Episode 223 Snippets: Kayci Evans of the Evil Geniuses

Best Of The Digital and
Social Media Sports Podcast
Episode 223: Kayci Evans
On episode 220 of the Digital and Social Media
Sports Podcast, Neil chatted with Kayci Evans,
Director of Global Brand Marketing for esports
organization Evil Geniuses.
What follows is a collection of snippets from the
podcast. To hear the full interview and more, check
out the podcast on all podcast platforms and at
www.dsmsports.net.
@njh287; www.dsmsports.net

Kayci’s Career Path
“I graduated from Baylor University in 2014. I was
a collegiate volleyball player and had a great four
years there being a student-athlete. And then
through networking in the athletics department, I
got an internship offer with Major League
Baseball, which at the time back in the day was
MLB Advanced Media…

“So I moved to New York right after college to start my
internship, I signed a 12-month lease and was like ‘I
hope they'll keep me for at least 12 months as an
intern’... It worked out, they, they let me stay on and I
just kind of made my way up to full time. I guess where
it really all started was in 2015 [when] I was able to step
into the role of oversight for what at the time was called
our real-time correspondent program. That was all the
recent grads and interns of the 30 baseball clubs taking
photos on cell phones and videos and sending them back
to us in New York, because at the time we did all of the
live posts and articles for all 30 clubs from New York.

“I mean, it was insane at that time. It was the wild
west. And then from there [we] just developed that
program and to what it is today and continues to
evolve to be, which is the live content creator
program at Major League Baseball. They're now
part of the brand studio team and they've got a
bunch of new leadership and all that. I've stayed
super close to lots of those content creators and
friends. And as of February of this year of 2022, I
made the move to Seattle to get this job in eSports.

“It's where I've always wanted to be. I've always
been a casual gamer, but I think over the last few
years, I've really realized how big the industry is
getting and felt like it was a great crossover for me
to bring the traditional sports knowledge to esports
and to gaming. So I'm super excited to be where
I'm at. My role currently is oversight of all of our
brand marketing initiatives, along with my
wonderful counterparts who have also come from
amazing non-eSports — they call it non-endemic —
companies and backgrounds.

“But we are just rebuilding an incredible marketing
department over here at Evil Geniuses and I'm super
thankful to be a part of that. So I cover everything from
fan engagement activations onsite to our live social
media coverage and working with that team to working
with our creative team and assets, our PR and
communications agency — I mean, you name it. I'm
probably helping with it in some regard at this point,
just because we are very much a small team with big
ideas and big expectations. So I’m getting to do a little
bit of it all right now, which is something I'm enjoying.”

On her time at college and preparing for her career
“So I got really lucky because I think it was right before my junior year, they
opened up a new major, which was PR and digital media, which I think at the
time, 2012-2013, digital media was really more like website and maybe
Twitter. So they opened that up just in time and I only switched because there
was this one class in the traditional PR major that I really did not wanna take
and this new major did not call for you to have to take that one. So yeah, I
went that route and I also minored in film, which was super fun and it was
great.
“I'm thankful for my education and thankful to have been a student athlete,
but ultimately, you know, you can only learn so much in a classroom. So it
was really through some of my internships that I did through college —
nothing too glamorous, but I got to work with the school district, got to work
with our athletics PR team and all that good stuff.

“At the time I think social media was still kind of really just for personal
use; I remember my first Instagram posts were very much like my food
or a pretty flower or a selfie or whatever, and my tweets were my
random thoughts of my stream of thought and totally embarrassing to
go back and revisit any of those. So I don't even think I really realized
what I was trying to set myself up for (career-wise) if I'm being honest. I
think that because I was offered that internship with MLB, eventually
they were just like, cool, you're young, you know social media, right? Go
do social media. And I was like, okay, have you heard of Snapchat? And
they're like, ‘No, what's Snapchat?’ And I'm like, well, let me start, start
an account for you. And that kind of just translated into them being like,
‘Hey, the Cardinals wanna start a Snapchat account. Can you go to St.
Louis for the weekend and show them how it works, what the product is,
and get players involved?’ And I was like, yeah, sure, sign me up.
Getting paid to Snapchat around the country? Like, absolutely.

“So I think that that kind of teed up the live
content, real-time correspondent program when
that time came for them to have new leadership
since I was already kind of doing some of that
work just on behalf of the league instead of the
clubs. So yeah, that's how I got my jumpstart.”

On running the program / operation
“It was definitely more people management and operations.
It was just me, myself and I communicating with all 30
clubs and our counterparts at the clubs, as well as MLB
Photos, then team photographers and hiring all these
people in all 30 markets, and trying to discover hidden
talent in Milwaukee, which I'm like I know nobody in
Milwaukee, like, how am I gonna figure this out or Tampa?
Like, there's these markets that I just was not tapped into,
and the majority of the markets I wasn't tapped into. So it
was definitely a lot more of the communication [side].

“And thankfully, if I'm remembering right, when I first
started in that role, it was — I'm not kidding — two or three
days before Opening Day that year. So the staff was already
hired and in place, which, now in hindsight, you know, it
couldn't have been set up better for me because it then gave
me plenty of time to work a season, figure the team out,
figure out what was missing and then go into the next year
with the hiring season really knowing what I was looking for.
“So that at least helped. But yeah, it was, it was a wild ride.
That team, in general, and how it happened. I’m very
grateful.”

On goals and measuring success for the real-time
content program
“I would say a big thing at the time was just supporting
the teams. You know, a lot of the clubs didn't have their
own social media managers or content capturers yet for
social. A lot of us were still relying on the Getty and APs
of the world, the wire photographers, who maybe
weren't sending content in real-time, which is why the
whole capture of cell phone [content] was so efficient
and quick with doing updates and things like that.

“So at the time I would say our big goals were supporting
the clubs, making sure that we're sending content in a
timely fashion. And then ultimately what I started to
realize was we could do this in a way that was gonna
produce higher quality imagery while still being timely
and meeting those goals. So I think it was probably sort
of throughout that first year where we started
transitioning some of our staff off of just taking cell
phone photos to using the cell phone as a way to
distribute the content, but still shooting the content on a
DSLR camera, and that's where the evolution kind of like
really started, I would say.”

On the kind of content the real-time creators were seeking
to capture to provide the clubs
“So it really evolved every year. And I would say when I left
the program this last year, after this last season, we were
strategizing content capture based off of where we knew
we'd have positions in either a well or up on a platform in
the lower bowl. We would strategize and I would work
closely with like Lucas Stevenson and Jake Nesbitt who
oversee the team now on based off of what the team's needs
are, what maybe a sponsorship's needs are, what our player
marketing team’s needs are, plus what MLB Social needs.

“I think at my last World Series, we had maybe 7, 8, 9 content creators
just to knock out all those things. That's not inclusive of MLB Photos and
the other photographers and videographers from the teams or the wires
that were also down there. So we were super thoughtful with how you're
approaching this. And then on the backside of like, once you capture that
great moment, knowing when it's a big enough moment to stop what
you're doing, stop shooting, which is, you know, a gamble because you
might miss something, and go plug your card in and get something over,
plug your phone into the camera while you're standing there at BP or
whatever it might be. So we would go in with a content capture strategy to
reach all of our deliverables we had from various teams.
“And then we would also have a distribution strategy based off of what
those big moments [were] and what we could anticipate — what those
moments might be, and getting that over quickly so we could be the first
to put it up online.”

“We worked super closely with the teams in terms of [for example]
Wander Franco's call up last year…It was like, how can we get someone
—I think he was in North Carolina at the time before the call-up — and
it's, like, how can we get someone there to start capturing B-roll
because we know we're gonna wanna do a commercial spot for this
announcement tied to ‘Make It Major’ or whatever our campaign was.
So we had literally shipped one of our east coast LCCs to North
Carolina to go capture all of that while working in tandem with the
[Tampa Bay] Rays and figuring out when he's gonna arrive and figuring
out what we can capture on his first arrival to the ballpark and also
making sure that we had a videographer in the wells for his first game
at the Trop so that we can get that first hit, that first home run,
whatever it might be when you know you're gonna have that moment
from the fans and the audience freaking out that they've witnessed
history.

And then taking that and plugging it in to the ongoing
content piece or commercial that we were working on for his
call up so that we had the version pre-call up kind of like
teeing it up and then you have the new ending version that
could be swapped out for broadcast with the moment that
just happened; on top of also making sure Wander has all
those assets, the Rays have all those individual assets and all
these other things.
“It's crazy. When you think about the operation that they're
manning over there [at MLB] still, it is wild...It was insane.
The amount of reach that team's videos and photos has, it's
pretty incredible. [I’m] super proud.”

About Evil Geniuses
“Evil Geniuses is North America's original esports team. So the
brand Evil Geniuses has been around since the ‘90s, which a lot of
people can't believe. I mean, they were playing Dota 2, Counter-
Strike in the early 2000s. They really have a super deep history, but
the twist is that it was all player-run, and it was player-run until
three years ago when PEAK6 came in and invested, they put our
CEO, Nicole LaPointe Jameson, in charge. So really while it's an
original brand that the esports community might be used to seeing,
it is very much a new brand in terms of the more casual gamer
audience or people like you and myself, who would've not been as
familiar with our crest and our brand until the last three years or
even more recently.

“The last three years have really been making it a full-
blown organization. What I would say sets us apart is
we are super invested in how we can make gaming a
space that is welcome to everyone. The esports and
gaming community can be, like any community, super
toxic and all that, but because I think these fans are so
hardcore and because if you watch a broadcast you
might just assume everyone in esports looks a certain
way, we have really made it our mission to remove that
barrier to entry, right? Like what's gonna get me or you
interested in League of Legends if we've never played?

“Like what would make pay attention to League of
Legends right now? I don't know, right? So it's like
asking those questions, figuring that out, building
our fan base while also making sure that we are
winning games, taking names, kicking ass in the
space. In terms of our titles, we have five titles
that we participate in and a couple of them have
the best amateur leagues; it's literally like MiLB
basically, but for gaming.

“Our five main titles are Dota 2, Counter-Strike, Valorant, Rocket
League, and League of Legends. We participate in tournaments year-
round, they play all over the world. My best analogy is it's like a college
sports team because you have all these different sports, you have all these
different sports under one brand umbrella. But what I will say that I
don't think people realize about the chaos of gaming and esports is that
these seasons, you know, they don't have just one season a year or one
long season and then a long off-season. They play for like two or three
months then they go to a playoffs and then they go to like the world stage
and then they stop for maybe like a month and then they start it all back
up again. So you're playing multiple seasons to get to multiple World
Series or NBA Finals in one year. And it's five different teams doing that,
like constantly. So when I say it's bananas, I mean, Gwen Stefani has
nothing on esports; it is bananas. It's crazy. I'm still trying to figure out
how I'm gonna approach the rest of the year, because it's just bananas.”

On learning the esports space in-depth as Kayci started with
EG
“It's a great question and it's still something I am learning
and I think I will be learning for however long I'm in esports,
which I think will be a long time. It's always changing. It is
very much the language and the lingo is it's so deeply rooted
in — I don't wanna just call it internet culture because it’s not
just internet culture — it's like chat culture on Twitch or
Reddit culture, like in the weeds of Reddit. Like TL;DR —
that probably started being said years ago on Reddit or in
chats or whatever and now we're just starting to see casual
people use that in texting and stuff.

“So it's something that I'm still working on. I will
say that everyone at EG has been so wonderful; like
in our onboarding process, we were able to sit
down and go through each game title, talk about
some lingo and things that we need to know. [For
example], what's a minion in League of Legends or
what does KKW mean on Twitch chat? All of these
things that, when I see it and I watch a Twitch chat,
I just think that they're talking gibberish, but they
mean something, they're saying something. It's
wild and it's been really fun.

“Even the touch grass meme, and, and if Taylor
listens to this, she'll appreciate this, but I work
with this amazing woman, Taylor, who oversees
our EG creator collective talent, and my first week
she was explaining to me what a touch grass
meme was. And essentially, it's like if you've been
playing too long and you're losing and whatever —
it's like, dude, get outside, go touch some grass,
you need some fresh air. And I thought it was
incredible.

“So she's sending me memes and letting me get familiar and
whatever. So that ended up turning into this idea to bring touch
grass to life at our League of Legends fan activation. So it's it's been
really fun to learn and [to] also just acknowledge that, like, I don't
know everything that they're talking about and raising my hand in
a meeting and being like, hold up, what did you just say? What does
that mean? Can you give me the backstory? And then having
colleagues that are patient enough and willing to fill me in has been
a total gamechanger because then I can take that and I can make
sure that when we're marketing to our fans, we're doing it in an
authentic way that makes sense to them.
“So I'm gonna say it's an evolution and I'm still learning. I don't
think I'll stop learning because there's just so, so much.”

On marketing and engaging with EG and esports fans while ensuring it
all sounds and feels authentic
“It's super intimidating, I think, is the right word. At least how I felt.
Because you already don't know how to play the game, or whatever
they're talking about, and then on top of that, there's a lingo that is
matched to that game style or that community. So it makes it a challenge
on the marketing side to figure out how you're gonna break down the
barrier to entry. If you can't even talk the same language as the brand
that is trying to get you in, how are you ever supposed to become a fan of
it? So I think it's really finding that balance of being authentic to the
gaming culture so that our current fans feel like we are staying real to
what we do and who we are and the games and all that, but then also
finding maybe the more understood or easy-to-understand language to
get other people in.

“So [the touch grass meme], I think, probably is
more of a general internet meme versus a League
of Legends meme or a Valorant meme or
whatever. And so [it’s] tapping into things like
that where you can start to seed the language to
our audience that we're trying to reach and get
them in. I think we're gonna have to keep doing
things like that because we can't just talk in super-
endemic language to try and get non-endemic
people interested.”

On fan development efforts and considering avid esports/gaming fans vs. the
more casual
“I would say right now we're in the phase of cross-pollinating as much as we can.
I'd love to get to a point where we can host a marketing campaign that is super
targeted to certain audiences and almost multiplied. So we can have a version of
it that's for our APAC audience, and we can have a version of it that's for the
hardcore gamer and it's very stat heavy or whatever it might be, and then we can
have a version that is for the casual gamer who just happens to like Animal
Crossing and playing [Nintendo] Switch. But maybe the tie-in there is — if they
play on Switch, they also play Zelda, and if they like Zelda and the lore of Zelda
and the world-building, they might like the lore of League of Legends
“How do we get o that point, to find that answer or get them in; but I think for
now we're at a point of — where's the middle and how do we really go all in on
that cross-pollination and the middle line that either fandom or all of the fans
we're trying to reach can participate and don't feel left out.”

On marketing to fans around individual titles EG competes in vs.
the global EG brand across gaming titles
“I would say right now a lot of our efforts are title-specific. But you
know, [recently] Netflix dropped new profile icons that are for
Arcane, which is a League of Legends origin story for some of their
champions in the game. So something like that — that's trying to
talk to someone about Netflix, League of Legends in general, and
then champions of League of Legends. That's kind of three areas
where we can casually tap into a conversation. So we ended up
posting something that's like, oh, ‘Which one are you gonna be
using as your profile pick or which Arcane character are you gonna
be using for your profile pick at your next Netflix and chill session?

“So that's a little bit more like you and I can totally
time in on that if we want to, and are into at least
Netflix, right, and at least League of Legends to
some degree. So I think, again, it is all about
connecting dots and trying to think about, you know,
putting yourself in those shoes, what would get you
to each phase [of] I hate to use the fan funnel
diagram that everyone has seen in marketing, but it
is real, right? It’s like how do you get people down
the narrow funnel by hitting them with something a
little more vague or that they can connect with.”

On the tactics and avenues that are working to pull in casual
fans
“Well, I think that everything, especially in marketing and
how it lives across digital and social or even TV or streaming,
I think the core of everything is really just — I know it's so
cheesy — but it's storytelling. That's either the storytelling of
your players, your athletes, what's their origin story. Because
we work in gaming, I think that there's something really fun
that could be done on literal player origin stories and how
they got to where they are. We have some incredible people
part of our organization that even showing that side of things
[can work well].

“I think that right now we're in a world where, particularly with
traditional sports, you never get to see a peek behind the curtain. You
might follow your favorite athlete and get to see what they wear or what
they do, but I wanna know how he got to where he is right now. I wanna
know about the immigrant mom who brought her kids to America and
they learned English at [age] seven. I wanna know those things, right?
So I think that something we wanna focus on is those storylines.
“Sometimes there are fun storylines and they pop up throughout like
gameplay or highlights or, you know, you can kind of meme a moment
that happens based off of what happens in the game. But what we're
really trying to do is sit down with our teams, with our players and
understand who they are, what they care about — what is going to be the
emotional connection that they can offer to a fan base?

“Our Valorant team this past weekend beat the number one Valorant team
and it was this huge underdog moment. Right. And we have this amazing
head coach who’s from Plano, Texas; she's played Counter-Strike, she has
been an analyst, and now, as of last year, she's coaching our Valorant
team. Just her story of going from Plano to being a female Counter-Strike
pro player, and it’s like what was that experience like? To now you're
coaching one of the top Valorant teams in the country — like, that is
incredible, and you don't see that often. So how can we elevate her story
and how can we show that?
“Again, going back to gaming is for everyone. You don't just have to be a
nerdy white dude or nerdy Asian dude, or whatever to play these games
and to appreciate them. So I think that's where we're gonna start to kind
of separate ourselves in terms of really focusing on the human experience.
And yeah, it sounds difficult, but it's actually so simple. It's like what we
all know at our core. So I think that's gonna be big on how we get to fans.”

On helping new fans consume esports when they do
discover games and give it a shot
“We've talked about how do we do second-screen
broadcast? And we talked about this in baseball too, but
esports is, I mean — if I thought that watching a baseball
broadcast, I had to understand baseball, watching
esports you have no idea what anyone's saying. You
don't know what you're looking at. It's just a lot of cool
[visuals], specifically with League of Legends, and I'm
like, they're saying weird words, I have no idea what any
of this means.

“So I do feel like we do a great job and the different
game developers do a great job that hosts the various
leagues year-round. They do a great job of working
with us in terms of how we wanna activate on-site or
what content we can provide for broadcast. But
again, a lot of it is still very much steered to the
hardcore fan. But I think to your point about are we
looking to build fandom of a game versus a team — I
kind of think they go hand in hand, but first and
foremost, you probably need to be a fan of the video
game. You probably need to play that thing.”

On creating fans of EG and the games vs. developing new gamers
that play the titles
“I think it probably goes more like fan of the game and then fan of a
team, because I think that in the middle of that there's watching the
game now. What's interesting is you have a lot of people who watch
games, maybe not on the esports level, but are going on YouTube
and trying to learn how to play better and perform better. So my
question is almost like, should we be focusing on how we tap into
the people that are going to YouTube to learn how to be better at
Valorant and like maybe pro tips, or treating the space and the
content we're creating there more as like a PewDiePie pie or
TimTheTatman, like these people who are playing games and
giving tips or reacting and driving that personality side.

“It’s just curious to me because some of the people with the biggest
following on those platforms are people that are gamers. They're just
not professional gamers. So it's like, what's this huge window that
we've missed? But going back to your point about you play football or
your dad loved football, so you play football and then you're a football
fan or whatever — I wanna point out I was at an event this past
weekend called DreamHack Dallas. It's generally a BYOC event, which
means ‘bring-your-own-computer event’, where all the gamers sign up
for tournaments, they do tabletop games, everything from Magic The
Gathering to an actual Counter-Strike tournament and all sorts of
things are going on at this event. Plus you have hundreds of people
coming to just set up their PC, watch a lot of Lord of the Rings and be
there 24/7 and just game with like their buddy that maybe they met
on Discord and haven't ever met up with in person or whatever.

“So it was this really cool, unique experience. And what I wanted
to tell you of that is it was my first epiphany of how that
relationship, the kind of passing of the baton, of like a dad who
takes his son to baseball. This what I saw [and] was my epiphany
— I was walking in the first day and I'm walking up to the venue
and there's an older man walking towards me with a big wagon
and he probably had like three or four little boys with him, all
ages six to 14 or whatever. And in this wagon was all of their
custom PCs, their LED screens, their keyboards, their mice, their
mouse pads — it was cute, and it was literally like watching a kid's
tee-ball game or something. And here you have dad wagoning in
all their PCs, he's taking them into the venue, he's setting up their
computers. You have parents who set up their popout chairs to
watch their kids play.

“I mean, it is the same. It is just, you know, not the same.
So I had this wonderful epiphany because I ended up
talking to a dad and his sons. The dad had been playing
Counter-Strike f since the early 2000s. and now his sons
have gone from playing Fortnite to now being the older
ones like, oh [Fortnite is] for babies, I play Counter-
Strike. So you do have that same sort of like theme of the
passing of the baton, and that was really cool to see.
“So I do think it's there. I think it's just a little bit
[harder] to find I would say than like baseball, but I think
there'll be more of it.”

On Evil Geniuses’ social media strategy
“We have a lot of work to do in terms of — just
right now what we've seen is we inherited, you
know, some social accounts that were very focused
on Dota, because that was the game we've played
for the longest, since we've been around for so
long. So right now we're in this weird sort of
transitional phase of trying to get other fans of our
other titles to our platforms in general.

“But Evil Geniuses is active on Discord, on Twitch,
on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, all the
basics. We're about to launch a TikTok in July.
We're present on all those accounts, but we are very
much working on our strategy to build beyond the
Dota fandom that has lived here so long. We wanna
keep them, we obviously want to still cater content
to them and have that community space for them,
but we're also just trying to figure out how do we
get more League of Legends fans on our Instagram
account?...

“(Creating title-specific accounts) is something we're
talking about. We do think that we will segment at some
point. We (did just open) our first boutique account,
which was Counter-Strike-focused because we had a huge
announcement last week where we literally bought two
more North American Counter-Strike teams to build the
first ever fluid roster format for a Counter-Strike team.
So we'll have 15 players and because of that and all the
practicing and everything they'll be doing from Seattle,
we launched our first EG CS:GO Twitter account, and it's
doing really well. So it's kind of our case study for how we
figure out how we're gonna do the rest of this.”

On the role for brands in fan community-driven social networks
“I think that you have to do it right, especially on Discord and Reddit, because
those are communities that are meant for the community, they are not meant
for the brand, right? But the way that we treat our Discord is it's staff-facing,
so people can join our Discord and know who's part of the EG staff.
“We post content updates, we give custom content and things that are
exclusive to our Discord family all the time. But really it's kind of what you
said — it's creating the forum and making sure it's a safe place for people to
talk about our titles and our players and, and making sure that we're
moderating so no one's bullying each other. It's not about making it a place
for us and the EG brand — we want people to be honest, but we do wanna
make sure that if our name's on it that people are comfortable and welcome
and can have fun.

“So I would say [with] both those platforms [the
goal] is really to make sure that we are creating that
environment where our fans can discuss, and feel
like they can safely discuss, without being trolled or
get hate comments or profanity, or whatever else
some horrible internet people do. They're definitely
interesting platforms. I love Discord for other
reasons, but yeah it's just a completely different
strategy for sure, and I think that the more brand-y
you feel, the less success you're probably gonna
have on both of those.”

About media coverage currently around esports
“There are definitely some companies that are constantly talking
about esports. I wouldn't say that any of them are super
mainstream by any means. There are also some really fun talent
and people that come to these events and interview fans or do vlog-
style content or want an EG jersey or whatever. So it's very much
the same, but it's just not at the level, I think, of traditional sports,
which, if there are any influencers out there that are into esports,
you should probably start tapping into gaming because there's a
huge opportunity that has not been seized yet [along] with so many
things I think in its industry, which has been the most eye-opening
for me, for sure. Everything is so new. So I think there's a lot of
growth for anyone. They have it, it's just not there…

“We always talk about when does the ‘E’ drop from
esports? Like when does it just become sports?
Because our players are athletes. They have
regimens, they do PT on their wrists and their
forearms. They have meals that they're supposed
to abide by. It’s a thing, so I think we'll get there.”

Kayci’s favorite memory from her time as a Baylor
volleyball player
“We got to do a trip to Hawaii and we went
snorkeling. It was my second time [going] to
Hawaii, but going with some of my best friends
was incredible and it was beautiful and we made a
video that was really dumb. That's the first thing
that came to my mind, and I love those girls.”

About Kayci the volleyball player
“So I was a defensive specialist/libero, so I was the
one sometimes in another jersey place. I played all
four years in college. I was captain senior year. I
played all my life since fourth grade. I was a
gymnast before that, [but] was too tall for
gymnastics and then too short to be a hitter in
volleyball, so I switched to defense and I'm so glad
I did. I think it's the underrated position for sure.”

The most memorable game Kayci experienced [excluding volleyball]
while a student at Baylor
“I mean, I was there during RG3 (Robert Griffin III) era, as well as
when our women's basketball team won two national championships
when I was there. So I guess it was my freshman [and] sophomore
years was when football was getting really good. And I was at the
Alamo Bowl, I think during, my sophomore year, and we won and we
actually beat the University of Washington, which is ironic because
they're right down the road [from me now]. But yeah, that was just
epic because it was like the first bowl win, I think, in school history,
or at least in like a zillion years. And it was also the bowl game that I
met, the person who ended up getting me my internship at Major
League Baseball. So it was just like a full-circle moment for sure.”

Kayci’s favorite video game growing and her favorite video game to
play now
“My favorite video game growing up was Donkey Kong on my Game
Boy Color. And then I would say as of late in the last couple years,
it's been anything Nintendo Switch. That is literally how I got
through COVID and it was through Animal Crossing and Mario
Odyssey and Breath of the Wild and all the Switch games.
“But then more recently, a friend of mine at work had an extra PC
that he had built and he just built a new one, so he is letting me
borrow his PC. And so I've been getting into League of Legends quite
a bit. I'm terrible, like so trash, but I'm for sure addicted and I see
why people love it.”

The most memorable piece of content the LCC team created during her time
overseeing the program at MLB
“So was it 2017 or 2018? I'm so bad with years, but it was the Dodgers-Astros
game, game five or game six, I don't even remember. But it was when Max
Muncy hit the 18-inning walk-off home run..
“It was that moment because, one, it was the first time our team — and
shoutout Matt Faraci — got to do a postgame run out like how the broadcast
cameras kind of do. So he was able to capture that [and] it was so beautiful.
Great camera work. Just, like, chef's kiss on the actual video. But it also stood
out not just because it was the first time we did it, but we got so much praise
from leadership, from social and people online, wanting to know who did it.
But then also it is the most memorable because I was in the tunnel under the
stadium, waiting for that walk-off to happen for almost four hours. I didn't
even get to see it happen.

“For people who don't know, end of game, if you are a
broadcaster or a social media gal like myself who needs
to get like a selfie video from a player or whatever you're
gonna interview, you gotta go around like the eighth
inning to the bottom of the tunnel where they line up all
the media and then you're there; you’re there until the
game ends. You can't leave because then you miss your
spot. So I literally sat under Dodgers Stadium for, I think
8, 9, 10, 11 innings; like more than a full game of
baseball, literally. And I didn’t even get to watch that
play happen, but I got to re-watch it over and over
because of Matt Faraci’s video.”

The most memorable content or activation from EG during Kayci’s
tenure there so far
“So I know I keep bringing up touch grass, but it was my first esports
event at all and it was also something I was just super proud of
because I felt like I was able to take something that I had learned
from my colleagues who are super ingrained into the culture and the
lingo and then I was able to kind of put a marketing twist on it and
bring it to life. So I would have to say just our entire activation at
LCS Finals, getting our team over to touch grass and be involved with
the activation was awesome. And then we also ended up winning LCS
Finals that weekend, so I think it was the grass effect, it was a big
deal and people have been talking about it since. So I'm just really
proud of it. It was like my first big project and we crushed it.”

What’s on Kayci’s sports bucket list to attend
“I want to go to an Olympics. I also wanna go to a World Cup, but I
really wanna go to an Olympics, specifically summer Olympics, because
I would love to go watch track and field, as well as gymnastics. I was a
pole vaulter and so was my dad all through high school and [I] could
have done it in college, but I hated track practice. So I've always wanted
to go to the summer Olympics and be part of seeing all of that in person.
“I think my dad can literally name every Olympics by year and where it
was hosted, like since the beginning of time, literally. So it's something
we've always bonded over and I'd love to see them pole vault well; you
know, they're jumping like 17 feet in the air. It's crazy. So I gotta go get
to one of those.“

What is the brand of Evil Geniuses?
“So our tagline is you don't think we've just been playing games,
do you? And I think that that just ties back to, one, our legacy of
excellence, but also our future of dominance. I mean, we are the
OG esports team and we're here to stay and we have some
incredibly smart people who are wanting to, and are building up
this brand to be the best in North America. So I'd say if you're
looking for a North American team to root for, you should be
rooting for Evil Geniuses 100%. Not just because we're super
kick-ass and awesome, but we also are super in tune with our
values and our mission and making the space a safer place for
everyone, whoever you are, whatever you look like.”

The best meal to get in New York and where to get it and
what she’s found good in Seattle so far since moving there
“So the only place I've missed since leaving New York is this
Italian spot in the West Village and they also have one in
Little Italy — it's called Aunt Jake’s. There's nothing like it.
The man is right there, he's making the handmade pasta in
front of you, the wine list is great, they make incredible
custom cocktails. You pick your poison, you pick your flavors,
your fruits, it's just — I cannot even tell you; my mouth is
watering right now about it…So I get cavatelli pasta noodles
because you basically get to pick everything. You make your
own pasta and you make your own drink. So cavatelli with —
they have this chicken bolognese, but it's not a normal
bolognese, it's like a white garlicy sauce with lots of cheese.
I'm not a red sauce person, but they do have a really good
vodka sauce, too and some awesome gnochi if you're into that
and the raviioli, like you just can't go wrong…

“So Seattle has incredible
sushi and also incredible dim
sum. I have a place that I am
seriously addicted to called
Din Tai Fung. And it's
actually a friend from New
York who got me onto it.
She's originally from here and
she was like, I'm so jealous
you're moving back because
you're gonna be able to get
Din Tai Fung. And she wasn't
kidding, this place is it's
incredible…”

The #1 Evil Geniuses player we should all go follow on
social media and why
“So you need to go follow Jojopyun. He is our mid-laner in
League of Legends. He's 17, he dropped out of high school
to come play professionally. And he is the Joel Embiid of
esports like, if you follow Joel Embiid on Twitter, you
know he does a lot of smack talk. He's very confident [and]
will own up when he fucks up. He is just so fun to watch
play, he has the best smile and he's always talking trash
and people just eat up. So I would say if you're looking for
an entry point, go follow him. He's just the best.”

The gaming title that EG competes in that will last the longest as a popular
game
“That's a great question. I feel like I don't know enough about the literal
longevity of the games to answer this, but I have really high hopes for
Valorant right now. That's the same team that we have our incredible female
coach Christine Potter. She is just such a badass. But Valorant is a very young
title. Its developer is Riot Games, who is also the developer for League of
Legends. So I just think that now that it's on the scene and Riot's gonna start
really investing in it, you're gonna see the longevity. You're gonna be able to
see the future of Valorant and how long it's gonna be around.
“Plus, from what I know, Riot’s goals are incredibly in line with our goals, too,
with what we see for the future of Valorant and making it more diverse and
getting more female gamers involved. So I'm just really excited about it. So I
hope I'm right.”

Kayci’s Social Media All-Star to Follow
“Oh, man.,I follow so many people on social media.
It's honestly, like, I need to lay off. My favorite
baseball follow is Jackson Olson (@j_olson2 on IG,
@JDOlson2 on Twitter, @jacksonolson on TikTok)
He was one of our original creator class people, and
it's just been so fun to see him grow. He's also how
I'm getting all my baseball news right now somehow.
My algorithm has just put Jackson Olson in front of
me. So if you need a baseball follow, I'd go for him…

“This is so hard. I already said Jojo, go follow Jojo for Evil
Geniuses. I know, I have a good one. Actually, if you are
looking into getting into gaming and gaming culture on a
very, just, fun level, I'd say, go follow Jake Lucky
(@JakeSucky) on Twitter. He's kind of going back to what we
were talking about with people who are reporting the news in
esports and talking about changes, or like getting updates to
fans. He does a phenomenal job with that, and he's got a
super fun personality. He's probably my favorite most recent
follow if I had to pick one.”
Kayci also shouts a lot of MLB creators and former colleagues
on the podcast!

Where to find Evil Geniuses on digital/social
Find Evil Geniuses @EvilGeniuses across
platforms – Twitter (where they also have
@EvilGeniusesCS for Counter-Strike on Twitter)
and are on Facebook, Instagram YouTube, Twitch,
Discord
Kayci is @Kayci on Twitter and @KayciEvans on
Instagram

Thanks again to Kayci for being so generous
with her time to share her knowledge,
experience, and expertise with me!
For more content and episodes, subscribe to
the podcast, follow me on LinkedIn and on
Twitter @njh287, and visit
www.dsmsports.net.
@njh287; www.dsmsports.net

Episode 223 Snippets: Kayci Evans of the Evil Geniuses

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Episode 223 Snippets: Kayci Evans of the Evil Geniuses

Similar to Episode 223 Snippets: Kayci Evans of the Evil Geniuses (20)

More from Neil Horowitz

More from Neil Horowitz (18)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Episode 223 Snippets: Kayci Evans of the Evil Geniuses