Jordan Zelniker Speaks on Leading the Esports Strategy for the NY Islanders

ONE37pm: What sports and video games did you play growing up?

Jordan Zelniker: At a young age, I played many different sports such as hockey, baseball, and soccer. As I got older and my commitment to hockey grew, it became my main sport playing throughout college. It turned out my teammates on the ice ended up being the same people I gamed with. I grew up in the N64 days, eventually moving into GameCube and then up on the Xbox side. Some of the most memorable moments for me growing up with my friends were the Halo 3 and MW2 days. But nothing’s more competitive than a bunch of hockey players playing Chel. To this day, my friends and I still battle it out every time we’re at each other’s houses.

ONE37pm: As a child, did you always want to make a career in sports or esports?

Jordan Zelniker: Every athlete at one point or another in their life dreams of playing or working in sports. As a child, I never fully understood the business side of sports, but something about going to arenas and stadiums was just magical. At that point in time, competitive gaming was just starting to grow and there weren’t too many role models that had built out careers in the space yet. As I got older, Twitch and YouTube started to explode, seeing content creators starting to create a sustainable full-time income from videos. Not until college did I really start to focus my time on learning the business side behind it.

ONE37pm: After graduating college, what did you do before working for the New York Islanders?

Jordan Zelniker: After graduating from Binghamton, I knew I needed to leave New York and expand my reach in the industry before getting into a career. I decided to get my Masters's degree at Georgetown University where I found a passion for sports innovation, specifically focusing on two growing industries - esports and sports betting. It was at this point that the NBA2K League and eMLS were both created, and I found this intersection between the sports and gaming industry. Noticing that both the NBA2K league and eMLS were club-centric esports leagues, I started to dig into the NHL’s involvement in esports with the NHL Gaming World Championship. It was at this point that I decided to write my final capstone thesis on a proposed esports league for the NHL, a blended hybrid between the NBA2K League and eMLS. I was fortunate enough to pick the brains of industry executives and top competitive players.

After finishing my capstone, I was persistent in breaking into one of these sports, esports leagues, and getting my hands in NHL if possible. Fortunately enough, Monumental Sports (the Washington Wizards and Capitals) were looking to grow their team, in quite a perfect fit for me managing business operations for both their NBA2K League team, Wizards District Gaming, and working to develop their NHL esports platform, which grew to be their current platform - Caps Gaming. I spent two years with MSE around some of the most intelligent people in the industry. During this time, I experienced some of the most memorable moments of my career, including winning two NBA2K League championships and organizing an esports match to raise covid relief funds between the two greatest NHL goal scorers of all time - Alex Ovechkin and Wayne Gretzky.

ONE37pm: How did the opportunity align to work for the New York Islanders?

Jordan Zelniker: What most people don’t know is that I was actually an intern for the Islanders back in my sophomore/junior of college. As the Islanders were building out their new arena, the UBS Arena, they were interested in exploring esports. The Islanders had the right minds in place to show support for the vision and the right minds to execute it.

ONE37pm: What does your day-to-day look like?

Jordan Zelniker: Like many will tell you in both sports and esports, no day is the same. We have our competitive season, which runs from about December to July, then we have our off-season where we focus on growth planning and strategic alignment. We’re very lucky to have the support and involvement from so many other departments here at the Islanders, so we’re in collaborative meetings very often, tapping into resources from Isles marketing, partnerships, creative, events, and more. On the competitive side, we also have an entire roster of IslesGT players that we manage, from one-on-one meetings, team calls, watching games and scrims, or even attending events all over the world.

ONE37pm: What are the easiest and hardest parts of your job?

Jordan Zelniker: I’m very lucky to be surrounded by a very talented team who makes my personal role much easier. Our players are some of the most professional in the entire scene, organizing and setting up a practice, competing at the highest level, and fortunately finishing in the top-ranked teams in every tournament. They make my job easier and exceptionally more fun, all the credit goes to them. On the other hand, the hardest parts would be the external factors that we can’t control. Primarily, the development of the game. Unfortunately, we have little to no say in the actual game that we play, which can be frustrating at times. This is something you’ll see more on the sports esports side where the leagues aren’t owned by the publishers, unlike your more endemic esports.

ONE37pm: What do you look for in a potential player to join IslesGT?

Jordan Zelniker: We have a very strict vetting process when it comes to picking our players for IslesGT. Professionalism is of the utmost importance for us here. You don’t just represent our esports team, but you represent the entire brand. We look for a complete blend of professionalism, competitiveness, and entertainment. Most of all, we just want good people to be part of this innovative brand we’re building.

ONE37pm: How do you envision NHL esports in the next five years?

Jordan Zelniker: Well for anyone in the NHL community reading this, they all know I’d love to see a 6v6 league developed at the league level. However, I’m not sure that we as a community will be ready for a 6v6 league in the next few years. First off, the game is not built to be ready for 6v6 competitions at a large scale at this point in time. In terms of the player base, we’re just now in the past few years starting to see a professional shift where kids growing up can actually envision a career playing this game. Look at some of the top NHL streamers, like Nasher and NoSleeves, they’ve taken this community further than any of us just by creating incredible content in the game they love. As we start to see more and more of that and the community supports those streamers trying to grow, then we’ll see massive growth in the NHL esports scene.

ONE37pm: What advice would you give to aspiring people who want to make a career in this intersection between sports and esports?

Jordan Zelniker: My best advice would be just to show up. Personally, when I was trying to get into the space, I was going to as many events as possible, just trying to meet people without asking for anything. Nothing will ever beat face-to-face interactions. There may not be too many live events specifically for NHL, but there are plenty of other public esports events all year round. Find a way to get there, be yourself, and meet as many people as possible. One of those people will eventually help you get your foot in the door. Then one day, you can do the same for someone trying to get into the space.