Area company buys Houston esports team

Caroline Beasley — the CEO of a $257 million publicly traded broadcasting company and a nationally known 35-year radio industry executive — isn’t exactly the prime demographic target for esports. For the uninitiated, esports is people playing video games on TV, an already big and rapidly growing business.

But the company she runs, Naples-based Beasley Media Group, is going all-out into esports. The latest, in an 18-month run of esports investments, was announced Nov. 14, when the firm acquired the Houston Outlaws, an esports team in the Overwatch League. The Overwatch League is an international esports league made up of 20 city-based teams across Asia, Europe and North America. The teams, in a 280-match regular season that starts in February, play against one another, which culminates in fall playoffs. Players have guaranteed salaries, and the league has a prize pool of some $5 million.

“Gen Z and Gen Y are really into this,” Caroline Beasley tells Coffee Talk. “They watch esports the way our generations used to watch basketball or traditional sports.”