Leo Matlock has been promoted to the role chief business officer at international esports tournament organizer BLAST. Matlock announced the promotion via social media Wednesday morning.
Prior to being promoted, Matlock served as managing director of development—a role he took on in January of 2022. Matlock joined BLAST in September of 2018 from Virgin Racing, taking on the role of head of commercial solutions and strategy for the RFRSH brand. Since that time he has held multiple roles within the company during his more than five years there including commercial director and VP of commercial.
In his social media post, he said in part:
“Particularly excited to bring together our work across commercial, business development and publisher partnerships into one new unit with a fantastic team of people and partners, who I know will further develop our already great work as industry leaders.
“Most importantly want to take this moment to thank everyone internally and externally, past and present, who have been part of the last 5 years at BLAST and made it so fun! Looking forward to many more, working with old and new friends, partners and colleagues. Esports and gaming never sits still – and neither will we – so stay tuned.”
Matlock’s promotion has everything to do with BLAST’s plans for 2024: In July it opened a “host destinations process,” looking for partners to find key locations for its events next year. In 2023, BLAST hosted events in Paris, Washington, D.C., Madrid, London, Copenhagen, and Lisbon, and in 2024 it will pick similar international destinations for its competitions (Counter-Strike 2, Rainbow Six Siege, etc.). The company said at the time that the economic impact of hosting one of its events is huge: James Woollard, head of commercial solutions at BLAST, claimed that visitors (“over 60% on average from outside of the host city”) have provided more than €22M ($24.7M USD) in economic impact for “host economies” at previous BLAST events.
