7AM have had a turbulent journey since their entrance into the scene in 2022, showing they mean business taking down Limitless and snatching a map off of EG White at Fragadelphia 17. Unfortunately, it seemed to be in vein after a humiliating 16-0 on map three, followed by a close 2-0 affair with BLVKHVND, which sent them packing.
Despite an uninspiring start to the campaign, 7AM continue to show admirable resolve and resilience with impressive HLTV results and some dominant form at EPIC39. With only The Neighbours, who they took down in the upper bracket final, standing in their way in the path to glory, they may fancy their chances.
UKCSGO’s Josh “Joshampton” Arnup caught up with 7AM founder, John “WundA” Smith-Howell, who provided a glimpse into the brutal and cutthroat business side of esports, whilst keeping hopes high looking ahead to the future.
EPIC39, new venue, your own banners out there. How are you and the team feeling off the bat?
Yeah, really good. We wanted to represent 7AM here, we wanted to come and support the UK LAN. We’re fairly new to UK CS as an org. Obviously I’m not new to UK CS, but as an org we are and that was all done on purpose. We wanted to wait, I wanted to make sure we’re in a good position, I wanted to pick up a team that was decent and also make sure that we as a business were in a sustainable position to be able to support those teams, do the good things, do the content, take them away, do the events and be able to sustain that for an extended period of time.
So, it took a few years of building and we stayed in the Benelux for a number of years to do that. We want to, of course, make ourself a bit of a home brand name in the Benelux first before trying to spread itself out so wide and thin realistically too. So for me it was important to come and support EPIC.LAN and do it right.
Yesterday we did a full day of content recording too. We had two videographers here yesterday we recorded a number of pieces of content. We’ve got our banners here all the PCs and chairs have been supplied by the Org for the players and, for me, they turn up and play. That’s their job. Everything else is mine.
What were your expectations coming into the tournament and now that you are where you are, in the playoffs?
Yeah, for me, none. You know, it’s all about building, it’s all about experience, things take time. Husky is still fairly new to the team. He’s only been with us now for a couple of months and things take time to settle in. So, for me there was no real expectations, apart from maybe not getting grouped, obviously (laughs).
The guys have played really well, it’s been strong. They’re still making some simple mistakes which was always going to happen. They had a good day yesterday and they’ve got some tough games today, but they’re here and they’re ready to go.
Do you think you will get to the final, and if so, who do you think you’ll meet there?
I think we can definitely get to the final, it’s on the cards, who we will face, I’m not sure. I know a few of the teams and a few of the players but I’d be just taking wild guesses.
Moving on a bit from EPIC.LAN, you’re a pioneer to not just CS and UK, but even esports as a whole. What’s the spark for you?
I don’t know, I just love this industry. I’m so passionate about this industry. I’ve spent 24 years in this industry and came in at 13 years old, just a bit of a lost kid. I just found my place, I found my home. You know, my nickname back in the day was mr. keen (laughs), I was the first here and the last off and nothing was stopping me doing what I needed to do. I think I just carry that on through business and through different projects that I’ve been involved in. I just want to make esports bigger and better for everybody, because I just think it’s the best industry in the world.
I’ve met some amazing people from amazing countries and I’ve done a lot of traveling and I just don’t think there’s any industry like it.
You’ve made quite a commitment in starting the team 7AM , how has that journey been?
So during 7AM’s start, what it was about was doing it right. So, I had kind of taken a little bit of a break from esports and was concentrating on my professional career outside. Then I got messaged by a friend who said “Hey, I’ve got this new CS:GO team, I’d like you to just take a look at these guys, tell me your thoughts. If you’ve got some time to spend to do a little bit of coaching.” And I was like, yeah, you know what? Fine. Let’s get back in that big black hole of gaming, that you can’t get out of (laughs).
The idea caught on, the team weren’t great to be fair, but I was really honest and open with the guys, I said that they’ve got a lot of work, they’re very young, they’re very fresh, their mindsets are very different, there are too many different characters here, this probably isn’t going to work for you, but that’s my opinion. I’ll stick around a bit and support them and then… you fall into that abyss, and I got involved with the org, got involved with the business side of things, the guy then offered me shares in his business to continue to support and help run the org. I was like, “yeah, fine, let’s do it.”
Long story short, it turns out that the guy was just a liar. The false promises that he was making to teams, he was, and I literally shit you not, he was telling teams that we had an Adidas sponsor lined up. Turned out his cousin worked in an Adidas shop. It’s not quite a sponsorship, but he could get a 10% discount from his staff discount (laughs). But these are the stuff that he was promising people and I tried my very hardest to have some very real and open conversations with him face to face and said, “Listen, this is not how it works. This is not what you need to do.”
At the time they had a really good League of Legends team, really strong, one of their players, the ADC was a guy called FakeAnanas, an amazing player, amazing mental, still one of my absolute closest friends now, the guy’s doing amazing, one of the best Valorant players in the world right now ranked top 10 in the world, the guy’s insane. So, I’m seeing these guys and I was like, these guys don’t deserve this.
So after some conversations with Yoni, I got very close to Yoni and Vinnie, Izzy, who also is one of the founder members and directors of 7AM, she was their social media manager. As a group, we just decided this wasn’t right so we said, let’s go do something together and I said, I’m happy to do that, but we’re doing it my way.
Yoni is my business partner with the same equity in 7AM, but it’s very clear the direction of the business and where it’s led from. With my experience and all the stuff I’ve seen and been a part of in my own career, I’ve been shat on more times than most people have had hot dinners and not been paid and not given events and not being paid back and you know, all the other stuff that everybody else goes through, all the false promises, it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming.
I was just determined from the start to build slowly. It’s about the players, support them, give them experiences, be a community, be a family, and be here, be visible. There isn’t a player in this org that doesn’t talk to me, that isn’t in my DMs, that can’t come to me, that can’t come and speak to any of the guys. I don’t sit in this ivory tower looking down and it gets difficult to be involved all the time, it really does, but irrespective, I’m here for every single one of them, every single day.
I’m seeing these guys and I was like, these guys don’t deserve this.
Would you agree that the first two years of business are the hardest, even in esports?
Everybody does what they think is right and some make it, some don’t- most don’t.
It is. It’s really tough. esports is hard. You’re convincing somebody to give you some money for something back. We’ve got no physical product. You can’t just go and take it off the shelf, you can’t put on Amazon, Shopify and do some social media and you’d be good.
You’ve got to work and grind and you’ve got to show value, that’s what it comes down to. These companies and sponsorships, they want value. Some of them understand esports, some of them don’t, but if you can show that value and you can then tell them that actually spending ten grand on Facebook ads is all shit. Give me five and let me show you what I can do with it, that’s value. It’s return on their investment
The industry that we’re in is predominantly very young, these org owners are young guys who have probably not had many jobs, certainly not senior roles in jobs, so it’s difficult, it’s hard. Some kid comes to you and goes “Hey, I got an esports team. Can I have 20 grand?” No, go away (laughs).
There needs to be more support out there. Tournament organisers need to take responsibility and start supporting because these are big businesses. They’ve got big businesses with big turnovers, big margins and these are senior people. Take responsibility and start supporting some of the orgs help them do some workshops, I still consult for other orgs, even people that are that are technically against us, I shouldn’t be supporting them, but I absolutely do, because it’s not about that. We’re only enemies when we’re on the field, or the map.
Orgs don’t particularly know what they need to do for sponsors. Are you looking at impressions? Are you looking at engagements? Are you looking at content that’s produced? Are you looking at teams? Are you looking at a particular demographic? Are you looking at particular games? Are you wanting multiple teams in multiple games or one game? All these different questions could be answered very simply if the people with the connections and contacts would actually say, “Hey, why don’t you tell us what you need, then everybody else can get some answers.”
Everybody does what they think is right and some make it, some don’t- most don’t.
I want to talk about the team, obviously I can imagine you get criticism due to results. What keeps you guys going?
Because Rome wasn’t built in a day. These things take time, and I know this from my own experience, and you know what? It’s all about how you deal with things, how we deal with the teams and the players and it’s not to say that we haven’t had some serious conversations over the year, I think it is now.
You know with the main core guys and with EMPEROR and everybody. Of course we have, you know, at the end of the day it’s business, these are salaried players. This is money that we’re having to pay-out. Events aren’t cheap, you know, I can be very brutal, open and honest.
Fragadelphia was a ten grand event and two weeks before that, we flew a videographer guy in from Sweden to come and record the announcement video, we boot camped in Stevenage for three days. So before they’d even really played a game under us properly, we’d spent the best part 15 grand. … and then we salaried them.
So, it was a big investment from our side, but we wanted to do that, we wanted to give back and show other orgs what ‘s possible and how you can be supported. Results are important, of course, but they’re not everything. Results will come with time, results will come with them being able to just get on with what they need to get on with. We needed to find the right five. We knew quite quickly on from Frag[adelphia] that Will [zyyx], who was an amazing guy, and a very good player, didn’t fit with what structure we needed.
Then again as we then moved up a bit in level, we found that again, we were hitting a ceiling and we needed to open that ceiling up. Which is why with 1Knas again, who’s a brilliant player we just needed more flexibility in the squad and we tried to change stuff around, but actually that made it worse. Everybody else then struggled to be that flexible, so we knew something needed to give. Then husky, we did a lot of trials. husky was someone always on our radar, we knew him, I met him out in Fragadelphia. That international experience, because he was with BLVKHVND, was important. He’d already played on the stage, played at those serious games, the sweaty palm games.
He made it very clear that “Look, I’m with these guys so, right now it’s a no.”
So we trial people, couldn’t find anybody. We pretty much did a season with four main and a trialist and that didn’t help our results, of course, because there’s just no consistency. You’re constantly playing basic strats because you can’t spend time doing something more.
You’re always doing defaults because it’s easy to just call a default tactic when you’ve got somebody who doesn’t know the intricate details of what we’re trying to do so that affected our season. We end up getting relegated out of Advanced back down to Main, which was disappointing for all of us
Husky’s here now, we’re very, very happy with him, the guys are happy with him and now it’s about building back to be full strength and I think games like the Singularity show what we’re capable of. We gave NAVI Junior a good beating only a few months ago and the mental resolve that it took to beat them because it was a tough game, there were lots of pauses, they had some massive tech issues, with pauses all over. Mentally, they’re really hard games because it just breaks momentum every single time and you restart. So that showed me that mentally these guys have exactly what they need.
[Husky] made it very clear that “Look, I’m with these guys so, right now it’s a no.”
You’re quite a big ‘move maker’ in this industry, what’s your projection for UK CS and esports?
I think, you know what, UK esports has done a really good job over the last few years. I’ve obviously been a part of it for many, many years and seen it be very, very good. Back in the day when we had the ESWC [Electronic Sports World Cup] qualifiers and we had CSGN [Cyber Sports Gaming Network] and we were playing some really big [teams], 4Kings back in the day and teams like Choke.
Even if you look at Source and look at the CGS with Birmingham Salvo and London Mint, these teams, big players, big teams. We can definitely get back up to there where we’re seen as a team that can compete. Obviously Into the Breach have really helped us do that. It’s amazing to have a team back there at that tier one level and they absolutely deserve it.
For us, we’re next. It’s not a question. It’s not an if, it’s a when.
We’re just gonna keep pushing, the guys have got time, I will continue to invest and continue to give them everything they need and we’ll be boot camping once CS2 is out and again, I don’t know where that will be, probably in Poland at the Kinguin Esports Center. We may go and try the one in Sheffield, but again, they need time together, they need time to chill, time to relax. All this, all this helps.
For us, we’re next. It’s not a question. It’s not an if, it’s a when.
Anything else?
I’m massively appreciative of everybody, the support that I get from people inside and outside of 7AM. We couldn’t do anything without the support that we get from our sponsors and investments that we’ve had.
But we’re not going anywhere.
