NAVI: the history of Ukrainian esports development

The esports organization NAVI (“born to win”), owned by Maksim Krippa, is one of the most successful in Ukraine. The organization's teams also have a large fan base around the world. NAVI has gone from an idea in the spirit of “it would be nice” to the main esports organization in the country in almost 15 years. Let's recall and analyze how they managed to realize their plans and how esports in Ukraine has developed in general.

Chronic post-Soviet fatigue

At the beginning of the noughties, the level of computerization in the country was, if not at the zero point, then at the minimum. Those of us who are older should remember how proudly schools used to announce that they had a computer classroom with 5 people working on one machine at a time. Naturally, under such basic conditions, it was out of the question for schoolchildren or students to play computer games. Meanwhile, somewhere in Europe and the United States, the next generation of kids was already growing up playing arcade machines, PC games, and game consoles. In short, there were no prerequisites for the development of Ukrainian esports at all.

A timid shift toward positive dynamics was associated with the emergence of computer clubs. Here, the experience of the 1990s came in handy: video salons used to be popular, although watching movies did not become a prerequisite for the development of cinema. Esports was more fortunate.

The first computer clubs, with quite understandable marketing goals, began to organize local competitions, not even tournaments. The winner received some free time, the losers gained experience and a desire to become better, and thus a desire to spend more time in the club. Money makes money and computer clubs in big cities began to multiply. Competition contributed to the emergence of the first tournaments and the first prize pools.

It worked like this: a new computer club wants to attract players. They organize a tournament with a small prize fund, which could be money or equipment. Then, players from other clubs come to the tournament, compete, and some of the participants realize that this club is better than them and stay. In addition, the word spreads through neighborhoods, districts, and schools that you can make money on computer games, and newcomers join the clubs. This is how a pool of potential and promising Ukrainian esports players was formed, and all-Ukrainian tournaments were created.

NAVI before the arrival of investor Maksim Krippa

The trajectory described above was followed by all the first Ukrainian esports players, who started with local tournaments in a computer club with prizes in the form of a conditional can of beer. The legendary Ukrainian esports player ZeroGravity (Oleksandr Kokhanovskyi) recalled this time as follows: "Back then (in the noughties, ed.), esports was just beginning to go beyond computer clubs. No one knew how to broadcast tournaments: the first attempts were made only in 2005."

The prize money in the Ukrainian esports segment was growing slowly, and to reach the international level, you needed money, and a lot of it. Computer clubs could not support the players, as they were going through hard times due to the 2008 crisis. But ZeroGravity and a few other guys who were passionate about Counter-Strike drew a lucky ticket.

In 2009, the Intel Extreme Masters tournament was planned. Flying to Dubai and winning was not enough. Murat Tulemaganbetov, a philanthropist from Kazakhstan, wanted to prove that guys from the former CIS countries could do many things, if not everything. This is how the idea of creating an esports organization came about. They decided to start, of course, with a Counter-Strike team formed by Serhiy Ishchuk, known as starix. The first NAVI team also included Arseniy Trinozhenko (ceh9), Yegor Markelov (markeloff), Danylo Teslenko (Zeus), and Ioan Sukharev (Edward), and the team manager was the already mentioned Oleksandr Kokhanovsky (ZeroGravity).

A few years later, Tulemaganbetov stopped supporting NAVI. But the beginning was laid: the organization grew, the list of teams and the list of high-profile victories expanded. One of the most striking was the victory in the DotA tournament, when the NAVI team received its first prize money with six zeros. The figure of $1 million is still quite decent now, but at that time it was quite dizzying.

By 2018, esports organization NAVI needed financial support. The search for a suitable investor led NAVI's owners to Maksim Krippa. At that time, Maksim Krippa was just starting to build a portfolio of esports-related assets.

How Maksim Krippa became a NAVI investor

The esports community, despite its current size, has traditionally remained a rather closed community. At the time of 2018, it was smaller in terms of the number of participants - everyone knew each other, more or less. Therefore, when NAVI needed an investor, they decided to turn to a trusted person, Maksim Krippa, with a proposal.

The fact is that a few months before that, Maksim Krippa had already invested in another company that was also related to esports, but from a slightly different angle. It was Maincast, a newly created studio for broadcasting esports matches and tournaments in Kyiv. Maksim Krippa became a shareholder in the third month of the company's existence and was just getting into the intricacies of investing in esports. But this did not stop him from quickly navigating the market and investing in NAVI.

Current state of affairs at NAVI

Today, NAVI is the leading esports organization in Ukraine and has a large army of fans around the world. Over the past year alone, NAVI teams have participated in more than 130 tournaments and won 27 victories.

NAVI's victories bring it not only fame, but also significant prize money. In terms of prize money, NAVI is the second largest organization in the world. Not bad for an esports organization that was formed in a country where there were no computers 20-30 years ago.

NAVI's success is largely due to good management. In particular, Maksim Krippa has come a long way from being a newcomer to esports to becoming the owner of NAVI over the past few years. Starting with an investment in 2018, Maksim Krippa decided to become the beneficial owner of the organization by 2020. Having fulfilled a number of time-bound contractual conditions, Maksim Krippa became the new owner of NAVI in 2022.