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Bloomberg Businessweekwatching other people play video games is no sure thing, but
Comcast isn’t alone in its enthusiasm. The prize money in
e-sports can reach into the millions of dollars, and researcher
Newzoo BV expects overall revenue to climb 27% this year, to
$1.1 billion, thanks to increased ticket sales, corporate spon-
sorships, and media rights deals. (Comcast is currently con-
sidering offers for naming rights for Fusion Arena.) Among
the new owners of video game teams: basketball great Michael
Jordan, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, and Atlanta’s Cox
Communications.
Roberts, who’s 29, sees the Fusion as part of a larger
strategy to win over young people. E-sports could be to
Generation Z what music videos were to Generation X, and
Comcast, if all goes well, will be the MTV of this era.When Roberts was growing up in Philadelphia’s
Chestnut Hill neighborhood, his dad’s company, then a
regional cable carrier, was almost universally recognized,
if not exactly beloved. “Having a nightmare Comcast
story is practically a residency requirement in this town,”
Philadelphia magazine once wrote. Neighborhood service
centers were seen as crucibles of human frustration where
impassive representatives faced customer meltdowns from
behind barriers of bulletproof glass.
It may not be surprising then that Tucker—whose full name
is Brian Leon Tucker Roberts Jr.—immersed himself in gal-
axies far, far away. He read Harry Potter novels and played
games. Brian Sr. took the 8-year-old Tucker to the King of
Prussia mall for a Pokémon tournament, where he advanced
five rounds before coming up against a 28-year-old rival who,
as Tucker remembers it, was then getting a doctorate at the
University of Pennsylvania. Tucker cried when he lost.
In middle school, Roberts became obsessed with an online
game called Star Wars Galaxies. He played as Kiey Ekips, a
Zabrak bounty hunter, on the Scylla server and eventually
joined a guild. Over time he helped build cities on Tatooine
and Naboo, a planet in the Chommell sector. Along the way,
he made some friends. “I’m hanging out with a bunch of
30-year-olds who are some German dudes, and they don’t
know I’m 13, and they’re just treating me like another per-
son,” Roberts says. On the internet, nobody knows if you’re
the heir to an omnivorous cable empire.
Escaping the family shadow was a little harder in col-
lege. Like his father and grandfather, Roberts attended the
University of Pennsylvania, where he studied business. On
campus at the time, school officials were just completingWhen the Philadelphia Fusion plays, the team president,
Tucker Roberts, likes to stay in the dugout, alongside the
coaches and bench players. He hangs out there as long as the
team is winning. But if things start to go poorly, he heads onto
the arena floor to pace among the fans banging on inflatable
thunder sticks. If that doesn’t help, and a loss feels imminent,
Roberts parks himself in a backroom, next to the Fusion’s
social media editors, who are crafting online videos for sup-
porters at home.
“It’s basic feng shui,” Roberts says. “If your environment
isn’t working for you, you have to change it.”
The mix of restlessness, bile, and foreboding he feels
would be familiar to the owners of pro football and basket-
ball teams. But despite his family’s great wealth—Roberts’s
father is chairman and chief executive officer of Comcast
Corp., the cable giant that owns NBCUniversal and the NHL’s
Philadelphia Flyers, among other businesses—his angst isn’t
tied up with the fortunes of a major sports team. Fusion play-
ers compete in Overwatch, a frenetic video game, an e-sport,
in which squads of professionals (six per side) launch gre-
nadesandblastcannonsatoneanother,countingkillsand
respawningasneeded.Duringgames,playerswearshort-
sleevejerseys—orange-on-black for home games, orange-on-
white for away—with their nicknames on the back. If bowling
shirts still exist in the 22nd century, they will look like these.
The Fusion’s roster is stacked with talent from Europe
and e-sports powerhouse South Korea. Despite missing the
preseason last year because several players had visa prob-
lems, the team almost won the championship, losing in the
finals to the London Spitfire. “We came in with expectations
that were, like, Let’s just get some wins, let’s not try to make
theplayoffs,”Robertssays.“Andthenoncewegotthere,it
waslikewewereplayingwithhousemoney.”Duringtheoff-
season, he beefed up the team’s coaching staff, in the hopes
of making another playoff run.
Comcast’s decision, two years ago, to pay a $20 million fran-
chise fee through its Comcast Spectacor division to start the
Fusion was the first of several big e-sports bets in which Roberts
played a role. In February he and Park Jung-Ho, CEO of South
Korean mobile phone giant SK Telecom Co., announced they
were forming a venture to field teams that will play Fortnite,
an Overwatch competitor, among other titles. Then in March,
Comcast revealed plans to build a $50 million arena for the
Fusion in South Philadelphia. With a planned capacity of 3,500
fans, it will serve as a sort of sister arena to the 20,000-seat
Wells Fargo Center that Comcast already owns, which will host
this year’s Overwatch championship. Architectural renderings
suggest the interior will feature many screens.
Roberts, who’s tall, thin, and athletic, also recently began
dating Olivia Munn, an actress who has a cult following among
gamers from her days as a host on the now-defunct video game
TV network G4. Roberts won’t talk about the relationship
except to say that he admires Munn’s business acumen.“She
invested early in Uber and Wag,” a dog-walking app,hesays.
The idea of building a long-term enterprise aroundpeople1