Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Martin Shkreli: The Pharmaceutical Entrepreneur Buying His Way Into eSports

Martin Shkreli. The same guy who's been in the news for increasing the price of his drug “Daraprim”, also known as pyrimethamine, from $13.50 to $750 per pill. Pyrimethamine is listed in the World Health Orginization's Model List of Essential Medicines, a list of important medications needed in a basic health system.

Martin Shkreli first took a dip inside the side of eSports with the offer of $1.2 million to a League of Legend's Challenger team, Enemy eSports. Enemy's CEO, Clerkie, declined and said that he "believes in this roster" to make big headway into the League Championship Series (LCS). Later down the road Shkreli created his own team to compete in the amateur league, Odyssey Gaming, only to lose in the second round of the 2015 NA Challenger Series tournament. Shkreli merged his current team with another team, Team Imagine, in August after the NA LCS Spring Promotion tournament. Team Imagine managed to make it to the playoffs only to place third, yet still qualified for next year's 2016 LCS Promotional Tournament. When merged, Martin took place of CEO of Team Imagine

Martin Shkreli is more than likely one of the biggest eSports capitalist the community has seen with his earnings from his time as founder of Turing Pharmaceuticals AG and being the co-founder and CEO of Retrophin LLC. For a man with money there's a lot to wonder about how he'll treat his players when he said in an interview about Daraprim prices: "It’s a great business decision that also benefits all of our stakeholders,” and afterwards “I don’t expect the likes of you to process that. You are such a moron.”  Player treatment has already seen its lows from multiple owners not paying their players, a manager threatening a player to make sure his mother “would lose the house”  if he did not continue playing for the team, and an owner poaching contracted players. Bullying and manipulation has been somewhat of a common thing in the lifetime of eSports and maybe Shkreli will be just another whose name doesn't belong.