What a dream that was. There was that beautiful woman, and a robot. The robot had been flashing like a disco ball. And we were discussing some game? I sat up in my bed and was smacked in the face with nausea. The details fought the blooming hangover for my attention, before fading away, lost forever. I rushed to the bathroom to hurl.
A few hours later and I was on my couch recovering, drinking some gatorade, struggling to eat a few saltine crackers. This was the first moment since I had quit that I’d gotten a moment to think. I still felt the heat like I had yesterday. Like a piece of me had opened its eyes and now was here to stay. I looked at my phone and saw I had a missed call from Sara, my oldest sister. I thought of the last conversation I had with her. I had been telling her about my frustrations with work. She had heard it all before and was not having it. And now here we were.
I sat across from James, my former team lead at Lake Shore. He had called me with an investment opportunity. This wasn't the first time.
"Listen Tommy, I know you are probably going to be skeptical of what I am going to tell you about tonight. Hell, you should be. WEREWOLF hasn’t taken off the way either of us was were hoping for. You should hold on to it though, I am planning to harvest more before the next full moon, but that is a conVersation for another time." He downed his drink quickly and ordered another.
"Let’s get to it man."
"I want to buy a football team".
“Buddy, that is going to land a bit outside of my price range."
“Hear me out," he said.
"The ARSL is a gaming system that merges traditional sports with cutting edge augmented reality technology, providing a unique immersive experience for fans. Each ARSL team fields a lineup of players with baseline skills of the NFL team players. The ARSL players, wearing glasses and haptics, take the role of one of the on the field athletes from the correlated team, and a game is played. Owners are responsible for managing the team operations and fielding the squad. This is the next generation of e-sports. There are a bunch of different ways to monetize a team. Teams can have sponsors, the league pays out dividends for viewerships and gambling, performance incentives, player contracts.. just to name a few. The average team is valued at around $120,000. The Big Cats are the franchise from Jacksonville and they are being offered at a discount, as the team baseline metrics are based off of their sister team in the NFL, the Jacksonville Jaguars, who have not been doing well of late, both in terms of performance and revenue. They are listed at $85,000, I have been talking with the current ownership and they are willing to let them go for $75,000. It’ll require some heave-ho, and now that you are a free man, I am thinking that he could be the team coach and president. Hey, even a player too. You mentioned you used to play ball, and I know you have done some gaming too. Gameplay is geared towards reactions and gestures and also utilizes a handheld controller for basic movements. You need about one square foot of space in total in order to play, but you would be surprised at how much of a workout in can be. Communication between players was done via headset, as well as through display, which also showed play calls, stamina, injuries, and boosts.”
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James paused, inviting input.
I sat there silent for a few moments, taking it in.
"I have run the numbers and there are scenarios with major, and I mean major, potential upside for us."
This was a textbook James pitch. Untested, eccentric, and convoluted. And yet, I couldn’t help but to be intrigued. Gaming had become big business. Not just for the developers, but for gamers themselves too. There were guys out there getting rich selling subscriptions to streaming channels. A couple of the members of the underachievers and I had even toyed with starting our own channel. I had just cut off my source of income. Yes I am a trust fund baby, but I did not have direct access to it for a few more years, and I loathed the idea of asking my father for any more money, or for an early pull from my trust fund so that I could by a knock off of one of the least successful sports franchises in America.
"Uhhh, I don’t have that kind of liquidity right now. No job, remember?"
"Aye. You haven’t let me get to my proposal yet. I’ll raise the money, as well as a $5,000 budget for you to get started. You become team president on a one year contract with a key incentive built in: If you remain cash flow positive and post a winning season this year, a quarter of the team is yours. I don’t need an answer tonight. Come over tomorrow night, play a couple of games on the practice platform. I’ll show you around ARSL. What say you?"
