Riot and Twitch veteran Nick Allen joins Madison Square Garden company

The Madison Square Garden Company (MSG) has hired esports veteran Nick Allen to head up its fledgling esports division, showing MSG’s continued push into the esports space.

MSG own a string of venues and sports teams, and recently invested into esports outfit CounterLogic Gaming (CLG), allowing CLG to purchase an NA LCS permenant partnership slot, which is a form of franchising that required a $10m buy-in.

Allen is a perfect figure to take them forwards. Allen is known for his work for IGN helping to create the IGN ProLeague, a series of popular League of Legends and StarCraft II events, in addition to several years with Riot Games themselves, after joining as their esports operations manager in 2013, followed by a stint with Twitch, where he became the company’s vice president of esports in July 2015.

We could see many more live events as part of Allen’s tenure, and creating large-scale live ticketed events has been a mark of his career so far.

Allen will hold the title of vice president of esports, and according to a press release he’ll be "responsible for driving the company’s efforts to expand its presence in the esports industry, with a primary focus on operating Counter Logic Gaming.”