NASL and SC2 Tourney Economics

Allenansgar

United States31 Posts

July 12 2011 03:43 GMT

Greetings Team Liquid Readers,

So 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!

FragKrag

United States11567 Posts

July 12 2011 03:50 GMT

You actually make a great point with AppleTV/GoogleTV/Boxee/etc

People are starting to move away more and more from the TV/cable programming as their main media consumption device, and it really benefits eSports. With more online streaming services popping up, if they eventually gain popularity, it's only a matter of time before SC2 and other eSports are going to be shown.

If anything, we already know that many of the high up companies are already aware of SC2 as an eSport due to the AH SC League that twitter, google, etc are setting up. Given SC2's broad exposure online, it's probably only a matter of time before online streaming for HTPC is going to knock on the door.

udgnim

United States8024 Posts

July 12 2011 03:53 GMT

NASL basically made up some numbers (you can call this analyzing/predicting) and pitched the numbers & ideas to investors

they did a good enough job to build up investor confidence and secure 3 seasons with a total guaranteed prize pool of 400K

being able to monetize online streams has made a lot of these leagues/tournaments like NASL much more financially viable.

regarding 2008 e-sports failure, I'm going to quote Leah Jackson's G4 article

The CGS tried to be an American eSports league televised on G4 and DirectTV but it quickly died out for a variety of reasons. Aside from being a passionate league filled with amazing talent and production value, they eventually spread themselves too thin. Instead of trying to create a national franchise, they tried to create a global one when they simply couldn’t afford it. The league burned out almost as quickly as it was ignited and with it went many of the potential advertisers and sponsors of eSports.

“The CGS turned out to be a great example of how you can't throw money at eSports and expect success. Although they suffered the curse of average game titles, the real downfall of the CGS was the massive amounts of money they dedicated to their global initiative with relatively zero return. Ultimately, CGS wasted money by expanding too quickly," said Marcus “djWHEAT” Graham, eSports Commentator.

http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/714327/screenside-esports-a-history/#ixzz1RrMthqbs

I don't think NASL is headed in that direction. what they definitely need to focus on though is tightening up the quality of their productions.

I'd like changes to their format to as well. example, double elimination tournament during playoff stage and a non-fixed maps for matches where G1 map is a very accepted balanced map and the rest of the maps are loser's pick, but NASL really needs to push their production snafus to an absolute minimum so the focus becomes on the quality of the matches instead of NASL's production mistakes.

Yurie

12151 Posts

July 12 2011 05:10 GMT

Allenansgar with streams the ad revenue is in large parts coming back to the ones running the tournament. Same with HD prices and venue tickets. It is possible to get large venues and people to visit them for money.

The last and most important part is sponsors. The other ones don't make enough money to pay for things. Same is true for normal sports as well, without sponsors we wouldn't be seeing those high salaries.

Cassel_Castle

United States820 Posts

July 12 2011 05:46 GMT

I think the next step in "monetizing online streams" is ads that are part of the stream itself and not an adblockable overlay. Obviously this is only feasible for big tournaments like NASL, but the increase in revenue should be huge, since the only thing viewers can do is mute, and that doesn't deny them ad revenue.

Nuclearasaurus

United States5 Posts

July 12 2011 06:05 GMT

The NASL Finals has some great matches. I wasn't disappointed with the game play at all, what I was disappointed with was the production. Most likely their add revenue and sponsors were contracted ahead of time to make sure their prize pool was guaranteed, I must admit that the prize pool is what lured me into this (besides the big names obv) I hope that tournaments like this keep popping up and the esports community keeps going with this trend.

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