Building the sport of the digital generation 2010-2015

mas has emerged with a business model that goes beyond the classical consulting scheme:

• In cooperation with private or institutional investors, mas engages in critical phases of client investment cases, either because the investment is in a turnaround situation or at a critical crossroads regarding the further development of the business model.
• Part of this engagement almost always also involves a financial investment by mas into the specific company, so that we have our “skin in the game”.
• When it comes to the exit, we have aligned interests with the investor, being investors ourselves. We then carefully choose the best transaction and tax advisors from our network.

One of these “Investment Advisory” engagements is Turtle Entertainment, where Heinrich Zetlmayer, partner at mas, took over a co-management engagement in 2010. Turtle Entertainment operates the “Electronic Sports League” (ESL), the worlds #1 portal for eSports. Besides this co-management role, mas has also been engaged with its own investment, so we had our “skin in the game”.

Heinrich Zetlmayer was key in re-shaping the business model and shaping Turtle / ESL into the leading eSports provider position it enjoys today. An important success factor was the design and execution of an overall business strategy with a number of diversified but highly interconnected services. ESL is currently serving:

• operations and TV studios all around the world; offices in Germany, Russia, France, Poland, Spain, China, North America, etc…
• full-service gaming agency; gaming technology, event management, TV production and advertising,
• covering all major game titles: League of Legends, Counter-Strike Global Offensive, Dota2, Hearthstone,
• in-house multi-channel network: ESL Video Network, partnered with streamers from all over Europe, and
• largest content provider on Twitch (recently acquired by Amazon); long-term partnership since 2012.

As of today, it has more than 5,000,000 registered members and consists of over 1,000,000 teams, which have played over 22.5 million games. The ESL supports over 50 games in different genres, where the best players in various national and international leagues can play for prize money.

Heinrich Zetlmayer was also a key player in the M&A process that was conducted in 2014-2015, which eventually led to the sale of 74% of the shares in Turtle Entertainment to one of the largest European Media Companies, MTG from Sweden.