DRX, one of Korea’s best-known esports organizations, is expanding its business beyond competitive gaming and has expanded its digital entertainment services.
The company has signed agreements relating to two unannounced K-drama pictures. The company is also expanding into game publishing, creating a broader entertainment business alongside DRX’s existing esports operations. The company’s first game will be a casual mobile title, said DRX’s co-CEO Can Yang, in an exclusive interview with GamesBeat. I did an interview with Yang and CFO/CIO Jaeyong Lee.
DRX’s new content IP subsidiary, the marketing agency WebsCreative, will lead all production. The company has more than 20 years of experience in entertainment, including film and OTT campaigns, but historically operated primarily as a marketing agency.
Since joining the DRX group in 2022, it has expanded upstream into game publishing and, more recently, content development, investment and production.
DRX plans to inject additional capital into the business to expand its operations, grow the
team working across content IP and increase its ability to identify, secure, invest in and
produce entertainment projects. Future structures could include co-production and
investment partnerships, as well as potentially originating content directly, depending on the project and available capital.
The expansion of WebsCreative forms part of a broader roadmap to develop DRX from an esports organisation into a digital entertainment company. Its move into game publishing creates another growth pillar within the Asian entertainment market, alongside the group’s existing esports business and growing content operations.
Over the longer term, DRX plans to build a connected entertainment business spanning
esports, game publishing, content production and content IP. By investing in new capabilities and expanding across these areas, the company aims to use its existing brand, audience and industry relationships as the foundation for a broader digital entertainment platform in Asia.
DRX has been through three rebrands in its history. It started in 2012 as the Incredible Miracle esports team for League of Legends in South Korea. In 2016, it rebranded as Longzhu Gaming, based on a sponsor’s name. In 2018, Longzhu Gaming was acquired by Chinese esports organization Kingzone and renamed Kingzone DragonX.
Then in 2019, Kingzone parted ways with the League of Legends division team, and DragonX then shortened the name to DRX. And in 2022, DRX won the 2022 League of Legends World Championship, defeating T1 in the finals. And after acquiring eDreamwork Korea in 2022, DRX also operates a Valorant team. Its headquarters is in Seoul, South Korea.
“The marketing agency is transitioning to focus more on the IP-related business and also game publishing business. That’s our structure of the group,” said Yang. “Webs Creative was an integrated marketing agency for more than two decades. A couple of years ago, Webs Creative expanded into game publishing. They published mobile games such as Dark Eden.”
The Webs Creative team previously focused on K-drama film marketing. But the movie business is challenging, and the agency is now focusing on interactive entertainment and it is now expanding to games, said Lee.
Of the global markets that DRX is focused on, it is turning more of its attention to Southeast Asia, Yang said. In particular, the team will focus on casual games on mobile platforms. The company will start talking about its games in the fourth quarter, Yang said.
“We are from South Korea and are looking for a global expansion, and the first phase of that is stepping into Southeast Asia,” Yang said.
He noted the population of Southeast Asia is around 600 million, while South Korea is only around 50 million. And he noted that K-dramas that are popular in Korea are now also trending in places like Southeast Asia.
“We want to bring our full ecosystem as an esports team, which is the player development side and the commercialization side, to this market,” Yang said. “I want to bring the whole ecosystem to Southeast Asia.”