People: Gaming & Esports Startup yup.gg Brings in Top Agency Executives David Webster as CCO and Tim Lindley as CXO to the Team

SINGAPORE – yup.gg, the Singapore based gaming and esports marketing platform, has hired BBH Singapore Managing Director David Webster as Chief Commercial Officer, and BBH Managing Partner and former Red Bull exec Tim Lindley, as Chief Experience Officer.

The appointment of Webster and Lindley to the yup.gg executive team signals the start of a major expansion across the region, as an influx of new brands, agencies and gaming partners sign up to yup.gg to scale and manage their gaming and esports marketing activities.

CEO and Co-Founder Rai Cockfield:  ‘We are excited to add David and Tim to the yup.gg team and look forward to leveraging their experience providing unique marketing solutions to top brands in the world, to our core knowledge of gaming and esports community-building and content monetization. We’re passionate about the gaming community and we’re focused on adding top minds from tech and media to the yup.gg team to make sure we develop the right tools to help brands maximise their investments and creators and rights-holders maximize their earning potential.”

In their new roles Webster and Lindley will develop the demand side of the yup.gg marketplace, deepening partnerships with brands and agencies, and working closely with the platform engineering team to evolve the product experience to fit the needs of today’s brand marketers.

David Webster has spent the past 14 years at BBH, moving from London to the Singapore office 12 years ago. He has risen through the ranks to the role of Managing Director and Chief Growth Officer, leading global and APAC accounts for Nike, Samsung and Riot Games (the creators of League of Legends) among others.

Said Webster: “It’s not every day that you get the opportunity to join the best in the industry to help build a product that can create genuine value for the whole ecosystem. While the scale and opportunity in esports and gaming is there, with yup.gg’s marketplace approach we hope to bring a new level of transparency and trust to the industry that will give brands the confidence to enter or level up their investments in this space.”

Tim Lindley served as Managing Partner and Global Head of Content at BBH, working with brands including Nike, Samsung, Riot Games, Sentosa and YouTube. Prior to BBH he spent 7 years at Red Bull, most recently on their Asia Pacific leadership team as Head of Owned Media and Communications, leading their digital marketing, communications and content teams across the region.

Tim said, “I have witnessed first-hand how effective gaming and esports marketing can be, I also remember how difficult it can be to navigate this complex and fragmented ecosystem for the first time. I hope to simplify the way marketers access audiences through gaming and esports, and bring some rigour to the way these activities are executed and measured.” 

Yup.gg also recently announced a partnership with 108 Media to launch the world’s first TV and digital reality competition show to find Asia’s next great gamer called Asia’s Got Game, set to launch in Q2 2020.

The gaming and esports industry is already bigger than the film and music industries combined, with revenues forecast to grow from $152bn in 2019 to $164bn in 2020. The 1.3 billion gamers in the Asia Pacific region continue to dominate the global gaming landscape, with 48% of total industry revenue and 64% of mobile gaming revenue coming from the region.