Esports and how to get interviewed in the media

I was interviewed by Ticker Sports about esports today, including my involvement as a League of Legends player for UNSW recently. It was a fun interview, and I got to talk a little about the past and future of esports, something I’m passionate about and enjoy a lot. You can watch the interview by clicking here and going to 21 minutes 12 seconds.

As a secondary reason for writing this post, I want to talk about how I ended up speaking about this. I don’t think I’m the most qualified or even most charismatic person to talk about this in Australia, and yet I was interviewed instead of a player or coach for an OPL team, or an esports journalist/analyst.

I use a website called Sourcebottle (I’m not sponsored, I swear), which puts both interviewers and interviewees in touch with each other. Anyone from journalists to blog writers can put in a request for someone to speak about a particular topic, and people like myself will get an alert based on some keywords they’ve entered.

I’ve been interviewed for several news articles and magazines in this way, and even ended up having a book chapter written about some of my work. It’s a great tool, and I’d highly recommend filling in a profile with some keywords if there are some issues you are knowledgeable/passionate about so you can get opportunities to talk about it with the media. There is a paid version of Sourcebottle which gives you some extra perks, but in my opinion it’s probably not worth it. The free version gives you what I described above.

Finally, the media alert I got wasn’t even directly esports related. They were looking to speak with someone involved in a sport that had not been severely affected by the Covid-19 lockdowns, and I figured esports might fit the bill. Turns out it did.