While adolescent students traditionally choose from extracurricular activities such as debate club, music or student government, Play Versus Inc. is giving them another option: esports.

The Sawtelle-based company, which does business as PlayVS, has been collaborating with high schools since 2018 to establish competitive esports teams and leagues. About 2,500 educational institutions in the nation currently operate PlayVS programs, with more than 81,000 youth participants playing titles from PlayVS publishing partners including Nintendo Co., Santa Monica-based Activision Blizzard Inc., Epic Games Inc., Electronic Arts Inc. and Sawtelle-based Riot Games Inc.

The company’s reputation was affected detrimentally last year after reports from The Washington Post and Esports Insider claimed that PlayVS was wielding its alleged exclusivity deals with partners such as Activision and Nintendo to block competitors and was “strong-arming” schools in an effort to become the sole provider of scholastic esports leagues. Founder and former Chief Executive Delane Parnell stepped down from PlayVS in May of last year and Jon Chapman assumed the role in June. Chapman, the co-founder of digital learning company Everfi Inc., said those moments were “missteps” for PlayVS and that recent changes have helped the company move past its blunders. 

The company has switched to new revenue model that does not include license or participation fees – it has discontinued a previous $80 per-student per-game title charge – and now subsidizes its costs through sponsorships from private companies, foundations and government entities. Chapman said he has also extended some olive branches to resolve issues that occurred during Parnell’s leadership. Those olive branches include a new partnership with one of its previous competitors, nonprofit Network of Academic and Scholastic Esports Federations, with which PlayVS co-ran the California Interscholastic Federation Esports Initiative in the fall. 

Chapman spoke with the Business Journal about the role youth players can hold in the growing esports industry and what esports leagues offer to children and teenagers.

Tell me a bit about PlayVS’ mission, what it does for students and schools and what place you think it has in the esports industry. 

I think we have a really important space in the esports industry. We’re effectively trying to construct and scale an entire amateur ecosystem to all participants on a pre-professional level and, in doing so, we’re hoping to create as many competitive gaming opportunities as possible. My favorite statistic, for sure, is that 45% of the students who sign up for and participate on one of our esports teams have never done anything else extracurricular at all, so we are literally pulling them off their couch into something that’s a sanctioned activity after school where they can have a purpose and they can learn all the skills you learn in traditional sports: teamwork, communication, resiliency and goal setting.

You previously served as the president and co-founder of Everfi. Was there anything you learned there that will be driving your work as the head of PlayVS?

Number one is implementing the new revenue model; number two is that I do want to make sure that we create the best experience for our schools and teachers as possible.

 (The teachers) are doing this because they are passionate about it, they’re doing it because they’ve created a venue and a purpose for students to be on an esports team. But they’re often not getting paid any extra stipends, so we want to continue to value and embrace those educators within our network.

Following the departure of Delane Parnell, is PlayVS making any changes to how it operates with schools or how it engages with its partners? 

We’re trying to obviously reduce costs, or make the platform free, so that certainly dramatically changes how we interface with our schools … participation is the biggest barrier to esports and competitive gaming becoming legitimate, and we need to exponentially grow our participation, (which we’ll do by) reducing cost barriers, giving more support to coaches and students and creating more competition opportunities even outside of their sanctioned school league.

PlayVS had some issues last year with its partnerships. Have there been any changes to how the company is handling its partnerships and exclusivity deals?

Listen, I don’t shy away from those challenges. Those were challenges. There were some, probably everyone would agree upon, missteps there. But we have entirely put that behind us. We’re trying to be a unifying organization, not one that creates kind of exclusive pockets. We’re going to continue to work with our publisher partners and … I don’t think we need to have exclusive deals in order to drive participation, I think you just compete on the quality of your experience, with all of your technology and who you are as an organization, and I think we can win in those areas.

Tell me about a mistake you made in your career and what you learned from it. 

As someone who prides myself on having a real entrepreneurial spirit and who sets very high expectations for myself in terms of performance, there are times earlier in my career where I probably overestimated my ability to be successful in certain areas. What I learned is that sometimes you have to focus on what’s working versus the entire art of the possible … so I’m going to try to heed that here. If we go one direction and – even though by nature I’m optimistic and feel like I can do it – the results tell you it’s not working, you’ve got to refocus your efforts on what’s working.

Do you think PlayVS is going to explore establishing programs with colleges in the future? 

I wouldn’t say never. Right now, we see a really massive opportunity in the high school, pre-college space … and we just think that that’s a massive, totally addressable market. We’re going to stick to that level of focus. I would never rule it out, but right now I just think our opportunity in the pre-college space is so enormous and we want to stay focused there.

What can esports provide for children with physical limitations or disabilities, or those who may not want or be able to play a physical sport?

We have a great partnership with the Special Olympics’ Unified Champion Schools program where we have kids who have physical or intellectual disabilities competing next to and with kids who don’t. That, to me, is really, really special and something we value tremendously. The fact that in esports you don’t have to have the biggest and best physical attributes to succeed, and you can still get the value out of participating in sports, is such an incredible benefit and one that we’re going to continue to leverage and prop up.

Do you have any specific anticipations for how the esports industry will grow in the future, and any places you see younger players factoring into that?

The (professional esports) space is facing a lot of challenges, and I’m well aware of that. But I think that presents an incredible opportunity for us to expand the amateur participation space, and thereby make the professional space eventually healthier … I think by us making that amateur ecosystem healthier, we have a tremendous opportunity.

Going into the new year, is there anything you’re most excited about?

I’d say expanding into new avenues of competition and creating more events … and then just building what I think is going to be a really great, vibrant ecosystem of organizations that want to support this and see the value of what esports has emerged as, and how it’s exciting and inclusive and it gets kids off the couch doing something purposeful after school. I think organizations are going to get really excited about that, so hopefully we’ll have a lot more partnerships to announce in 2024 and beyond.