Experienced and driven creator economy specialist. Known for exceptional capabilities in creator partnerships, growth, management, cross-platform expansion, and monetization strategies. Focused on helping startups, platforms, and creators thrive through data and industry insights.

Dylan Harari

I’ve spent 15 years at the intersection of marketing, gaming, and technology - from competing as a semi-pro player to leading campaigns for some of the biggest names in the industry.

In 2018, I built a multi-7-figure marketing agency focused on gaming, esports, creators & crypto, helping global brands connect authentically with users.

Later, I co-founded BIGR, an AI startup that automated social media creation for businesses.
The startup didn’t go the distance, but it taught me more about product, scale, and leadership than any success ever could.

Today, I specialise in B2B strategy and connection - building bridges between brands, partners, and opportunities.

I thrive on navigating challenges, unblocking ideas, and bringing the right people together to make things happen.

Chris Smith

Riot is removing prize pools from major League of Legends regional leagues starting in 2026.

That means no prize money for regular season splits in the LEC, LCK, or LCS. International events still keep prize pools, and Worlds is actually increasing to around $5M.

On the surface, it sounds like Riot is taking money out of the ecosystem. In reality, split prize pools were never doing much.

A typical LEC split prize pool sat around €90K. Once that’s divided across multiple teams and then again between players, staff, and orgs, it barely moves the needle. Teams don’t budget around prize money. They budget around fixed income.

Riot’s reason for the change is pretty straightforward. Prize pools create volatility, not stability. Teams need predictable revenue to operate, not small performance-based payouts that fluctuate split to split.

Instead of distributing money through prize pools, Riot is reallocating that spend into the league system itself. That includes revenue sharing, direct publisher support, league operations, production, infrastructure, and maintaining salary structures.

It’s also worth putting League in context. In 2025, total global LoL prize pools were around $14.5M. Counter-Strike was closer to $30.9M. Dota sat around $22.4M. League has never been a prize-pool-driven esport.

Nothing changes for international tournaments. Worlds remains the peak, with a larger prize pool and the same competitive stakes. What changes is how money flows during the year.

Do you agree with the changes?

I've already posted a few times about how live commerce is going to change our industry in a large way.

Here's more proof that it's growing at a rapid rate. 

Outlandish Inc is a TikTok shop agency that did $500M last year, utilising over 50,000 creators and sending 19.5 million outreach messages and publishing 18,000+ hours of live shopping streams.

JBL and recently Razer have dipped their toes into the waters of TikTok shop, a lot will start to follow.

QVC does $20M a month on the store, and Crocs does $8M.

There are some huge announcements coming soon that will shape the way a lot of companies in our industry sell products, bringing them to the TikTok store.

In 2020, fewer than 10,000 games launched on Steam. Last year, that number nearly doubled.

Almost 20,000 games were published on the platform in a single year.
That is not just growth. That is saturation.

Steam did not suddenly double its discovery slots, or front-page real estate. What doubled was competition. Every new release now launches into a noisier, more crowded market than ever before.

This is why “just ship it” stopped being a strategy years ago. Anyone who has worked in agency land has plenty of stories of developers who spend their entire budget on creating a game, leaving nothing to market it.

For developers, the challenge is no longer just getting a game live. It is getting noticed. Wishlists matter more. Community building starts earlier. Marketing timelines stretch months, not weeks.

The bar to ship on Steam is lower than ever. The bar to succeed is higher than it has ever been.

Our Mirage CS2 Utility Map now has over 2,000,000 subscribers! 

The entire map series of 9 experiences has reached 7.75M subscribers.

Users return daily to learn grenade usage and brush up on skills before queueing for competitive play.

We're seeking a new advertiser to implement. If you want your brand front and centre of the series, which is still growing at 101K new subscribers per month organically, reach out.

Our maps have a storied history of delivering on client campaigns, including strong FTD results, sold-out product collabs & tracked region-wide sales uplift.

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Dylan Harari

Chris Smith

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