obviously like, de vie games and more indie developers kind of looking into that space for sure. But I don't think it will be kind of picked up by the big the big publishers or AAA games for a good while to be honest. But that doesn't mean there's no value within that within gaming anyway. I mean, yeah, mobile gaming is actually the biggest type of gaming in the world now which is bonkers. As as an actual like diehard gamer, it kind of blows my mind a little bit. But so you are going to see obviously tangible and viable companies going into the space as you already are like defy gaming at the moment is huge. Of course it's like is this a bad thing at the moment? Right. But for the Yeah, for the for the big boys to come in? I think it would. I don't think we're near that to be honest.

Matt Zahab: 43:01

years down the road. No, totally makes sense. Fellas, this man, incredible. couple more questions here. Give me a game where each of you would absolutely smack me

Ben Husted: 43:10

every single

Matt Zahab: 43:15

day you just like a pro gamer.

Ben Husted: 43:16

I used to play a lot, a lot, a lot A lot. Unfortunately, life gets in the way sometimes as an ex. I'm a big I play a lot of single player games, but I'm also a big college using guy. I play a lot with my friends. So I will probably obliterate you in that matter.

Matt Zahab: 43:35

So like, in a game of war zone. How many kills you get?

Ben Husted: 43:38

I think my biggest one is 24 I think

Matt Zahab: 43:42

you would undoubtably crush me so good. Good thing we're not gonna play war zone twice. What about you?

Ben Husted: 43:50

Candy Crush?

Tobias Gooden: 43:51

Yeah. I've got quite an addictive personality, Matt. Okay. And, you know, if I, I can't make a decision a few years ago just to stop doing everything because I needed to just focus on getting the business sorted out. Otherwise, you know, nothing will get done. I mean, we were laughing earlier with our art studio guys here. And they were sort of saying you know, they spent four hours playing FIFA sometimes and then realize you know what's going on? So it's definitely, if you've got a propensity to have you know, have a bit of addictive personality, then you know, when you get to a certain age or your life you can waste a few years when you're younger, you know, that's okay, you've got plenty of time left, but you know, my clock's ticking, so yeah, maybe Tiger Woods.

Matt Zahab: 44:41

Nice. Can't be playing Candy Crush. I love that. Any questions for me fellas?

Ben Husted: 44:47

What's your guy? What would you be asked that.

Matt Zahab: 44:50

So I'm I'm born and raised in Toronto. I'm a Canadian. I used to play you know, pretty high level hockey. NHL, I would I could be be blindfolded and I would easily take you for a walk in the park but I'm not a great gamer. I'm I'm decent, but like, I don't know Call of Duty Warzone. You can chalk me up for anywhere between one and five kills every round, but like no, I'm not a good gamer. I have some friends who are like you've been at any point or controller in their hand and they'll mop the floor but the only game that I can mop all of my peers in is NHL Otherwise, I wouldn't even I have no confidence.

Tobias Gooden: 45:26

And it's a tough my I've given it a go. I don't know what I'm doing within it, to be honest.

Matt Zahab: 45:30

But you don't know how I feel. That's the thing. It's not even so much like the skill it's like when I play one of my friends who actually knows football and FIFA and they just tactically they, you know, they take me for a walk and I'm just sitting there and I'm just every time I get the ball I'm trying to go for a 60 yard threw ball and get myself breakaway. And it's like no, that's how you do it.

Ben Husted: 45:48

Old school English football if you're just playing long balls from the back. Yeah. On the on the hockey game you're allowed to fight on.

Matt Zahab: 45:56

Yeah, so that's one of the things in real. In real hockey, you can fight as well. That's how I got these scars right here. But real hockey can fight in NHL, you can fight but in NHL in the game when you fight your team that's energy back. So it's like if you win a fight your whole team is full energy and then you can take advantage of the next one, whereas the other team only gets a bit of energy. So there's actually some tactical implications to fighting.

Ben Husted: 46:18

Oh, God. That's awesome.

Matt Zahab: 46:21

I've always I've always dreamt of seeing just a gladiator football match like in hockey when two guys you know have a little scuffle they dropped the gloves, helmets off a couple of punches to the faces couple swear words in the penalty box and then beers after the game I'd love to see that in football like a dirty slide tackle a guy gets up soccers him in the face and boom

Tobias Gooden: 46:46

it's called rugby.

Matt Zahab: 46:50

I know I love that anyways, flows really appreciate you having me on this. The absolute great episode had a blast learned a ton. And you guys have a very bright future ahead. And very happy for you and round two in the near future. Thanks a lot, guys. Appreciate it.

Tobias Gooden: 47:03

Thank you so much for your time. It's been an absolute pleasure, mate. Hopefully Speak to you soon. Yeah,

Ben Husted: 47:07

yeah. Thanks for that. It's been really cool to speak to you and yeah, speak soon for sure.

Matt Zahab: 47:12

All the best guys. Ladies and gentlemen, hope you enjoy this episode an absolute blast. I love gaming myself love eSports love crypto, no better place to check that out. Then ultimate GG. As always, I will include all of the links, all the show notes, all the everything. In the episode description. As usual. We're going to go back to drop in on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays when September rolls around. I'm super excited about that. And hope you are too. Thanks again to Ben and Tobias for jumping on phenomenal lads and companies well, as always appreciate you guys listening, love you and see you all shortly. Bye for now.