EPTFXOpen Invitational Final Analysis - Page 5
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juicy
Australia145 Posts
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FXOpen
Australia1844 Posts
On February 20 2012 20:05 melinauvu wrote: I agree with Zax19. Weekend tournament model should be alot profitable because people sitting at home for the weekend follows it all along. For example, I only followed FXOpen when other streams are not good enough. I did not even watch it live. But, I tried to watch homestorycup because I know who is eliminated or who is not. Although, I stayed home all this weekend, I do not even know who won the FXOpen. I am sure 8-10k money would be enough to make it a weekend tournament like home story cup, but in Korea instead of EU. The main issue is which weekend should it be? If you can time it well and bring good casters/players, I am sure it will break even. The fact that the event was broadcasted over 8 separate broadcast days to reach that 2700 figure. A weekend system would mean we have to cut the prize back to $500 which makes it non-viable. - Unstable | ||
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TumNarDok
Germany854 Posts
As on twitch, its "one of them buttons somewhere in the website".. but to be used it needs to be more recognizeable by the viewer. Also, embed the stream player into an own website, you can then design it with your own IP and add value through providing additonal values like.. proper chat, link to merchandise, social media embeds, tournament informations about brackets and players, timing schedules, and info/advertisements about your own organization. Also, and after following the humblebundle dot com / Mojam event last weekend - allow volunteers to donate money of their own choice, in a simple to use interface. They raised 430k $ in 4 days for charity based on that and while i would not call it a business model - because you are not able to calculate it, it can help to mitigate the cost. However to completely compare it to mojam.. ok the donors there also had gotten 3 free games to play. So a little something should be coming with the donations in addition to higher quality of streaming ... ideally easily distributable over the internet.. maybe replay packs or so ? (brainstoprming needed) -- Bottom line is though, as of now the sponsorships drive the tournaments and esports teams - community must be increased to 500% to break even on even a low cost event as this, played only online and only revenue through steaming ads. -- thanks for the insights mr boss | ||
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L3g3nd_
New Zealand10461 Posts
2.5k isnt that much at all | ||
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RudePlague
Great Britain113 Posts
Hopefully this sort of information will make people realise that tournaments aren't making huge sums of money by being free and aid more informed discussion on the subject of monetising the industry and helping it to become sustainable in the future. | ||
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FXOpen
Australia1844 Posts
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Zax19
Czech Republic1136 Posts
On February 20 2012 20:13 FXOpen wrote: The fact that the event was broadcasted over 8 separate broadcast days to reach that 2700 figure. A weekend system would mean we have to cut the prize back to $500 which makes it non-viable. - Unstable Not necessarily, there are ways how to structure this so that the 2 days have a climax. Looking at day 1 and day 2, the whole weekend was Ro32 WB. You could do one “side” of the bracket so that the day 1 is the 8 matches Ro32 and day 2 is the 7 matches from Ro 16 to the semifinals. So the climax of the first week is the name of the WB finalist, the second week is the name if the second WB finalist. The third week is the WB bracket finals and the name of one LB finalist, the fourth week is the second LB finalist, LB finals and the grandfinals. It’s basically the same as running a couple of small qualifiers every weekend and then having one weekend final tournament. Of course this is only one of many things you could try – nobody says it’s easy, yet there seems to be room for improvement (and it seems that you wish to continue fighting for e-sports). I don't want the stats to be the "proof" that’s it’s not sustainable to run an online tournament when there are several ways other online tournaments manage to increase their revenue. The stats prove it’s a very competitive environment, it’s good for the context, so in general you need something “more/else” than great players, good production and decent price pool (as sad as it may sound). ADDITION: The issue with FIS specifically is that FXOpen is both the sponsor and the tournament organiser. My understanding of sponsorship is that you spend money and give away products in order to get back something else than money. It’s a form of marketing, you get back some money in increased sales, market share, brand awareness and so on. As it’s been mentioned most of the sponsors are already known to an average e-sports viewer so the issue is how to entice the sponsors offering anything “strange”. FXOpen as a sponsor will probably lose money because they offer something especially “strange” to the average viewer but it doesn’t mean they have to lose money as a tournament organiser. If it was profitable to sponsor in e-sports in pure “money for money” perspective then to me it would be the same as lending money to gain money. | ||
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pepsimaxibon
61 Posts
a high balling tv show such as american idol can make around 70cents per viewer per episode, that's roughly= 45cents per each hour watched by an individual. that's the very top end - a less prestigious show such as modern family would only receive 14 cents per viewer per episode (28 cents per viewer per hour). to contrast, this event works out (using the 400k hours watched) at roughly 0.6 cents per viewer per hour. i'd love to say i'm surprised, but anyone who's sat on a twitch/own3d stream for any amount of time knows how mindbogglingly inefficient they are. you'll likely see the same advert for the same niche product maybe two dozen times over the course of a modest tournament, often something that has only a tangible connection to the sc2 demographic: or more importantly, the discrete demographics of individuals. there is a huge, huge opportunity for someone with the clout and entrepreneurship to make internet streaming ad revenue work. we each shell out so many personal details, and google adsense has become creepily orwellian in its understanding of an individual's interests: why is nobody doing something similar with video? those 400k stream hours should be a golden number, and worth far more currency that it is. even receiving a tenth of an extremely modest pphr tv rate would soar you into a profit, and there is no reason for the "one size fits all" scattershot of tv marketing when advertisers have all the tools available to make a surgically accurate ad strike through all the information our ip addresses cough up. the potential is there, the infrastructure is not. | ||
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ReaperX
Hong Kong1758 Posts
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Rylaji
Sweden580 Posts
It also does show people who think "OMG EVERY PRO PLAYER MAKES MILLIONS" that there is not much cash in e-sports at all. People need to start spending money on the industry itself if they want it to grow I feel. | ||
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FXOBoSs
337 Posts
On February 20 2012 21:38 pepsimaxibon wrote: thanks for the numbers. really shows how immature internet stream advertising is and how the rates are just godawful compared with traditional tv advertising. a high balling tv show such as american idol can make around 70cents per viewer per episode, that's roughly= 45cents per each hour watched by an individual. that's the very top end - a less prestigious show such as modern family would only receive 14 cents per viewer per episode (28 cents per viewer per hour). to contrast, this event works out (using the 400k hours watched) at roughly 0.6 cents per viewer per hour. i'd love to say i'm surprised, but anyone who's sat on a twitch/own3d stream for any amount of time knows how mindbogglingly inefficient they are. you'll likely see the same advert for the same niche product maybe two dozen times over the course of a modest tournament, often something that has only a tangible connection to the sc2 demographic: or more importantly, the discrete demographics of individuals. there is a huge, huge opportunity for someone with the clout and entrepreneurship to make internet streaming ad revenue work. we each shell out so many personal details, and google adsense has become creepily orwellian in its understanding of an individual's interests: why is nobody doing something similar with video? those 400k stream hours should be a golden number, and worth far more currency that it is. even receiving a tenth of an extremely modest pphr tv rate would soar you into a profit, and there is no reason for the "one size fits all" scattershot of tv marketing when advertisers have all the tools available to make a surgically accurate ad strike through all the information our ip addresses cough up. the potential is there, the infrastructure is not. This also raises the question why viewers don't watch e-sports on TV... but either way... I think I have a solution that brings the gap closer but it will take some time. | ||
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FrozenFrotie
Singapore156 Posts
On February 20 2012 19:50 Zax19 wrote: Thank you for the final numbers and here is a bit of feedback. A) Other than what’s been mentioned I still think you should put more weight on the subscriptions such as limited stream quality. 480p for free is ok, 720p and more for free in this kind of event is just too “nice”. Make it another reason to get the subscription. B) 32 players, double elimination (a lot of content and fair to the players) split over 4 weekends make it very difficult to follow and kill the hype a bit. A smaller event during one weekend would probably bring higher average viewership. C) Casters are a thing of personal preference and definitely can up the budget but they bring the followers. You could ask some English speaking progamers to do a bit of co-casting, they tweet about it and bring their fans and so on (although some might consider it a dip in “casting quality”.) All in all the talent of the players is of Code S level, what you miss it the live studio, the production (yours is just fine anyway), more exclusive subscription (less for free), the hype, the strong celebrities (aside from the Korean players) and their following. I know it sounds harsh, difficult and obvious, but it’s a list of things you can take apart and find the most accessible ways to improve. Agreed. I feel like more hype can be generated by making the brackets easier to follow, possibly through a graphic to show where each player is in the tournament and who we can anticipate he will meet in further into the tournament. I'd think a more open pricing system may generate more revenue. For example, make the price floor $2, but let subscribers pay as much as they want. As a perk , their chance to win a lucky draw increases the more they pay. I am of the view that people who are willing to go through the hassle of using their credit card to subscribe to your tournament recognize the value of the product that you provide. Having an open pricing system allows these subscribers to not be bound by a fixed rate and instead pay as they see fit. Do you think this is a viable option to try out? | ||
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stentorian
United States1 Post
I just spoke to my girlfriend who works with Twitch on their advertising. What she tells me is that you will only get paid for ads that run in the countries for which the ads are approved to be run in. Since most of the ad sales teams do deals with American companies, the only views that are getting good CPMs are the ones based in the US. As a result, you may want to reconsider broadcasting the live event at 3am EST when the US is sleeping. Also, given how (relatively) small your concurrent viewer numbers are, FXO should consider building it's own ad sales team (or see if Twitch will work with you directly) to sell directly to advertisers for future events, the goal being that the special nature of this event would sway an advertiser to pay higher rates. In-stream ads are another option, even if pre-rolls will still make up most of the revenue. The good news here is that she tells me e-Sports is an "extremely attractive" demographic for advertisers, if the value is properly explained to the advertisers (which can be tricky if they have no idea what SC2 is). This is my first post on TL (long time lurker) but since I have a direct connection to the topic I thought it made sense to speak up. | ||
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FXOpen
Australia1844 Posts
On February 21 2012 00:20 stentorian wrote: FXOBoss - thanks for sharing. I just spoke to my girlfriend who works with Twitch on their advertising. What she tells me is that you will only get paid for ads that run in the countries for which the ads are approved to be run in. Since most of the ad sales teams do deals with American companies, the only views that are getting good CPMs are the ones based in the US. As a result, you may want to reconsider broadcasting the live event at 3am EST when the US is sleeping. Also, given how (relatively) small your concurrent viewer numbers are, FXO should consider building it's own ad sales team (or see if Twitch will work with you directly) to sell directly to advertisers for future events, the goal being that the special nature of this event would sway an advertiser to pay higher rates. In-stream ads are another option, even if pre-rolls will still make up most of the revenue. The good news here is that she tells me e-Sports is an "extremely attractive" demographic for advertisers, if the value is properly explained to the advertisers (which can be tricky if they have no idea what SC2 is). This is my first post on TL (long time lurker) but since I have a direct connection to the topic I thought it made sense to speak up. I understand your point completely, But the US was still our no1 demographic for our event regardless of the timeslot which makes things more complicated than it seems. - Unstable | ||
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Seanza
171 Posts
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Longshank
1648 Posts
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Sermokala
United States13984 Posts
As for the subscription prize draw thing I think that was a great idea but the prize's could be made to be more personalized to the winners favorite player. Say grand prize is an old uniform that their favorite player wore. like the players get or the chance to play against/ with their favorite player for an hour. the chance of being able to tell your friends that you played 2v2's with leenock or gumiho for an hour seems pretty crazy. The event was really good and I really enjoyed the player list and the casters. Having a bracket and a corresponding schedule for when the matches are going to be aired would be cool as well, thats how I keep up on Olympic tournaments when everything starts to blend together. | ||
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daemir
Finland8662 Posts
The easier and cheaper you make things, more you'd get I feel. If it's a complicated registering and subscription process through 15 clicks, emails and confirmations, I don't think people simply bother, they don't bother for free stuff often either. I guess it's tricky to create a very fast, easy to use yet safe payment method though. But 400k and .25, that's already quite a bit. Even if half the people would bother doing it, it's still a lot. Dunno, just something I thought about, since I don't think that any tournament or event is worth spending 10-20 dollars for just viewing (especially since you aren't guaranteed to get the product eg HD stream, maybe power goes out in your region, maybe the stream provider has bad connection to your specific area, maybe there's tech problems etc.). | ||
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KaptenCulpa
Sweden29 Posts
I think you need to find the middle ground between PPV and the free option. Some tournaments have touched on this with offering high quality streams and some extra steams to paying viewers. The problem with getting enough viewers to pay for this is in my opinion that watching the free stream is not that different. People like to fell that they get something for their money. In this case I have a feeling that sense is a bit lacking when the free streams are still pretty good. With that said I don't feel straight up PPV is the best way to go (sometimes maybe it is). Watching the games in a tournament is only part of the experience. Anyone who watched homestory cup know what I am talking about. What if a tournament says fine, watch all the games free in a lower quality, but we are gone cut you in just when the games start and cut you out just when the game ends. No extra caster before and after talk, none of the extra content with players in between such as interviews and analysis. None of the other content between games that makes it a realy good tournament for the viewers at home. With enough good content anyone with a normal economy would pay a few dollars for these extras if he was going to watch more then maybe an hour or two, and the pricing was right. This should boost the umbers of paying viewers, and make it possible to sell the product pretty cheaply . If you also make reasonable one day passes available you could even reach people who are unable to watch big parts of tournament (cause they might have jobs or such). I think homestory cup really showed that this should be possible for any big live tournaments where you have players on site to produce the kind of content that people are willing to pay for. I feel that going that extra mile in content in between games could be the way to profit for many tournaments, and they wouldn't need to loose relevance in the community due to low numbers of viewers, as everyone could still watch it free. The one that pulls this of with good enough quality and good pricing could do really well. I guess its not a post on PPV, but one on a freemium-model of PPV. | ||
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Primadog
United States4411 Posts
Ouch. | ||
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