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NASL is huge. The player pool is enormous and the tournament runs for an incredible length of time. It is a huge deal and everybody knows it, but the system is missing something aside from the production value that all of the fans were hoping for.
With so many players and so many games, it is not just impossible to watch every game, but it is nearly impossible to bring yourself to care about most of the games. What NASL is missing is a system in place to give the fans an easy way to choose which games they care about. As it currently stands, the only way to have a compelling reason to watch specific games is to know a lot of the players from other tournaments and choose who you want to follow from that pool.
NASL.tv has a "teams" tab, but the teams are small and scattered, and completely irrelevant to the tournament itself. If teams were sanctioned as important, viewers would have a reason to get excited for specific games. Without knowing everything about every player on a team, a player can still know that they love the team itself and tune in excitedly when its time for that team to play.
Think of Major League Baseball, FIFA, or any other organized sporting event. While they aren't exactly archetypes because they are in fact team sports, the system is still relevant. Nobody watches all of a major sporting league. They choose a team to follow, and watch when that team plays, and frequently stop watching when that team is no longer in the running.
NASL needs to incorporate teams in to their league. Solo tournaments work well when they are closer to the size of MLG, but NASL is simply too big to feature specific players standing by themselves. If NASL were to make teams necessary and relevant, all of the fans would have a reason to watch on occasion.
Featuring teams would open up several productive doors to the future of NASL, as well. One bonus that comes to mind is the ability to offer a cheaper HD ticket specific to a single team. The full pass would still be there, but most people find NASL's season tickets to be way too expensive. Even with the cheaper tickets, NASL would easily make significantly more money, and if they can settle it properly then they could offer the finals in HD for free, as even if your team is out of the running, most people would still want to watch the final match between those who proved themselves to be good enough to push out everybody they have faced.
An edit to respond to the people who argue that the exciting and popular finals mean NASL hype didn't fizzle:
The hype of the finals is not deniable. This does not mean that NASL maintained consistent interest throughout the season. Every big tournament is going to drag in gigantic crowds for the finals, and my thoughts are in reference to the season as a whole, not one sample which everybody could predict would be huge even before the season started.
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i kinda like the individuals format. i think teams are definitely a possibility, but i htink that can wait
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80,000 viewers for the final? Doesn't sound like a fizzle to me.
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With community sites like TeamLiquid, its very easy to find "recommended games" and to read up a lot about certain players. I think you're trying to say NASL's hype is fizzling out because of the difficulty of following pro gaming and the lack of teams? I'd have to disagree with you. Pro-gaming is relatively easy to follow, especially with all the information readily available to viewers. As well, look at how many viewers the NASL attracted? Team tournaments are definitely interesting, but its much easier to have a favorite player as opposed to a whole team. 1 Season pass is enough.
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After watching these final games, There is no way i can agree with the fact that NASL has fizzled out. These games/casting/stream/crowd is just so sick.
That does not mean i disagree with your points, and some of them are pretty cool, but I think they are not doing to bad. Also, season 1 had a bunch of problems that season 2 should not have.
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Are you watching these finals? This is hardly a fizzle, outside of the early production problems they were plagued with(apparently the early sound problems were due to a defective cable burning out after sound check). I had no problem playing 10 dollars to watch this amazingness in full HD.
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On July 11 2011 08:18 ClysmiC wrote:
80,000 viewers for the final? Doesn't sound like a fizzle to me.
This.
I agree that it's impossible to see every game, but I still like the format. It makes it so it feels like the best players are getting into the final tournament and luck isn't as big of a factor for a huge open tournament.
I think NASL should stay the way it is. We still have the EG tourny for team play. I do think they should have more team tournaments though
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On July 11 2011 08:18 ClysmiC wrote:
80,000 viewers for the final? Doesn't sound like a fizzle to me.
Any big tournament will attract big viewers for the finals. I'm not talking about the success of a sample which everybody could accurately predict would be huge. If you look at the season as a whole, it was not consistently this popular. When it started NASL was ridiculously popular. As it went on, the league started to get a sizable amount of bad press and people cared less and less.
On July 11 2011 08:21 GenesisX wrote:
With community sites like TeamLiquid, its very easy to find "recommended games" and to read up a lot about certain players. I think you're trying to say NASL's hype is fizzling out because of the difficulty of following pro gaming and the lack of teams? I'd have to disagree with you. Pro-gaming is relatively easy to follow, especially with all the information readily available to viewers. As well, look at how many viewers the NASL attracted? Team tournaments are definitely interesting, but its much easier to have a favorite player as opposed to a whole team. 1 Season pass is enough.
I don't mean to say lack of teams is killing NASL, only that it would be a huge benefit in the future to incorporate them. You say Pro-gaming is easy to follow because stats and reviews are readily available online, but the audience as a whole isn't likely going to study all of the players and track all of the games to see what they want to watch. Not everybody wants to learn about a wide range of stats, and a large amount of people would be most excited to watch the initial broadcast. These broadcasts would track consistent attention if the ever growing audience had an easier way to care about the games individually.
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This makes no sence your blog is about how NASL's hype fizzled out and yet you talk about how you think it should be a team league somehow even though the players are already on teams?
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On July 11 2011 08:36 sermokala wrote:
This makes no sence your blog is about how NASL's hype fizzled out and yet you talk about how you think it should be a team league somehow even though the players are already on teams?
A lot of these teams are one to three people, and these teams have literally nothing to do with the season itself. I also did not say it should be a team league in the way we think of team leagues, but rather the teams should be incorporated as a way to encourage excitement for specific games to different people.
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On July 11 2011 08:40 LokitAK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 11 2011 08:36 sermokala wrote:
This makes no sence your blog is about how NASL's hype fizzled out and yet you talk about how you think it should be a team league somehow even though the players are already on teams? A lot of these teams are one to three people, and these teams have literally nothing to do with the season itself. I also did not say it should be a team league in the way we think of team leagues, but rather the teams should be incorporated as a way to encourage excitement for specific games to different people.
thats not what I said your title is about how NASL has fizzled out but your blog is all about how teams should be added for players that are already on teams. neither thing makes any sence. you think players sponsored by Steel series or razor are gona be teams with eachother or some of the korean manufacturing companies?
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NASL hype fizzled pretty quickly beginning with the Jinro vs Idra show match and then followed up by NASL week 1 being riddled with technical problems
anyways, what this all adds up to is that NASL Season 1 will and should help with NASL Season 2 being a much superior product (I hope).
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I find that other than the technical difficulties, the finals were actually much more enjoyable to watch and follow than the regular season. Sen vs MC was one of the best series I have watched in a long time, and everybody I watched it with was literally on the edge the entire time.
I like the idea of adding a NATSL if you will. But I'm a little iffy on how well all the games go.
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My take on this situation can be summarized with a classic joke:
If the NASL is casted and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
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EPT
