EPTSo the question is whether a yearly ticket for GSL is worth it. You have a few options, ignoring the GSTL for a moment, on tickets to buy. The light ticket is $70, the premium is $115, and the premium+ (no ads) is $154. Buying it per season is $15 at the lowest option (or $75 for the whole year) and $35 for the highest option (or 175 for the whole year).
A lot of people, again, were saying this is a lot of money to be paying for GSLs and a price that was unprecedented. The argument was also that it would just allow companies to charge higher prices. That might very well be true and this could lead to more expensive tickets in the future, but in the present I would argue that this price is very affordable and worth every dollar.
I would argue this because you are buying a lot more than an hour's worth of entertainment for every dollar. This is essentially the video game argument. Movies cost anywhere between 10 and 18 dollars a theater, especially on the coasts where they are more expensive than in Middle America (I don't know European prices), yet you are usually paying for 2 hours worth of entertainment and maybe even only 1 hour and a half. Video games can give you hundreds of hours of entertainment from only a 50 or 60 dollar price tag at most (Starcraft for example, or Skyrim).
So let's look to see if the GSL compares. Let us assume that you don't like Tastosis or Wolf, Khaldor, and Moletrap. Let's assume that you only watch the games and skip through the casters or mute them or whatever. So considering a low estimate of 10 minutes real time or 14 minutes game time for an average game in the GSL (which is low considering this: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=240774) and only 2 games per best of three, then for every best of three you get 20 minutes of real "value" out of the GSL. So you need to watch 3 best of threes to make an hour of "value" out of the GSL or 6 actual sets.
This means to make each dollar worth an hour of entertainment, then you need to watch 180 best of threes for the $60 option, 300 for the $100 option, and 450 for $150 dollar option.
Let's now take a look at the number of games in a typical GSL. There are 52 best of threes in Code A. There are 60 best of threes in Code S Round of 32 and Round of 16 together. The single bracket in Code S Round of 8 and above consists of 6 best of 5s and 1 best of 7. Ignoring that bracket, this leaves us with 112 best of threes per season not including the Up and Downs (of which there are a significant amount). Since there are 5 seasons per year, that means 560 best of threes.
This means that taking the most expensive option that does not include GSTL, which I did because I got tired of ads during 2011, skipping the caster banter before/after the games, and only watching Code A and Code S before the round of 8, I still get more than an hour's worth of entertainment from each dollar I spend. This is at the super minimum of a 10 (real time) minute game or 14 (game time) minute game with only 2 sets per best of three.
Dollar for dollar, the purchase is worth it. Although again, this isn't an argument saying that it is good for eSports or that you should buy it, but just that if you are planning on being entertained by Starcraft for the whole year, you are spending your money fairly well when compared to other forms of entertainment you could get.
it is blasphemy that in this day and age, such a horrible quality stream even exists.
