Esports would be nothing without the fans and the competitors that make up the end-to-end ecosystem. With that fact in mind, there’s one unique company that has deployed a platform to market in recent months that is looking to take advantage of that concept and connect the two together – fans and competitors. This company is named ENDX.GG, and it operates the world’s first esports fantasy game that’s based on traditional stock market rules.
Recently, I was lucky enough to sit down with John Pritchard, the Head of Marketing, Partnerships, and Content at ENDX. I learnt how ENDX is working to change the face of esports interactions, offering fans both a game and the opportunity to profit from their knowledge while playing it. With ENDX, there’s an already thriving economy, buy-in from hundreds of esports organisations, and an insane growth track – and the firm is only just getting started.
What is ENDX?
I spoke to John Pritchard about ENDX and received the most fundamental statement outlining what ENDX is:
JP: We are the world’s first esports fantasy-based trading game that uses stock market rules rather than traditional fantasy rules. Users create a portfolio of their favourite players which goes up and down in value depending on whether other users buy more or sell more of those player shares. ENDX is 100% peer-to-peer. As a platform we never manipulate prices and we have just been accepted for regulation by the Financial Services Commission which means that we are deemed to not be any type of gambling or betting.
Put simply, ENDX is a trading game. It all starts with a partnership, and ENDX acquires the rights needed to onboard esports organisations and players onto the platform. From there, they adopt an inherent base value of $1, and shares are opened up for purchase. Fans buy those shares and then do what they want with them – hold, sell, or trade. There’s a utility token, as John said, and it has a 1:1 conversion into USD.
So, you can log into ENDX, build out a portfolio of players – focusing on Counter-Strike organisations at present – and then watch those stocks rise and fall as other fans and users of ENDX also buy, sell, and trade their shares.
In John’s words:
JP: All of the prices that you see on ENDX are completely, one-hundred percent supply and demand and market-drive. ENDX does not and will not ever control the price of a player.
ENDX is going beyond being just a trading game or a form of gambling. While John explained that ENDX offers ‘the same dopamine hit’ as a successful bet, it’s not a gambling platform, and therefore it’s able to circumnavigate restrictions imposed on betting practices on various sites – like Twitch.
Users are essentially trading their knowledge against each other without the downsides of the house stacking the odds against them.
Related: Learn About The Value of the Esports Industry
What Makes ENDX so Exciting?
One of the most exciting aspects of ENDX is the potential of the game and the unprecedented connection that it offers esports fans to their favourite players – some of the best CSGO players in the business. It’s a partnership-driven endeavour, and as John explained, there are active efforts to onboard teams from either end of the CSGO spectrum.
JP: Every single person you see on ENDX is on ENDX because they want to be there. We have a direct partnership with every single team on our platform, and there are a few players on the platform that we have direct relationships with.
All you have to do to be a part of ENDX is to see the ENDX vision, want to be a part of something that’s going to change the way and the lifestyle of esports, and just hold the same values as us – that’s literally it. There’s a reason we have five of the top ten teams in the world and we also have six teams that are ranked outside the top 120 in the world.
It’s for everybody, it really is. You’ll actually find sometimes that it’s the smaller teams that probably gain the most out of it, purely because they understand the value of actually pushing and advertising this.
From partnering with a traditional fantasy gaming application to running the ‘BLAST Paris Trade-off’ event that featured the talents of Anders Blume, and Nadeking, ENDX is bursting at the seams with growth. That’s something that John explained:
JP: We’ve been building the product for just over two years now and launched into a closed beta about 18 months ago. In December of last year (2022), we launched into open beta, around the BLAST World Finals in Abu Dhabi. Since then, we’re approaching nearly a 3000% increase in active users, and the best thing about it is we’ve actually thrown no marketing at the product – it has been pure, organic growth.
Under half a percent of our traders who have deposited money and traded to earn on the platform have withdrawn their funds. People are understanding, ‘Damn, this is the future, this is interesting, this is fun.’
Making Everything Healthier
During my conversation with John, we also touched upon the connections with gambling, referencing how CSGO leads the esports betting space. He spoke candidly, admitting that he couldn’t blame teams and players for soaking up betting sponsorship deals, but he stressed that with ENDX, it’s about the long game. They’re passionate about esports, they want to help shore up the economy in the industry, and they want to pull impressionable youngsters away from betting.
Related: These Are The Best CSGO Teams Today
JP: There’s a reason why we’ve partnered with forty-two of the leading CSGO teams in the world, five of which are in the top ten HLTV ranks, and fifteen of our partnered teams had pre-existing betting sponsors but still went on to sign with ENDX.
So, I learned a huge amount about ENDX and could definitely see the value in the platform. It was explained that ENDX has plans to expand into other games outside of just Counter-Strike, with the team working on platforms for as many different esports titles as possible, with the plan being to launch these platforms in the near future. There’s talk of introducing a ‘Legends’ category, an ‘Influencers’ market, and there’s apparently a big content creator initiative in the pipeline.
ENDX truly does look like an exciting product – I’m eager to see where it all goes from here. Check out ENDX now and use code ENET10 for e$10 free when signing up!
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