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Recently I watched Live on Three for the highly anticipated interview with Sundance DiGiovanni. Sundance recently made the bold move to charge for his MLG Winter Arena event. Gold members who pay a yearly subscription fee for a high quality stream and commercial-less broadcasts were left in the dust for the upcoming event. Sure they get a $5 discount, but the gold members still feel jilted by Major League Gaming.
I went to MLG Anaheim and loaded up on countless Dr. Peppers and enjoyed a conversation with qxc. I have to be honest, that the MLG events have an incredible atmosphere. There I things that MLG has done poorly in the past and have rectified this issue with correct public relations moves. The Dallas stream debacle was a devastating problem, and they offered refunds or free Columbus high definition stream. So not every problem that MLG has is handled as poorly as the upcoming MLG Winter Arena event.
Before the Live on Three interview, I was seriously contemplating purchasing the event. Then I tuned in to the interview. This is the summary of the interview:
-Sundance shouting
-Sundance wanting to make a profit
-Sundance thinking highly of himself and believes his product is the best for e-sports
-Sundance admitting they screwed up
-Sundance’s devil may care attitude towards MLG
Perhaps it’s a bit of an oversimplification, but I came away from the interview wondering if this guy is delusional, overly confident/arrogant, or is just a businessman looking to make money. I did come away from the interview thinking that perhaps e-sports does not need people like Sundance DiGiovanni. I know it is a bold statement, but I believe that Sundance does have an influence on e-sports, he is never larger than the sports he promotes. E-sports is made by community members who created new social activities such as Barcrafts. They are also made by people who support MLG by attending their events and of course by the members of communities such as Reddit and Team Liquid.
Sundance made the proclamation that he could “walk away” and feel alright about the decision. Perhaps this decision would not be a bad thing. Sundance has a severe public relations problem as he spurns the community that supports him. Do I blame him for wanting to make a profit? No. I but I believe that Sundance needs to do his best to rectify the problem quickly and amicably. If he still wants to commit to disregard and disrespect the communities that support him, perhaps MLG will end up paying the price long term and we will be talking about another professional league disappearing.
 
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I think a good oversimplification would be "I fired that guy". He handled that interview very poorly, but overall I don't really disagree with what MLG is doing as long as Gold fans feel like a $5 discount is enough.
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I think you're looking too much into the presentation of what he said, and not the idea behind it.
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wait,title is misleading. White - Ra is Bigger than ESPORTS!
on a srs note :
Im pretty sure there will be people who will get rich off of ESPORTS,but not when the cost is their name and the love of the community.I hope this Moondance or whatever guy is really gives this a thought since now the whole community dislikes him.Im sure the money he'll get will be more if he charged some nominal fee because everybody would watch.Now he just destroys the good name MLG has
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On February 17 2012 18:04 bGr.MetHiX wrote:
wait,title is misleading. White - Ra is Bigger than ESPORTS!
You sir are correct, I stand corrected.
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Congo598 Posts
in that list of things about sundance i think you missed the part where he showed he had a real passion for games, and if he was doing everything in a pure business, money making manner he would have cut many games off mlg long ago. He obviously needs to make money, thats not even his decision but fact of the matter is the man wants these games to be huge, and is taking risks and putting even his own money into it.
And why do you care that he was yelling? It wasnt a professional interview to begin with, i mean you could easily say sirscoots was out of line but you sir obviously need to poke something with your pitchfork.
Sometimes i also feel that people replace the term starcraft 2 with esports. Thats annoying as well. Mlg has done much more for other community's too, and as he said its all connected in the end. Mlg didnt start with starcraft.
Just throwing out the part of the interview you apparently didnt watch =o And we do need people who take these risks, otherwise we will forever be small community with no profit.
As for my opinion on the matter - i wont comment, i have yet to decide if i am purchasing the $20 dollar ticket yet.
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Sundance is riding esports into its grave. he wants to grow it too fast, unnaturally while trying to make loads of money off of it.
I sincerely hope mlg crashes fast and hard for the greater good of sc2 esports
Ive seen the whole lo3 interview and i am disgusted by his opinions
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I came away from the interview feeling the same way. He said: "I fucked up" a lot but refused to do anything about it (besides fire someone that made a misleading announcement). You can't just say you made a mistake without trying to fix it if you want good PR.
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I think that people think that Sundance has more power than he does. I love Sundance and he has always tried in the past to address community concerns while running the company, but as they said post-interview, it seems as if his hands are a bit tied on this one.
The thing is that a CEO cannot do whatever he wants. He also cannot blame the people writing the checks for the decisions either. As top dog, you have to take responsiblity for all decisions, even if they were not yours or what you wanted to do. Yes the CEO is the head and guides quite a bit, but Sundance has bosses and if he refused this, then those bosses could force him out, or run the company into the ground and write it off as just a lost investment.
I don't agree with the price on the ticket, and I also think that Gold members should have gotten it free from the start. That being said though, I think it is silly to think some of the points about Sundance. He is not a money-grubbing demon as many people made him out to be. If he was, he wouldn't be in this industry in the first place. Also, he is not "killing esports" or whatever other ridiculous things people think.
The fact is that if the PPV model does not work, then businesses will either find new revenue sources or go out of business. That is not their fault. If esports or SC2 is dying, it is not because of MLG or NASL or whomever you want to blame at all. The fans and players are the only ones to blame. It all exsisted on a minute scale for years while passionate players and fans supported it because they loved it. Just because a business is trying to give us content while turning a profit does not change anything.
As for the interview itself, it was a casual interview and yes Sundance got emotional at points, but so did Scoots. The fact is that things were not handled right overall, but he does not have all the power in the world to change them, so part of his job is sitting there, taking the brunt of the hate while still trying to run a damn business. That is a hard fucking job and by the time the interview happened, he had already gotten so much shit for something that is, at least to a good part, beyond his control.
I think that people need to give him a break. If you don't want to pay the money, don't pay the money. If the content is worth it, then pay. Just know that he is not doing this out of greed and maliciousness. He is not sitting around, twiddling his thumbs, hatching plans to make millions and screw his fans. It is just a huge jump in reason to think so if you know anything at all about how businesses function.
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On February 17 2012 17:54 Wrongspeedy wrote:
I think a good oversimplification would be "I fired that guy". He handled that interview very poorly, but overall I don't really disagree with what MLG is doing as long as Gold fans feel like a $5 discount is enough.
I paid for gold membership for a years access to HQ streams from MLG events.
So no, I don't feel that way.
Up to MLG to do business their way, I just won't give them more of my money because of this.
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You're fucking retarded if you honestly believe that. Sundance doesn't make a ton of money, he could make more money working another job. But he doesn't. Why? BECAUSE HE CARES ABOUT ESPORTS, which is why he agreed to do the impromptu interview explaining himself in the first place.
User was temp banned for this post.
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On February 17 2012 20:29 Drizzt3 wrote:
You're fucking retarded if you honestly believe that. Sundance doesn't make a ton of money, he could make more money working another job. But he doesn't. Why? BECAUSE HE CARES ABOUT ESPORTS, which is why he agreed to do the impromptu interview explaining himself in the first place.
You makes the "making tons of money if he has another job" sounds too easy
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On February 17 2012 20:29 Drizzt3 wrote:
You're fucking retarded if you honestly believe that. Sundance doesn't make a ton of money, he could make more money working another job. But he doesn't. Why? BECAUSE HE CARES ABOUT ESPORTS, which is why he agreed to do the impromptu interview explaining himself in the first place.
Neither the OP nor me nor you (I assume) know anything about how much or little he makes when it comes to money. Maybe he could make more somewhere else, maybe not. We don't know. It certainly could be true.
But it's not 'fact' that have any relevance really ... because we don't, and can't, know what the facts actually are.
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I'm a gold member and I get my 4 MLG events during 2012, which is what I expected out my Gold membership.
I'm on the ropes about winter arena because I wont have a lot of free time this weekend but watching the Lo3-interview makes me want to buy the ticket even if I can't watch the show just to support MLG and applaud them for not backing down to self-entitled Gold members random demands.
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Selective hearing FTL. I don't know how you can say he is spurning the community when he is giving us the cold truth.
-Sundance shouting (Outside of the CGS argument with Scoots he was simply speaking loudly)
-Sundance wanting to make a profit (Wanting his business to be sustainable and *eventually* be profitable is a bad thing?)
-Sundance thinking highly of himself and believes his product is the best for e-sports (If he didn't think his product was the best or even good for e-sports he shouldn't be investing millions into it)
-Sundance admitting they screwed up (Would you rather he didn't admit it? He even said it was largely due to the fired staff but took the blame anyway)
-Sundance’s devil may care attitude towards MLG (If you stop and think about it there is thought put into his actions)
Like he said "this event will decide if I have a business or a really expensive hobby" he wasn't kidding. If you think e-sports is fine the way it is watch Assembly. If you think his vision of transforming e-sports is good then pay for the arena. At the end of the day the numbers will tell the story.
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I think the wanting to grow and the screw-ups are yesteryear's problems (the year of horrible website, acquisitions and the subsequent lay-offs).
I think these recent events are, in fact, paying the price for the rashness of 2011, not the desire to make huge profits, just satisfying some of the venture capital investors of MLG, that it can operate without losses. Who knows? Or maybe it is ESPN or some other entity who wants to test the market before they jump on the ship, maybe next Arena will be on TV as well as PPV or something.
I don't really think it is greed, at least not Sundance's, that is the motivation but everyone has to make up their own mind about it.
I am personally leaning towards buying a pass (while giving them feedback that the price ought to be lower) and going to barcraft.
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Since the first time I saw an MLG event I've never had a very positive opinion about Sundance.
He seems like a nice guy, but also quite stupid.
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A lot of people seem to say that he could have approached the interview in a slightly different manner, but I definitely agree with hoby2000 with the fact that the ideas behind it are pretty solid. There's still all the free MLG content (nothing else has changed at all), and he's trying one single pay-per-view event. That's it. And if someone doesn't feel like paying twenty bucks for it, then they don't pay for it. Sundance is just testing the waters. Most sports have ppv events, and we're actually pretty spoiled for having everything sc2-related free. It's not like all the tournaments are going to start costing money to watch online now just because of this one event.
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-Sundance shouting
-Sundance wanting to make a profit
-Sundance thinking highly of himself and believes his product is the best for e-sports
-Sundance admitting they screwed up
-Sundance’s devil may care attitude towards MLG
While these are all true to some extent, if these are the main points you took from that episode of LO3, you missed the show.
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This was probably/obviously a directive from the board. I don't see why this is so hard to understand.
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I don't think you should take much of his attitude negatively. I don't feel like the interview was formal enough to judge him that way. (him shouting etc, cuz scoots was also nagging him on)
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On February 17 2012 18:47 isleyofthenorth wrote:
I sincerely hope mlg crashes fast and hard for the greater good of sc2 esports
Yeah I am sure a ton of good will come to the scene by one of the major groups in it completely blowing up
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the reaction comes down to people being too stupid to understand the simplest aspects of how traditional, VC-funded companies are run. Sundance has a bunch of 60 year old white dudes who put 50mil in this thing telling him what to do and its his job to take the heat and make something out of the business/plan that he is given. CEO means chief EXECUTIVE officer.
its like iloveoov (board) telling fantasy what to do, and fantasy executes it
(or sc2, boxer telling mma what to do)
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I swear some of you are living in a bubble and didn't actually listen to the interview. Sundance runs a business and is trying to make it viable, they are trying this once to see if it works, if you can't afford it then thats fine but if you can afford it then pay so that next time they can drop the price and get more viewers and put more money in to the players and teams.
We should be willing to pay, nothing comes for free in this world. Grow up children and join the real world where businesses make money and you don't always get what you want
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On February 17 2012 18:04 bGr.MetHiX wrote:I hope this Moondance or whatever guy is
I laughed so hard at Moondance.
I think Sundance is a good guy, but I've yet to see the LO3 interview.
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United Kingdom16710 Posts
Maybe he needs Butch to steady the ship. 
I didn't catch the show, but it sounds like he didn't cover himself in glory with explaining the business decisions & mistakes they made. Perhaps he just forgot the delivery of the message is as important as the message itself, and didn't prepare enough. Oh well, everyone has bad days. From what I've seen so far, he's a decent guy. He does seem to genuinely care about the growth of the scene. MLG's decision to change their model is perfectly understandable, though I disagree with a few details. I hope it works out for them. SC2 & esports in general is better off with MLG in business.
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On February 18 2012 03:08 Telcontar wrote:Maybe he needs Butch to steady the ship. I didn't catch the show, but it sounds like he didn't cover himself in glory with explaining the business decisions & mistakes they made. Perhaps he just forgot the delivery of the message is as important as the message itself, and didn't prepare enough. Oh well, everyone has bad days. From what I've seen so far, he's a decent guy. He does seem to genuinely care about the growth of the scene. MLG's decision to change their model is perfectly understandable, though I disagree with a few details. I hope it works out for them. SC2 & esports in general is better off with MLG in business.
Take a look at reddit for another viewpoint on how the interview with him went. He actually gave a damn good interview when Scoots wasn't yelling over him repeatedly.
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EPT
