Biography | Matthew Bromberg — The Lexington Avenue Office That Ran Early Esports

For about four and a half years, Matthew Bromberg ran Major League Gaming from midtown Manhattan.

A 2010 business directory listed the league's office at 420 Lexington Avenue, suite 2820, in the Graybar Building beside Grand Central.

The Art Deco tower, finished in 1927 and landmarked in 2016, is a public building a visitor can still stand under.

MLG itself had been founded in 2002 by Sundance DiGiovanni and Mike Sepso.

Bromberg was the hired chief executive, not a founder.

In 2006 the league put a Halo 2 Pro Series on USA Network as the Boost Mobile MLG Pro Circuit, the first televised console-gaming league in the United States.

That broadcast is the moment the office on Lexington stopped being a niche tournament shop and became a media company with a television problem.

Sponsorship and advertising, not ticket sales, paid the bills.

In a 2009 industry interview Bromberg put the split at about 80 percent sponsorship and ads and 20 percent licensing.

On 18 August 2009 the company bought Agora Games, a studio that built multiplayer communities, as a way to grow the online side of the same business.

The arrangement did not last.

In May 2010 he left after a split with the founders over how fast the league should grow.

Kotaku and VentureBeat both recorded the break: the founders wanted a slower pace; he did not.

Sundance DiGiovanni took over as interim chief executive.

Bromberg stayed on briefly as an advisor to the primary investor.

The Graybar address is the one that can be pinned.

Wikipedia notes that MLG later sat at 3 Park Avenue; the Lexington suite is the address attached to his name while he was CEO.

Unity's 2024 appointment filing still lists the MLG job as the early chapter of the gaming career.

The building is not a museum of esports.

It is an office tower next to a train station, which is exactly what a 2006 league office was.

Photo: Wdfadude, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons