“For New People, We’re Making the Esports Curve Way Easier” : Weekly.gg Co-Founder Franco Rivas On Newsletter

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“For New People, We’re Making the Esports Curve Way Easier” : Weekly.gg Co-Founder Franco Rivas On Newsletter

Weekly.gg has made its mark in the esports industry for veterans and newcomers alike with its recent launch of a tailored email newsletter: a to the point newsletter for esports professionals. The email goes out to subscribers every Friday, containing curated news told in a unique way.


The people behind Weekly.gg, Alan Ruchtein, Gonzalo Sanchez Sarmiento and Franco Rivas, aim to inform their audience about everything they need to know about esports in a few minutes. Co-Founder Franco Rivas sat down with ESTNN for an interview about what makes Weekly.gg unique and how it fits in with the esports industry as a whole.

How are these new bites and articles chosen in the first place? Is there an algorithm or method that you use?

[The] reality is that we sit down and read every single article of the week. We organize them in terms of what are the most interesting topics to read and take all the distractions away. From there, we choose which site has the most interesting take on the news and highlight and curate it. After that, we give our input.

We cover community news, investments and sponsors, good reads, esports highlights, upcoming events and some “coffee thoughts.” We have a foundation and structure for the newsletter, but we also change things up by incorporating creative ways of presenting the info and new sections. The idea is to create an email that people can read in 5-8 minutes.

You mentioned going through a lot of news articles per week in order to find the ones that stand out. Tell us more about the audience you are curating. Are they more for investors, organizations, fans, or players?

At the moment, we’re working with business professionals. We have readers from all over the industry, working for companies, teams and sponsors related to esports. Also, there’s a good amount of non-endemic sponsors and VC’s engaging with the newsletter. Both esports veterans and newcomers to the scene are involved with Weekly. For the veterans, we’re trying to make it unique and fun enough to read. For the new people, we’re making the esports learning curve way easier.

On that note, what inspired Weekly.gg in the first place, and what do your own experiences bring to the newsletter?

I currently work with Gonzalo [Sanchez Samiento] and Alan [Ruchtein]. The three of us are from Argentina and we’ve known each other since we were kids. Neither of them have really worked in esports before, but they had been successful for years in sales and growth for tech companies. Once I told them about esports and the possibilities out there, we decided to get together and replicate some business models that we created before from different verticals into esports.

I found about esports five years ago when I went to Salina, Kansas to study and play football (soccer). The first contact I had with esports was when I saw a friend of mine watching a Worlds League of Legends game, Fnatic vs Invictus Gaming I believe, and it blew my mind. After graduating from university, I wanted to get involved in it, so I messaged Fnatic and applied to work as a designer for them. They hired me, worked in London for a year, fell in love with the industry even more and then moved to Barcelona to create Weekly.gg with my friends.

What are some of the challenges you are facing, and how are you overcoming them as a team of three people?

We definitely face challenges, many of them. Primarily, we don’t know a lot of people in esports, but after putting our name out there in the last couple months, so many people reached out to us expressing their interest in the newsletter. The majority of them are people that are well known in the industry, so we’re very happy to get their input.

We constantly ask for feedback, and we’re not afraid of listening and trying things out. Through many conversations with people, we’ve been building a very fast-growing subscriber base. For people who subscribed, we ask them to introduce themselves to see what they do and where they come from.

People are really interested to see something that is completely unfiltered. We have the freedom to write it the way we want to write it, we approach content in a conversational, human and less formal way. It’s not just a structure of text; we try to save people’s time while making it entertaining. Imagine having a drink with a friend at a bar and talking about all things esports, that’s Weekly.

Our goal to improve communication in a realistic way for both veterans in and newcomers to the scene. We want them to learn from each other and push to improve esports together.

What is something we haven’t covered that you would like to share with our audience?

For the people reading this article, you guys can get in touch with us at any time. We are genuinely interested in people’s thoughts and stories. We will start working on original articles on our webpage soon. Stay tuned. We want to hear from you. We (often) don't bite.

You can subscribe over here on Weekly.gg.

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Amy Chen
Amy is an esports journalist and enthusiast who specializes in in-depth interviews and breaking news. A recent University of Toronto and Humber College graduate, she is passionate about building up the Canadian esports industry.