{"id":67759,"date":"2024-09-19T17:36:40","date_gmt":"2024-09-19T17:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ginx.tv\/heather-sapphire-garozzo-the-milk-cup"},"modified":"2024-09-19T21:13:43","modified_gmt":"2024-09-19T21:13:43","slug":"heather-sapphire-garozzo-the-milk-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ginx.tv\/en\/heather-sapphire-garozzo-the-milk-cup","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Heather \u201csapphiRe\u201d Garozzo \u2014 \u201cI Think The Milk Cup is Going to be One of Those Historic Moments.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Taking place in Los Angeles, in early October, is a LAN that’s set to make history. The Milk Cup<\/a> is offering its all-women Fortnite<\/a> competitors the chance to win their share of the largest North American prize pool ever offered in women’s esports. But the LAN holds a lot of significance, not just because of its prize pool, but for the incredible talent involved at every stage of its production. <\/p>\n

Heather “sapphiRe” Garozzo<\/strong>, a prominent esports veteran and the first woman inducted into the Esports Hall of Fame, gave us an insight into how The Milk Cup has been built with its players in mind at every step of the way. <\/p>\n

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Heather “sapphiRe” Garozzo is brining over twenty years of esports experience to The Milk Cup.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“I’ve been in esports for a long time, and I’ve seen a lot of so-so events, but this event really  nailed what it means to host a true competitive, high-class women’s event,” Garozzo began. “A lot of the women’s events from back in my time were always kind of second tier. The ladies never got the best stuff. They never got a lot of attention or content or storytelling, and we wanted to get that right. And we’re so proud that Gonna Need Milk believes in that and the storytelling of these players.”<\/p>\n

Gonna Need Milk<\/a>, the company behind The Milk Cup, have taken the nutritional approach of providing performance drinks to athletes and have branched out into the gaming sphere. Part of their passion extends to providing safe spaces for gamers, particularly women gamers, to compete as their authentic selves. Something that Garozzo and her company Raidiant<\/a> believe in whole-heartedly. <\/p>\n

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The interesting part is that a lot of the top women gamers in the world, they’re still not making enough in terms of prize money or salary. So they’re having to go to school, they’re working multiple jobs at the same time, and they’re still making time to compete and be among the best in the world. That’s incredibly inspiring.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

“Women’s events are great stepping stones to the big leagues,” Garozzo said. “I just thought we could do so much better. I knew how many women compete in this space.<\/p>\n

If you look at Counter-Strike, it was one of the first games to support women’s esports events. There’s a reason why Counter-Strike has one of the biggest women’s communities, and it’s because they’ve supported these events for two decades now. Then we saw that with Riot Games and Game Changers. Now, you’re putting them on massive stages and big arenas — you’re putting the women there. That’s been followed by Fortnite, which has an incredible women’s player base, but a lot of them are content creator focused because they haven’t been given as many opportunities for competition.<\/p>\n

Obviously, women are not being held back from FNCS, from any of the cash cups — women can play in those. However, we know that there’s just a lot of barriers to entry, especially on gender and harassment and how to find other players. If we create these women’s only events, we’re going to start to grow the pool of competitive players. That was really the two inspirations behind Raidiant; make better women’s events and then create women’s events for communities that have women player bases.”<\/p>\n

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