In an exclusive interview with Ministry of Sport, co-founder of Play Media, Chris Derrick, spoke about the importance of the organisation’s exclusive long-term partnership with inStreamly, a leading live streaming technology that allows brands to connect with the gaming community, whilst also giving insight into the goals of his recently established organisation.

Who are Play Media?

Established by Derrick and Sean Callanan, Play Media established itself in 2020 to combine years of experience in digital media and marketing to cover a number of sectors, including Esports.

Derrick said Play Media was started to help brands build their repertoire and to connect them with audiences.

“Play Media is essentially a sales and media agency focused on helping brands and their media agencies connect with video gaming audiences,” Derrick told Ministry of Sport.

“Whether that is through Esports, through media, through events or other activations, sponsorships what-have-you, we cover the full gamut of marketing channels.

“We’ve only been around a little while but, we’ve established ourselves pretty quickly with some of the endemics across the agencies in terms of bringing our traditional sports and media backgrounds into the space, there are a couple of other players doing something similar.

“I think people are really starting to appreciate the fact that you can do a lot more in marketing to gaming audiences now than what they ever have before,” he said.

The deal with inStreamly

 Play Media announced an exclusive representation of InStreamly in Australia and New Zealand, allowing “marketers to work with gaming streamers and influencers at scale but with real results,” Derrick said in a statement.

Speaking to Ministry of Sport about the deal, Derrick said the professionalism of the company will improve Play Media’s proficiency in the market.

“InStreamly are a Polish company that have a platform that allows brands to use influencers, particularly gaming streamers, in their marketing campaigns, and they do it at scale and with ease,” Derrick said.

“We’re seeing very good results from those types of campaigns, really strong click throughs.

“What attracted us to them, [was] we got to know the guys, they’re really easy to deal with, the technology is really interesting, no-one is doing anything like it here in Australia, yet overseas they’re working with Netflix, they’re working with Samsung, they’re working with game developers, [they’re working] with Disney, lots of great brands running these types of campaigns, and we look forward to growing that and bringing that here to Australia.

“These guys will hopefully be the first of several types of technology partners that we can introduce to the Australian market.

“We’re in discussions with several others at the moment who are doing other really interesting things, whether it is on the measurement, the planning or the implementation side of marketing to gaming audiences.

“There’s a lot of transferability from gaming audiences into other forms of digital entertainment as well, whether that’s live streaming of sport, or movies, TV, what-have-you, a lot of the similar types of technologies can be used in those different industries as well,” he said.

What gap in the market does Play Media hope to fill?

When asked whether there was a gap in the market here in Australia, Derrick said there were a couple of opportunities to improve, with Play Media’s main goal to become a leading partner for media agencies to become confident in their abilities.

“The first one just touches on being effectively the boots on the ground for technology companies, scaled up to the point that they can have local representatives here in Australia, we can be a trusted partner for them in that sense,” Derrick told Ministry of Sport.

“On the other hand, marketing agencies, media agencies, [they] can’t be experts in everything.

“We help to fill the gap in terms of knowledge around what to do in gaming,” he said.

Speaking on the positives and negatives in the industry generally, Derrick said the major plus is there is still a huge amount of growth to be seen.

“I think it’s doing quite well on the media side of things,” Derrick said.

“There’s obviously a lot of growth in terms of the viewership and the consumption of gaming and that’s live on platforms like Twitch, on-demand on YouTube and leveraging those audiences from a pre-roll ads, traditional advertising point-of-view, [that] is working well.

“As those audiences grow that opportunity grows as well.

“I think coming from that traditional sporting side, the opportunity of growth is still really around bringing the non-endemic brands into the sporting space.

“We’ve seen some brands come in, Laurel, Puma, just a couple off the top of my head.

“I think there’s a lot more scope for auto-brands or travel brands or finance brands who still haven’t come into the gaming and Esports space on a sponsorship or a marketing level to the same way they are overseas, so that will happen it’s just going to take time,” he said.

The long-term plan for Play Media

With the company only recently up-and-running, Derrick said Play Media was really looking forward to delving into different forms of entertainment in the not-to-distant future.

“If you look at our focus today it’s been on gaming, and it continues to be on gaming, and that is something that we’re passionate about and will continue to do” Derrick said.

“As the name “play” suggests, we’re open to all forms of entertainment whether that’s music, sport, what-have-you.

“Over time we’d like to branch out into different sort of verticals, different offerings around those other types of entertainment industries as well,” he told Ministry of Sport.