UP211: The esport psychologist
11/23/21 • 42 min
Mia Stellberg is an esport psychologist. She’s employed by some of the world’s most successful teams to help them win and keep the best gamers in the world happy and focused on being the best they can be.
Stellberg wrote recently that “Esport is chess at warp speed. It’s strategic, you need to be really clever, several steps ahead of your opponent, you need to have good strategy, you need to practice all the time, to the point – and even beyond – of obsession.”
So, what does she do to make good players better? What’s the tension between the needs of the individual player and the team owners? What are the areas of competitive advantage that determine the difference between winning and losing?
But beyond that, we talk about the life of a pro gamer, the pressures and the incentives. And we ask how the usual tropes of sports psychology apply to the gaming world, things like team culture, 10,000 hours and marginal gains.
Welcome to a world I hardly knew existed, and an opportunity to delve in to the lives and the minds of some of the best and highest paid esports gamers working today.
If you don’t already get the weekly Unofficial Partner newsletter, you can join thousands of busy sports biz execs who receive it direct to their inbox every Thursday, subscribe via unofficialpartner.com
Every episode of Unofficial Partner can be found by using the big podcast providers, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via your favourite podcast app.
Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry.
To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner
We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.
These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.
Our entire back catalogue of 400 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.
Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and every podcast app.
If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series, you can reach us via the website.
Mia Stellberg is an esport psychologist. She’s employed by some of the world’s most successful teams to help them win and keep the best gamers in the world happy and focused on being the best they can be.
Stellberg wrote recently that “Esport is chess at warp speed. It’s strategic, you need to be really clever, several steps ahead of your opponent, you need to have good strategy, you need to practice all the time, to the point – and even beyond – of obsession.”
So, what does she do to make good players better? What’s the tension between the needs of the individual player and the team owners? What are the areas of competitive advantage that determine the difference between winning and losing?
But beyond that, we talk about the life of a pro gamer, the pressures and the incentives. And we ask how the usual tropes of sports psychology apply to the gaming world, things like team culture, 10,000 hours and marginal gains.
Welcome to a world I hardly knew existed, and an opportunity to delve in to the lives and the minds of some of the best and highest paid esports gamers working today.
If you don’t already get the weekly Unofficial Partner newsletter, you can join thousands of busy sports biz execs who receive it direct to their inbox every Thursday, subscribe via unofficialpartner.com
Every episode of Unofficial Partner can be found by using the big podcast providers, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts or via your favourite podcast app.
Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry.
To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner
We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.
These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.
Our entire back catalogue of 400 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.
Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and every podcast app.
If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series, you can reach us via the website.
Previous Episode
UP210: Michel Masquelier
Michel Masquelier entered IMG as an intern and left as chairman. The intervening 30 years saw a transformation in the sports economy, led by the boom in media rights values, an area in which Masquelier became a world expert as head of IMG Media, first under Mark McCormack, then Ted Forstmann and finally Ari Emanuel’s Endeavour.
We talk about private equity, bundles and betting, and his new book, Life Is Not A Dress Rehearsal, which charts the ups and downs of a career in sport.
The Unofficial Partner newsletter goes to thousands of people across the sports business, to join them sign up via unofficialpartner.com
Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry.
To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner
We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.
These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.
Our entire back catalogue of 400 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.
Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and every podcast app.
If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series, you can reach us via the website.
Next Episode
UP212: Bhandari and Amaechi on racism
The subject of today’s conversation is racism and sport’s relationship to it. And our guests are Sanjay Bhandari and John Amaechi.
Sanjay is chair of Kick It Out, the charity campaigning to end racial and ethnic discrimination in English football.
John Amaechi OBE is a psychologist and founder of the APS Intelligence consultancy.
The context for the podcast is English cricket and specifically the accusations of institutional racism made against Yorkshire Cricket Club by Azeem Rafiq, the former player, who detailed his experiences at a highly charged and very emotional meeting of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee on November 16th.
The conversation took place before the publication yesterday of the ECB’s action plan to tackle the issues raised by the controversy.
Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry.
To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner
We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.
These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.
Our entire back catalogue of 400 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.
Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and every podcast app.
If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series, you can reach us via the website.
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