EPTSo this weekend I ponied up my $10.00 for a HD stream of the NASL tournament and was quite impressed with experience. One of the reason why I paided for the HD Stream was due to the fact I felt there would be top notch talent at the event since it was one of the first 100K tourney's in North America this year.
This got me wondering how such a large prize pool is generated for an e-sport like SC2. Over in Korea, it makes sense to me that they would have large prize pools due to the popularity of the game there and personalities.
When poker took off in the US several years ago, the economics of the million dollar tournaments made sense due to the buy-in players would put up. It was a boon for small cable networks since they didn't have to pay the players, they just had to provide the legal venue and production costs. Ad money would easily pay for those costs... so the economics made sense there.
With SC2 and eSports in general, I don't understand how large prize pools are generated. I mean Activision is holding a 1 Million Dollar COD tournament in September, there are a couple more 100K tournaments for SC2 in the Fall being held by MLG and NASL2, and then there is Blizzcon's tournament. Do the registration fees of the players and casting really pay enought for such a large event?
The more I think about it, the more I think there is a potiential for eSports to become really big over the next few years. With technology improvments to AppleTV, Boxee, XBox, and Playstation, these devices can be the delievery vehicles to HDTV sets vs the PC or laptop.
What concerns me though is if the economics aren't transparent we can see another bust like 2008 eSports went through due to mismanagment. I was watching djWHEAT's Inside the Game cast the other week where he talked a lot how the failure of some of the eSports leagues really gave the franchise a bad rap.
Much like poker, I think one of the main draws for people to watch will be due to great talent taking shots at large prizes side by side next to amatures who by some chance develope some skill or use unorthadox play to upset the establishment. It won't happen right away, but much like all major sports today, one upset with positive coverage could change everything.
Cheers!
