Scion Esports is a Lake Charles, Louisiana based home-grown esports organization funded by Lake Charles Toyota that has been producing gaming events in Louisiana for the past decade. Here’s a little bit about who we are and what we do, in the form of a couple easy questions we teed up for ourselves. Feel free to contact us with any questions you have about Scion Esports by clicking over to our Contact page and getting a conversation started.
You're a car dealership, why video games?
The consumers that grew up in the information age represent a very unique and difficult to reach market. They (if you're on this website there's a good chance the appropriate pronoun here is "you" as opposed to "they") are conditioned to ignore prices advertised on TV or radio commercials or billboards, or catchy slogans touting the best service after the sale. They have to be reached differently. We at Lake Charles Toyota believe that the best way to reach a specific market of consumers is to connect with them on their terms. Scion Esports is an example of that philosophy... Giving a generation of gamers what they want: games.
We have been producing gaming events in this area since 2011. From shooters, to strategy, to fighting, to MOBAs, we've dabbled in everything. We always do our best to put everything we have into each event we produce. We want people to feel like they're at a world class event, we want to bring a MLG or WCS or LCS atmosphere right here to our community. We're not perfect, but we are sincere in that desire. Games are what we love, and we feel that with Scion Esports we've found a great way to connect with our community, and our potential customers. And we try to do it all for free (unless we're trying to help raise money for a charity.)
How do you pay for all this?
At every Scion Esports event we make one sales pitch. One. We call it the "we also sell cars" speech. Our only request is that when you have any automotive need, whether it be sales or service, you remember us and give us a chance to do business with you! That way we can make enough money to keep producing awesome gaming events.
So how much money do ya’ll make doing this?
We try really hard not to laugh every time we get this question. So far, our net profit for Scion Esports over the last decade is about -$400,000. Or <$400,000> if you prefer, if you’re an accounting major. Point being; this is an investment for us, not a goose that lays golden eggs. It’s a way for us to return some of the profits we make selling cars back to our community, in the form of experiences folks aren’t likely to get anywhere else. If we ever do take money from players, 100% is distributed back to players in the form of a player-funded prize pool for that event.
Why are you still called Scion Esports, didn't Toyota axe the Scion brand?
Yes they did, and we agree with the decision wholeheartedly. The cars are good products, Toyota's strange way of marketing and selling them turned out to be more of an obstacle to customers than it was a benefit. Now we have the same awesome products to sell, but we won't have to jump through a bunch of Scion "Pure Process" hoops to sell them. That being said... we still kind of like the name, so we decided to keep it! We've taken the opportunity to officially shorten it from Lake Charles Scion Esports to just Scion Esports so it rolls off the tongue better!
Will you sponsor my team?
One of the most common questions we get asked by players is to sponsor their team in whatever game they play. We do have a small group of professional players and teams that we field in a few games. Unfortunately we don’t have the resources for a large academy structure of up-and-coming players who want to test their mettle at the next level. While it’s not totally out of the question, our main bread-and-butter is producing live events for the gamers of Southwest Louisiana. If you feel like your team really has something to offer, feel free to send us an email at esports@lakecharlestoyota.com and let us know what you've got in mind. You can also check out our blog posts about recruiting players, teams, and content producers at scionesports.com/blog for more information about a sponsorship.
OMG when are you going to do a Fortnite tournament?!?
As soon as Epic introduces a public custom matchmaking feature or provides us a custom lobby key like we requested eons ago, we’ll start producing Fortnite events. We just can’t get excited about the pub-stomp tournament style. It’s not elegant enough. Don’t stop practicing your flossing though. We’ll be introducing Fortnite as soon as the infrastructure is there. In the meantime, if you’re interested in becoming a sponsored player or streamer on Fortnite, check out our blog for info about sponsorship opportunities.
When are you going to do CS:GO? (CoD/R6:Siege/Battlefield/WoW/LoL,/Hearthstone,/etc.)
We’ve always been less likely to feature games that focus on photo-realistic intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language leading to an ESRB rating of M because by their nature they are limited to a subset of the gaming audience. Also, games that require repeated and expensive purchases are not likely to be featured. Games like World of Warcraft that require a monthly subscription from players or Hearthstone that include large portions of the game that are quickly made obsolete if you don’t purchase the latest expansion pack, aren’t really very compatible with our mission either. With the advent of the staggeringly popular Call of Duty: Warzone battle royale, we have tacked a bit towards the CoD franchise in recent history. Just because we haven’t done something in the past doesn’t mean we won’t do it in the future. In the meantime, if you play any of those games and you are interested in content creation, check out our blog post about recruiting here.
Location
Lake Charles Toyota
3905 Gerstner Memorial Dr.
Lake Charles, LA 70605
Watch
Watch live on Twitch @scionesports