Dietmar Rheeder-Kleist, co-owner of the venerable Organised Chaos LAN, has announced that the business is for sale, saying that a need to focus on a more stable kind of business, and a “day job” led to the decision.
“It’s been a fun journey, growing a hobby into a a fledgeling sport, a get together into an event. The pressures of growing from 220 players at Milnerton’s Theo Marais to the various sizes we could cater for at the Bellville Velodrome, ~350 at the first one, 600 during our 2010 regular events and then 1,218 at our signature events. We eventually pushed that boundary to just over 1,300,” said Rheeder-Kleist.
Rheeder-Kleist said there is a single reason why OC cannot be sold as a running business: a regular, easy to book venue.
Rheeder-Kleist said that, on the plus side, OC has the potential to go anywhere, as all of the kit is neatly packed into two trailers.
“We’ve been in JHB, Bloemfontein and Port Elizabeth. The key is to sell at least 75% tickets, get sponsors and marketers on board, and with a bit of skill “OC and gaming” could be the next big spectator sport just like Rugby or Cricket,” he said.
OC will on be the market for 3 months, Rheeder-Kleist explained, and should no offer to purchase be received, they will simply be wrapping the event up and selling off the equipments and assets.
“Potential buyers of OC should be young energetic self motivated type of people, preferably with a marketing background or focus. OC’s biggest failure to date in my opinion has been its inability to successfully mass market for participants, attract and retain sponsors that wish to tap into our core market and database of players,” said Rheeder-Kleist.
“To a lesser extent we have been unsuccessful in implementing a state of the art booking system, as using Computicket or related services would have been excessively expensive.”
More information can be found on the Organised Chaos website: OC is for sale | Organised Chaos LAN
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Plus, it would be better if LANs could be hosted at dedicated premises, with infrastructure that could be upgraded or converted as needed for events, like a Game Center type of concept. We once had a cybercafe that wanted to do something like that in my neck of the woods, but due to the very small number of people that could be seated, it went bottom up within weeks. Maybe a major gaming organization in SA could arrange for something like that?