As promised albeit delayed. Below you will find the full analysis of the FXOpen Invitational series of the last month.
I do apologise for the delay there has been a lot going on lately.
Over the course of event, FXOpen e-sports broke its own records for viewership, hours played and monthly income. We are very impressed by the communities support towards our event and thankful to everyone who watched the awesome games.
Our viewership stats are as follows:
Video Plays: 720993 Unique visitors: 434895 Hours watched: 393577 Max Concurrent Viewers: 10875 Average Concurrent during live: 7615
During the entire event we ran 956 commercials. We had 95 subscribers.
Total income from advertising: 2412.88 Total income from subscribers: 332.50 Total income: 2745.38
Cost to run the event: $8000
As you can see we did not come close to the running cost of the event, even with viewership records and high numbers of advertisements. If you wish to google the way to calculate CPM eCPM etc feel free to do so. But I will not be doing that in this thread.
My personal analysis of this event is that it was successful for what we are trying to achieve. This was a strong viewer growth. Although breaking even financially would have been great, we managed to grow our product to an all time high for our events. Which adds to the exposure of the brand name.
There is nothing overly interesting about these figures other than the fact that even with 7-10k viewers it is very difficult for an organisation to break even without multiple streams of income. I guess it reinforces the whole facebook/google vs e-sports argument I have run into recently. Without huge viewership, ad revenue from its current sources is not a viable business model for e-sports.
Without re-starting the who PPV debate a sponsorship model is also a non viable model as it becomes a 'reliant' source of income. Basically, if you run a sponsorship model and sponsors go away then you will die.
So my thoughts are a bit mixed on how to go about profitability in the e-Sports market.
A pay per view model is essential but at the same time its a desperate measure.
From our subscription testing in this event I don't even think with a subscription cost of $1 would it help the bottom line. So holding the event with an option subscription is probably going to be as far as we go with a paid model.
Although our production quality has been raised, we will look to raise it again in the next invitational. We have changed the format a little bit to include qualifiers and invites mixed together. The purpose of the format change is to allow for more up time at no extra cost. That way we have more time to run ads and more time to increase our viewership. Of course, this isn't what the community likes to see, you would rather see an increase in prize pool but that won't happen until the economics become viable to host such an event.
If there is anything you'd like me to answer, feel free to post the question here.
Thanks for releasing this stuff, people need to see the numbers like this and actually cope that ESPORTS as a business isn't actually really making money.
Without getting into the debate of whether or not PPV is necessary, I think we can all agree that something needs to be done about the financial viability of hosting a tournament, especially a major LAN. Thank you for releasing these numbers, but I am sure you can agree that these numbers are a bit troubling (Revenues just over a third of total expenses), and that this situation is probably not uncommon.
Your viewer numbers seem really low, like, IdrA streaming the other day had 12k. Maybe it's a result of the main tournament stream being at like 5 in the morning in the US?
Great analysis and insight. Thanks for sharing and always being so interactive with the community. I tried to catch as many games as I could but since I'm from the states it wasn't always convenient to stay up late.
Admittingly I didn't make the effort to catch vods, rather, I just went to liquidpedia for results. Is there a financial benefit to watching vods or does the benefit lie mainly in exposure for the tournament and those involved?
I tried following this event but, couldn't simply because of the time(3 AM EST). I'm the type of person that will watch something if it's "Live/First Broadcast" but, will rarely go out looking for VOD's after the fact since there is just sooo much content that is Live.
Appreciate you getting down and sharing the nitty gritty. How much do you think it would help you if broadcasted at a better time for both NA and EU since those are the main markets at the moment? Think it would've made a significant dent in making up the costs or basically the same?
On February 20 2012 13:14 garbodor wrote: Your viewer numbers seem really low, like, IdrA streaming the other day had 12k. Maybe it's a result of the main tournament stream being at like 5 in the morning in the US?
While at first glance, this conclusion does make a lot of sense, but most people forget that if we did do it at prime time for US or EU. We also run in conflict with NASL, IPL ect. These events have roughly the same viewers (estimate from what I've seen). So running in this timeslot I feel would provide less results and also hurt the viewer ship of all three events.
Thanks for posting this. It's nice to see some financial transparency even though nobody asked you to reveal your numbers. Showing actual numbers about how much in the red you are is certainly a much more appropriate way to get people on your side than vague threats about how e-sports is going to die if we don't pony up $20. I'm glad you guys considered the tournament a success in spite of the lack of revenue. Here's to hoping FXOpen iS#6 gets even bigger.
On February 20 2012 13:14 garbodor wrote: Your viewer numbers seem really low, like, IdrA streaming the other day had 12k. Maybe it's a result of the main tournament stream being at like 5 in the morning in the US?
While at first glance, this conclusion does make a lot of sense, but most people forget that if we did do it at prime time for US or EU. We also run in conflict with NASL, IPL ect. These events have roughly the same viewers (estimate from what I've seen). So running in this timeslot I feel would provide less results and also hurt the viewer ship of all three events.
- Unstable
' In your current time slot isn't there pretty bad overlap with GSL most nights?
You rebroadcasted it, but you ran it right after the first airing ended. Would you not have gotten more ad revenue running it again during a better time for NA/EU viewers? Not that it would have probably made you break even, but still
Very nice to see info like this being broken down for once. I hope that it becomes a trend, I feel like there is too little transparency in eSports at the moment.
On February 20 2012 13:14 garbodor wrote: Your viewer numbers seem really low, like, IdrA streaming the other day had 12k. Maybe it's a result of the main tournament stream being at like 5 in the morning in the US?
While at first glance, this conclusion does make a lot of sense, but most people forget that if we did do it at prime time for US or EU. We also run in conflict with NASL, IPL ect. These events have roughly the same viewers (estimate from what I've seen). So running in this timeslot I feel would provide less results and also hurt the viewer ship of all three events.
- Unstable
' In your current time slot isn't there pretty bad overlap with GSL most nights?
For the days that we Broadcasted GSTL would finish at roughly the time we started on the Saturday broadcast and no GSL event on Sunday.
Our initial goal of that timeslot was to avoid all possible overlap with any event. While it does show that people liked the event as I have heard nothing but good things. It will be a difficult experiment to weigh in on running in the same Time zone as other events. As of course it would affect the bottom line. It's an interesting thing to think about and one of the problems I am trying to solve, Will it be better or worse? I am not sure but its a difficult decision to take the risk when our latest event broke all our previous records.
On February 20 2012 13:26 ninjamyst wrote: Any chance we can see the breakdown of the cost to run the event? Just want to see where that $8k is coming from.
[in no way affiliated with fxo so im probably talking out of my ass :c]
The prize pool was $5k, I'd imagine most of the 8k is that, the rest probably going to production/casting
On February 20 2012 13:23 Gheed wrote: You rebroadcasted it, but you ran it right after the first airing ended. Would you not have gotten more ad revenue running it again during a better time for NA/EU viewers? Not that it would have probably made you break even, but still
We ran rebroadcasts for over 12 hours after each event, Unfortunately we were not approved to have rebroadcast events in the Calander.
Did this in a couple of minutes, but someone weigh in if I'm not doing this right. 2412.88/956 = $2.52 (Earned per ad) 2.52/7615 = $0.00033 (average earned per ad through the duration of the showing)
If I got my definition of CPM properly, the $0.00033 would be the CPM in this specific scenario and it's not what has been touted by any streaming companies. Or if CPM is per 1000, then it would be $0.33, which makes a lot more sense. Still is pretty low, as normally we hear numbers ranging from $2-$4 thrown around.
On February 20 2012 13:33 MrCash wrote: Did this in a couple of minutes, but someone weigh in if I'm not doing this right. 2412.88/956 = $2.52 (Earned per ad) 2.52/7615 = $0.00033 (average earned per ad through the duration of the showing)
If I got my definition of CPM properly, the $0.00033 would be the CPM in this specific scenario and it's not what has been touted by any streaming companies.
It's an easily confused term. What CPM means is how much you get for every 1000 shown ad's. So your calculations don't factor in fill rate.
I'd like to ask about your comment on the sponsorship model, if you expand on your thoughts I'd love to hear them. I agree that relying on one sponsor to stick around and fund a series of tournaments is risky. But on the other hand from your numbers it seems like you have over four hundred thousand pairs of eye balls in a largely young male demographic that you can sell to a variety of sponsors. Am I wrong in thinking that there will always be someone out there willing to pay for that access?
On February 20 2012 13:33 MrCash wrote: Did this in a couple of minutes, but someone weigh in if I'm not doing this right. 2412.88/956 = $2.52 (Earned per ad) 2.52/7615 = $0.00033 (average earned per ad through the duration of the showing)
If I got my definition of CPM properly, the $0.00033 would be the CPM in this specific scenario and it's not what has been touted by any streaming companies.
It's an easily confused term. What CPM means is how much you get for every 1000 shown ad's. So your calculations don't factor in fill rate.
So would it be more appropriate to call this eCPM then? From that we can divulge what the fill rate is, if we know what the twitch is claiming to be their CPM. So if the CPM is say $2 and the eCPM is $0.33, the fill rate would be 16.5%, yes To be fair, that probably isn't even JUST the fill rate, as there are other factors to account for, like ad blockers, but that's always going to be part of the market, so eCPM would be a fair way to call this, I suppose.
On February 20 2012 13:27 ReachTheSky wrote: Sounds like your in the wrong business if your trying to make money. Maybe you should try a different market?
I think they're looking more for financial sustainability than financial profitability.
I seriously wonder how much money NASL is losing trying to do what they are doing.
On February 20 2012 13:33 MrCash wrote: Did this in a couple of minutes, but someone weigh in if I'm not doing this right. 2412.88/956 = $2.52 (Earned per ad) 2.52/7615 = $0.00033 (average earned per ad through the duration of the showing)
If I got my definition of CPM properly, the $0.00033 would be the CPM in this specific scenario and it's not what has been touted by any streaming companies. Or if CPM is per 1000, then it would be $0.33, which makes a lot more sense. Still is pretty low, as normally we hear numbers ranging from $2-$4 thrown around.
This is an incorrect way to calculate CPM or eCPM.
The error of this come from double-counting ads from rebroadcasts. While 956 ads may been played, most of it was played during rebroadcast time, which have much lower concurrent average than the live broadcast. Therefore you're artificially deflating eCPM.
Much more accurate measure would be viewer-hour per ad dollar, which is roughly inline with the first-week analysis FXOBoss produced.
On February 20 2012 13:27 ReachTheSky wrote: Sounds like your in the wrong business if your trying to make money. Maybe you should try a different market?
I think they're looking more for financial sustainability than financial profitability.
We are looking to create e-sports events that are self sustaining and can grow naturally based on that.
On February 20 2012 13:23 Gheed wrote: You rebroadcasted it, but you ran it right after the first airing ended. Would you not have gotten more ad revenue running it again during a better time for NA/EU viewers? Not that it would have probably made you break even, but still
We ran rebroadcasts for over 12 hours after each event, Unfortunately we were not approved to have rebroadcast events in the Calander.
As someone who watched the tourny, I'm sad that only 95 ppl subscribed. they gave away a 10day pass to the FXO house in Korea and only 95 ppl wanted that among other awesome and unique prizes,
On February 20 2012 13:33 MrCash wrote: Did this in a couple of minutes, but someone weigh in if I'm not doing this right. 2412.88/956 = $2.52 (Earned per ad) 2.52/7615 = $0.00033 (average earned per ad through the duration of the showing)
If I got my definition of CPM properly, the $0.00033 would be the CPM in this specific scenario and it's not what has been touted by any streaming companies. Or if CPM is per 1000, then it would be $0.33, which makes a lot more sense. Still is pretty low, as normally we hear numbers ranging from $2-$4 thrown around.
This is an incorrect way to calculate CPM or eCPM.
The error of this come from double-counting ads from rebroadcasts. While 956 ads may been played, most of it was played during rebroadcast time, which have much lower concurrent average than the live broadcast. Therefore you're artificially deflating eCPM.
Much more accurate measure would be viewer-hour per ad dollar, which is roughly inline with the first-week analysis FXOBoss produced.
How is that not eCPM? Do TV ads pay less when they run the show 3 days in a row when the same people are watching? If the ad service providers gives less revenue for running more ads to same viewers, they are either not providing enough diverse ads or are insufficiently filling the ad demand. Those numbers are based completely of total revenue and average concurrent viewers. Viewer-hour per ad dollar ad would serve no purpose and would by definition NOT be eCPM or CPM. Number of ads run per hour and number of viewers hour to hour would vary as well.
Post your edit: That number is an interesting alternative way to look at the subject, however is still not CPM or eCPM, which is how advertising companies basically define and promote themselves.
On February 20 2012 13:33 MrCash wrote: Did this in a couple of minutes, but someone weigh in if I'm not doing this right. 2412.88/956 = $2.52 (Earned per ad) 2.52/7615 = $0.00033 (average earned per ad through the duration of the showing)
If I got my definition of CPM properly, the $0.00033 would be the CPM in this specific scenario and it's not what has been touted by any streaming companies. Or if CPM is per 1000, then it would be $0.33, which makes a lot more sense. Still is pretty low, as normally we hear numbers ranging from $2-$4 thrown around.
This is an incorrect way to calculate CPM or eCPM.
The error of this come from double-counting ads from rebroadcasts. While 956 ads may been played, most of it was played during rebroadcast time, which have much lower concurrent average than the live broadcast. Therefore you're artificially deflating eCPM.
Much more accurate measure would be viewer-hour per ad dollar, which is roughly inline with the first-week analysis FXOBoss produced.
How is that not eCPM? Do TV ads pay less when they run the show 3 days in a row when the same people are watching? If the ad service providers gives less revenue for running more ads to same viewers, they are either not providing enough diverse ads or are insufficiently filling the ad demand. Those numbers are based completely of total revenue and average concurrent viewers. Viewer-hour per ad dollar ad would serve no purpose and would by definition NOT be eCPM or CPM. Number of ads run per hour and number of viewers hour to hour would vary as well.
The trick here is that there aren't 7615 people on average watching both the live and rebroadcasts.
On February 20 2012 13:23 Gheed wrote: You rebroadcasted it, but you ran it right after the first airing ended. Would you not have gotten more ad revenue running it again during a better time for NA/EU viewers? Not that it would have probably made you break even, but still
We ran rebroadcasts for over 12 hours after each event, Unfortunately we were not approved to have rebroadcast events in the Calander.
On February 20 2012 13:33 MrCash wrote: Did this in a couple of minutes, but someone weigh in if I'm not doing this right. 2412.88/956 = $2.52 (Earned per ad) 2.52/7615 = $0.00033 (average earned per ad through the duration of the showing)
If I got my definition of CPM properly, the $0.00033 would be the CPM in this specific scenario and it's not what has been touted by any streaming companies. Or if CPM is per 1000, then it would be $0.33, which makes a lot more sense. Still is pretty low, as normally we hear numbers ranging from $2-$4 thrown around.
This is an incorrect way to calculate CPM or eCPM.
The error of this come from double-counting ads from rebroadcasts. While 956 ads may been played, most of it was played during rebroadcast time, which have much lower concurrent average than the live broadcast. Therefore you're artificially deflating eCPM.
Much more accurate measure would be viewer-hour per ad dollar, which is roughly inline with the first-week analysis FXOBoss produced.
How is that not eCPM? Do TV ads pay less when they run the show 3 days in a row when the same people are watching? If the ad service providers gives less revenue for running more ads to same viewers, they are either not providing enough diverse ads or are insufficiently filling the ad demand. Those numbers are based completely of total revenue and average concurrent viewers. Viewer-hour per ad dollar ad would serve no purpose and would by definition NOT be eCPM or CPM. Number of ads run per hour and number of viewers hour to hour would vary as well.
The trick here is that there aren't 7615 people on average watching both the live and rebroadcasts.
How do you know that? They said average concurrent viewers and total ads run. If the rebroadcast numbers don't include average viewers, than maybe the rebroadcast ads are not listed either? That seems like a strange assumption to make.
On February 20 2012 13:33 MrCash wrote: Did this in a couple of minutes, but someone weigh in if I'm not doing this right. 2412.88/956 = $2.52 (Earned per ad) 2.52/7615 = $0.00033 (average earned per ad through the duration of the showing)
If I got my definition of CPM properly, the $0.00033 would be the CPM in this specific scenario and it's not what has been touted by any streaming companies. Or if CPM is per 1000, then it would be $0.33, which makes a lot more sense. Still is pretty low, as normally we hear numbers ranging from $2-$4 thrown around.
This is an incorrect way to calculate CPM or eCPM.
The error of this come from double-counting ads from rebroadcasts. While 956 ads may been played, most of it was played during rebroadcast time, which have much lower concurrent average than the live broadcast. Therefore you're artificially deflating eCPM.
Much more accurate measure would be viewer-hour per ad dollar, which is roughly inline with the first-week analysis FXOBoss produced.
How is that not eCPM? Do TV ads pay less when they run the show 3 days in a row when the same people are watching? If the ad service providers gives less revenue for running more ads to same viewers, they are either not providing enough diverse ads or are insufficiently filling the ad demand. Those numbers are based completely of total revenue and average concurrent viewers. Viewer-hour per ad dollar ad would serve no purpose and would by definition NOT be eCPM or CPM. Number of ads run per hour and number of viewers hour to hour would vary as well.
The trick here is that there aren't 7615 people on average watching both the live and rebroadcasts.
How do you know that? They said average concurrent viewers and total ads run. If the rebroadcast numbers don't include average viewers, than maybe the rebroadcast ads are not listed either? That seems like a strange assumption to make.
I enjoy tracking data, so I have an idea of the general range of where FIS#5 runs on average. It's unlikely that 7615 number represent an average that includes rebroadcast when this is their best day:
Note that the http://pe.nitrated.net/ tracker refreshes at 3minute intervals. Hence the instanenous concurrent peak would be higher than the tracked concurrent peak.
Consider, for example, if you have 8k people watching live, 4k watching the first rebroadcast, and 2k thereafter watching the 2nd rebroadcast on the average. the 956 ads break down evenly to each of these three time slots. Therefore:
On February 20 2012 13:33 MrCash wrote: Did this in a couple of minutes, but someone weigh in if I'm not doing this right. 2412.88/956 = $2.52 (Earned per ad) 2.52/7615 = $0.00033 (average earned per ad through the duration of the showing)
If I got my definition of CPM properly, the $0.00033 would be the CPM in this specific scenario and it's not what has been touted by any streaming companies. Or if CPM is per 1000, then it would be $0.33, which makes a lot more sense. Still is pretty low, as normally we hear numbers ranging from $2-$4 thrown around.
This is an incorrect way to calculate CPM or eCPM.
The error of this come from double-counting ads from rebroadcasts. While 956 ads may been played, most of it was played during rebroadcast time, which have much lower concurrent average than the live broadcast. Therefore you're artificially deflating eCPM.
Much more accurate measure would be viewer-hour per ad dollar, which is roughly inline with the first-week analysis FXOBoss produced.
How is that not eCPM? Do TV ads pay less when they run the show 3 days in a row when the same people are watching? If the ad service providers gives less revenue for running more ads to same viewers, they are either not providing enough diverse ads or are insufficiently filling the ad demand. Those numbers are based completely of total revenue and average concurrent viewers. Viewer-hour per ad dollar ad would serve no purpose and would by definition NOT be eCPM or CPM. Number of ads run per hour and number of viewers hour to hour would vary as well.
The trick here is that there aren't 7615 people on average watching both the live and rebroadcasts.
How do you know that? They said average concurrent viewers and total ads run. If the rebroadcast numbers don't include average viewers, than maybe the rebroadcast ads are not listed either? That seems like a strange assumption to make.
I enjoy tracking data, so I have an idea of the general range of where FIS#5 runs on average. It's unlikely that 7615 number represent an average that includes rebroadcast when this is their best day:
Note that the http://pe.nitrated.net/ tracker refreshes at 3minute intervals. Hence the instanenous concurrent peak would be higher than the tracked concurrent peak.
Consider, for example, if you have 8k people watching live, 4k watching the first rebroadcast, and 2k thereafter watching the 2nd rebroadcast on the average. the 956 ads break down evenly to each of these three time slots. Therefore:
or a eCPM of $0.5 per thousand. Not great, but at least closer to the quoted CPM and known fill rates.
While a very pretty chart, it's still a lot of assumptions. Assuming that average numbers for rebroadcasts from one day of views. Assuming the total ads run is actually total for everything, while other numbers are exclusive to certain times. Either we can draw conclusions assuming the numbers given to us are accurate or we can't draw any conclusions at all. The more assumptions you ad to the equation, the less valuable the conclusion. From what you are showing there, that seems to be rather accurate for that one day, but that's as far as I can reasonably agree.
I feel like I watched the rebroadcasts much less than I would have otherwise because of it not being on the TL calendar. Is there anyway you guys could get approved for that this next time?
I can't remember how exactly it was setup but there were many times I'd go on the rebroadcast after finding it and be like "Wow, I can't believe there are these great games on here right now and it's not under "On Air:" I have to imagine there were many people who would have otherwise been watching that rebroadcast if it were listed more prominently.
I'm also curious on the sponsorship issue. Maybe I misunderstand what "434,895 Unique Visitors" means, but isn't that a huge amount of awareness for your sponsor? I guess I just don't see why this isn't "reliant" enough. Isn't this appealing to sponsors, why would they all leave?
I look forward to the next tournament. Should be fun .
On February 20 2012 14:06 Befree wrote: I feel like I watched the rebroadcasts much less than I would have otherwise because of it not being on the TL calendar. Is there anyway you guys could get approved for that this next time?
I can't remember how exactly it was setup but there were many times I'd go on the rebroadcast after finding it and be like "Wow, I can't believe there are these great games on here right now and it's not under "On Air:" I have to imagine there were many people who would have otherwise been watching that rebroadcast if it were listed more prominently.
I'm also curious on the sponsorship issue. Maybe I misunderstand what "434,895 Unique Visitors" means, but isn't that a huge amount of awareness for your sponsor? I guess I just don't see why this isn't "reliant" enough. Isn't this appealing to sponsors, why would they all leave?
I look forward to the next tournament. Should be fun .
The problem with sponsorship is who those 400k viewers actually are. Its hard to identify their financial bracket, and thus their value. And sponsors sometimes find it hard to support something they know very little about.
At the same time, the same amount of money can be spent on more solid exposure.
The only reason I would see sponsors leaving is a) they get no value for money or b) they have their own personal financial problems.
On February 20 2012 13:33 MrCash wrote: Did this in a couple of minutes, but someone weigh in if I'm not doing this right. 2412.88/956 = $2.52 (Earned per ad) 2.52/7615 = $0.00033 (average earned per ad through the duration of the showing)
If I got my definition of CPM properly, the $0.00033 would be the CPM in this specific scenario and it's not what has been touted by any streaming companies. Or if CPM is per 1000, then it would be $0.33, which makes a lot more sense. Still is pretty low, as normally we hear numbers ranging from $2-$4 thrown around.
This is an incorrect way to calculate CPM or eCPM.
The error of this come from double-counting ads from rebroadcasts. While 956 ads may been played, most of it was played during rebroadcast time, which have much lower concurrent average than the live broadcast. Therefore you're artificially deflating eCPM.
Much more accurate measure would be viewer-hour per ad dollar, which is roughly inline with the first-week analysis FXOBoss produced.
How is that not eCPM? Do TV ads pay less when they run the show 3 days in a row when the same people are watching? If the ad service providers gives less revenue for running more ads to same viewers, they are either not providing enough diverse ads or are insufficiently filling the ad demand. Those numbers are based completely of total revenue and average concurrent viewers. Viewer-hour per ad dollar ad would serve no purpose and would by definition NOT be eCPM or CPM. Number of ads run per hour and number of viewers hour to hour would vary as well.
The trick here is that there aren't 7615 people on average watching both the live and rebroadcasts.
How do you know that? They said average concurrent viewers and total ads run. If the rebroadcast numbers don't include average viewers, than maybe the rebroadcast ads are not listed either? That seems like a strange assumption to make.
I enjoy tracking data, so I have an idea of the general range of where FIS#5 runs on average. It's unlikely that 7615 number represent an average that includes rebroadcast when this is their best day:
Note that the http://pe.nitrated.net/ tracker refreshes at 3minute intervals. Hence the instanenous concurrent peak would be higher than the tracked concurrent peak.
Consider, for example, if you have 8k people watching live, 4k watching the first rebroadcast, and 2k thereafter watching the 2nd rebroadcast on the average. the 956 ads break down evenly to each of these three time slots. Therefore:
or a eCPM of $0.5 per thousand. Not great, but at least closer to the quoted CPM and known fill rates.
While a very pretty chart, it's still a lot of assumptions. Assuming that average numbers for rebroadcasts from one day of views. Assuming the total ads run is actually total for everything, while other numbers are exclusive to certain times. Either we can draw conclusions assuming the numbers given to us are accurate or we can't draw any conclusions at all. The more assumptions you ad to the equation, the less valuable the conclusion. From what you are showing there, that seems to be rather accurate for that one day, but that's as far as I can reasonably agree.
...
You do realize that the the chart roughly graphs a single live broadcast, and that the leveling off at 5k signals the start of the first rebroadcast period.
Again, this chart comes from the best day of FIS#5 (last day). My example simply shows how to properly calculate eCPM, which demonstrates why your calculation is wrong for every case except for when live viewership = rebroadcast viewership.
On February 20 2012 13:33 MrCash wrote: Did this in a couple of minutes, but someone weigh in if I'm not doing this right. 2412.88/956 = $2.52 (Earned per ad) 2.52/7615 = $0.00033 (average earned per ad through the duration of the showing)
If I got my definition of CPM properly, the $0.00033 would be the CPM in this specific scenario and it's not what has been touted by any streaming companies. Or if CPM is per 1000, then it would be $0.33, which makes a lot more sense. Still is pretty low, as normally we hear numbers ranging from $2-$4 thrown around.
This is an incorrect way to calculate CPM or eCPM.
The error of this come from double-counting ads from rebroadcasts. While 956 ads may been played, most of it was played during rebroadcast time, which have much lower concurrent average than the live broadcast. Therefore you're artificially deflating eCPM.
Much more accurate measure would be viewer-hour per ad dollar, which is roughly inline with the first-week analysis FXOBoss produced.
How is that not eCPM? Do TV ads pay less when they run the show 3 days in a row when the same people are watching? If the ad service providers gives less revenue for running more ads to same viewers, they are either not providing enough diverse ads or are insufficiently filling the ad demand. Those numbers are based completely of total revenue and average concurrent viewers. Viewer-hour per ad dollar ad would serve no purpose and would by definition NOT be eCPM or CPM. Number of ads run per hour and number of viewers hour to hour would vary as well.
The trick here is that there aren't 7615 people on average watching both the live and rebroadcasts.
How do you know that? They said average concurrent viewers and total ads run. If the rebroadcast numbers don't include average viewers, than maybe the rebroadcast ads are not listed either? That seems like a strange assumption to make.
I enjoy tracking data, so I have an idea of the general range of where FIS#5 runs on average. It's unlikely that 7615 number represent an average that includes rebroadcast when this is their best day:
Note that the http://pe.nitrated.net/ tracker refreshes at 3minute intervals. Hence the instanenous concurrent peak would be higher than the tracked concurrent peak.
Consider, for example, if you have 8k people watching live, 4k watching the first rebroadcast, and 2k thereafter watching the 2nd rebroadcast on the average. the 956 ads break down evenly to each of these three time slots. Therefore:
or a eCPM of $0.5 per thousand. Not great, but at least closer to the quoted CPM and known fill rates.
While a very pretty chart, it's still a lot of assumptions. Assuming that average numbers for rebroadcasts from one day of views. Assuming the total ads run is actually total for everything, while other numbers are exclusive to certain times. Either we can draw conclusions assuming the numbers given to us are accurate or we can't draw any conclusions at all. The more assumptions you ad to the equation, the less valuable the conclusion. From what you are showing there, that seems to be rather accurate for that one day, but that's as far as I can reasonably agree.
...
You do realize that the the chart roughly graphs a single live broadcast, and that the 5k leveling off is exactly the first rebroadcast period right?
Again, this chart comes from the best day of FIS#5. My example simply shows how to properly calculate eCPM, which demonstrates why your calculation is wrong for every case except for when live viewership = rebroadcast viewership.
Ok, so you understand that the graph does in fact not display the entire duration of the showing and any conclusion you draw outside of it are assumptions. The numbers given to us by FXOpen are the most reliable we have available.
The numbers I have given are direct from twitch. My calculation was similar to that of the first person to do the cpm/ecpm rates. However there are external variables. That being said the raw figures are that of the first poster.
One thing I would like to commend FXO on is the production value of this whole event. Aside from a couple very minor hitch ups, it was really well done and organized, everything was very smooth and nice.
If you guys ever try anything in the future, I would make a recommendation to ad some personality to it. Even though you guys had higher caliber participants than virtually anything other online tournament out there, the broadcasting and analysis, while clean, was rather bland. There is a lot of appeal and attachment created from casters being on camera in between games (there were a couple videos by FXO members promoting Razer gear I believe, but that was it). Some sort of introductory animations or player statistics would be very beneficial as well.
Of course there are many factors, all of which hard to account for, but I do hope you guys manage to find someway justify airing more of similar caliber games, regardless of format.
One question I have is how will the ads on the VODs affect the total income? People are going to be watching the vods for weeks/months and should help with the revenue. But from what I've seen here it won't come close to the cost of running the event.
The current state of esports seems to be one of tourneys/events being bankrolled by venture capital or parent companies with deep pockets hoping for a viable business model sometime in the future. The real issue is that esports is dependant on the game titles - as SC2 ages the viewership will naturally drop.
So really the only viable business model will be to increase the amount of money from viewers (PPV style), which is most likely not going to work, or to cut the costs of production. Most likely in the future you'll see smaller prize pools to compensate for the costs. Personally I think for at least the larger tournaments they need to cut the budget for casters - I remember the djwheat reddit thread where he said the big time casters are making more than the players. That is simply not viable. IMO thats the first thing to look at.
I don't believe Twitch pay any VOD ad revenue. This is the reason why Day9 Daily and OneMoregame.tv hosts their archive in Blip.tv, which offers similar revenue share arrangement (50-50, same CPM but higher fill rate) as Twitch.tv has for streams.
On February 20 2012 14:33 MrCash wrote: One thing I would like to commend FXO on is the production value of this whole event. Aside from a couple very minor hitch ups, it was really well done and organized, everything was very smooth and nice.
If you guys ever try anything in the future, I would make a recommendation to ad some personality to it. Even though you guys had higher caliber participants than virtually anything other online tournament out there, the broadcasting and analysis, while clean, was rather bland. There is a lot of appeal and attachment created from casters being on camera in between games (there were a couple videos by FXO members promoting Razer gear I believe, but that was it). Some sort of introductory animations or player statistics would be very beneficial as well.
Of course there are many factors, all of which hard to account for, but I do hope you guys manage to find someway justify airing more of similar caliber games, regardless of format.
It was the cards for this event, but there were technical issues with the sound that made it unworkable. It's slated for our next one. It really just comes down to manpower and cost for those things to be done.
I'd like to know why was the cost so high at 8k? What was exactly purchased with that money Is it possible to cut production to lower the cost to approx. 2k?
On February 20 2012 15:28 PolishxThunder wrote: I'd like to know why was the cost so high at 8k? What was exactly purchased with that money Is it possible to cut production to lower the cost to approx. 2k?
Prize pool is $5k, so that leave $3k to production. Note that FXOBoss originally stated his budget as $10k overall, or $5k in production.
On February 20 2012 15:42 PolishxThunder wrote: Then lowering the prize pool is the answer. Stream numbers are actually fairly decent imo so I don't undestand how you could increase revenue.
Increasing the value of advertisements is the best response. Its entirely possible to do that. Hopefully I can.
On February 20 2012 15:00 Primadog wrote: I don't believe Twitch pay any VOD ad revenue. This is the reason why Day9 Daily and OneMoregame.tv hosts their archive in Blip.tv, which offers similar revenue share arrangement (50-50, same CPM but higher fill rate) as Twitch.tv has for streams.
You get ad revenue on Twitch VODs because of the preroll. The reason Day9 has VODs on Blip is because ad revenue from Blip is MUCH higher than both youtube and Twitch (ok, maybe MUCH is an exaggeration, but it is undoubtedly more). The problem with Blip is that it doesn't get the same amount of broad exposure... but for someone like Day9 it doesn't really matter, he'll get the views wherever his vods are posted, so he goes to Blip for the extra revenue
this was a great event and im glad i subscribed for it. One thing i noticed when i bought my pass is that i needed to register a credit card with paypal, i have never seen this before i had plenty of money in my account. I'm sure this would have turned some people away.
I watched a good bit of the event live, and it was a great tournament.
Like others have said, I really think that they should consider a time-slot that is better for NA/EU viewers. There are tournaments with MUCH lower caliber players/matches and no better production quality that garner better viewership because of the timing. I don't think a better time slot would immediately bring the invitational to break-even, but I think it would help immensely.
A question: is there any way to know what the breakdown of viewership was by geography? And, if so, how did it compare to say, MLG?
EU wouldn't have had a problem with the timeslot they could have sat down to a lovely Saturday of watch Sc2. If they wanted to watch live. or watched it at night if they where happy with a rebroadcast. Sure the Live broadcast was a bad time for NA but over here in the future I have to put up with have my MLG finals on a Monday morning.
There is never going to be a perfect time-slot, and I don't think pushing the Western Pacific side of the world to have to take a sicky or "Watch at Work" to see some awesome SC2 is a good thing to do.
On February 20 2012 15:42 PolishxThunder wrote: Then lowering the prize pool is the answer. Stream numbers are actually fairly decent imo so I don't undestand how you could increase revenue.
Increasing the value of advertisements is the best response. Its entirely possible to do that. Hopefully I can.
I may be alone here, but I have no problem with streamers running more ads between games. Go ahead and load me up with 2 or three of them in between each set, its only a minute and half. It usually takes that amount of time for the next game to get ready anyway.
A lot of people will complain, but its not the type of complaint that people will stop watching for. They already have to sit through 3 times as many commercials for a tv program.
Especially at this stage, I think many people will recognize the need for increased revenue, and if they don't, this thread should help. Even if there was a PPV model I wouldn't mind more ads.
On February 20 2012 15:42 PolishxThunder wrote: Then lowering the prize pool is the answer. Stream numbers are actually fairly decent imo so I don't undestand how you could increase revenue.
Increasing the value of advertisements is the best response. Its entirely possible to do that. Hopefully I can.
I may be alone here, but I have no problem with streamers running more ads between games. Go ahead and load me up with 2 or three of them in between each set, its only a minute and half. It usually takes that amount of time for the next game to get ready anyway.
A lot of people will complain, but its not the type of complaint that people will stop watching for. They already have to sit through 3 times as many commercials for a tv program.
Especially at this stage, I think many people will recognize the need for increased revenue, and if they don't, this thread should help. Even if there was a PPV model I wouldn't mind more ads.
We openly stated we do 3 ads between each game. We did not receive many complaints about this and understand its relatively acceptable to do so provide there is some downtime.
Doing more than 3 though hurts the industry for sure and is not the best way to gain revenue (by upsetting advertisers).
On February 20 2012 17:47 KMARTRULES2 wrote: Don't want to come across as a flamer but honestly I think your casters were pretty sub par. I imagine a lot of people were put off by them.
It would depend on what you like from a caster. This is unfortunately a popularity game (commentating). There are not many fully capable casters out there who are able to bust through 200 hours of content in 4 weeks. Alot of them have school and other commitments.
If you could be more specific by PMing me, I am sure there are things we can work on.
On February 20 2012 17:47 KMARTRULES2 wrote: Don't want to come across as a flamer but honestly I think your casters were pretty sub par. I imagine a lot of people were put off by them.
Care to give real feedback? So we can work on it? I was one of those casters and am open to constructive criticism. It's more towards flaming when you just throw out something like that without any specifics.
I have an idea. I have no idea if it's a workable thing, but you seem like you're willing to experiment so here goes:
Run a PPV tournament, but let people pay whatever they want.
I say this because often I wouldn't mind spending 5$ or whatever, but I'm frankly too lazy to get out my information and enter it.
Also by the way, wasn't the FXO tournament played at weird hours? I seem to remember only seeing it at weird hours for CST. Maybe a rebroadcast in a US friendly time slot would have helped.
Talking about Casters, would it be viable to get another view point of the game BoSs? like an observer and switch between the obs and the casters during the game? I think Unstable would be a lot more awesome if he only had to cast, rather than doing his best to show us pretty pictures at the same time as explaining the strategy and figuring out what is about to happen?
Also I would love if the casters could to a quick run down of each game between games, maybe even with them on-screen.
Looking at this you can really see why MLG wants to move to a PPV model. If they had 10x as many subscribers (950) then that would be more revenue than ads for over 400000 unique viewers. That's a pretty large motivation.
I think publicity is the biggest problem. If you're not on TL all the time you don't see events like this that aren't from the big names, maybe some advertising on TL or reddit or something could have helped. There's lots of other stuff you can do for promotion. Bring on guest casters! Seriously, announce you're having John the translator guest casting for a night and boom, to the top of r/starcraft you go.
The fact that the stream was perma-rebroadcasting was poorly publicised, too.
I don't really know what I'm talking about. Just throwing out my ideas.
Its not so easy to get guest casters. Alot of them require payment and increasing overhead without breaking even is silly. At the same time, our viewership is good. We have very high viewership numbers for the type of tournament it is. There is alot of value in that, the value is just not reaching our pockets (to sound like scrooge).
2.4k from half a million people is pretty sad indeed.
Since overall viewership is pretty high it seems that the problem is pretty much entirely that the streaming platform don't seem to be able to get decent advertising buy in. How can that be fixed?
I commend you with being so open with your statistics and how profitable you competition is. I hope this starts a trend in the community and other leagues/organizations do the same. As a consumer I would rather know what I am buying into rather than have to assume and take somebody's word that their organization is doing terrible and you need to contribute or e-sports will die. With this type of information allows me to make a full assessment on how i want to spend m "e-sports viewing budget" and allows me to decide where to spend or donate money based not only on content but on need for the organization.
Also I do not necessarily see the need for a PPV model, when a subscription based model could work similar to the GSL's, I believe a combination of advertising, subscriptions and merchandise can be a viable and reliable way to run a business.
What's the time frame for when you're expecting this to start paying off? Two years? Five?
Who (and this might be more open-ended) is best suited to be making money off e-sports in a few years. In "The guy doing X" terms if you don't want to name names :D
For my own viewing habbits i would actually prefer if you did a continous broadcast rebroadcasting either entire brackets or just the "best series". I personally do not like to catch up through vods and i really like the idea of just turning on a stream and always getting games from my favorite source/tournament.
Is there anything limiting you from doing a continous transmition?
On February 20 2012 19:19 Ribbon wrote: What's the time frame for when you're expecting this to start paying off? Two years? Five?
Who (and this might be more open-ended) is best suited to be making money off e-sports in a few years. In "The guy doing X" terms if you don't want to name names :D
I am not 100% sure when I expect to be profitable from e-sports. I have a few things lined up to see if they are possible in the next month. Hopefully one of them materialises and I can push things a little harder. My fingers are crossed.
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.
Thank you for publishing your data, very interesting. Great that you dont spend money on useless stuff like a "studio" which adds nothing in most cases (look at NASL).
I guess it depends on how you look at it.
(5254.62 USD / 434895 UV) = 0.012 USD per Person (IP) reached
Although i think the service FXO offers isnt of interest to most of your demographic.
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.
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.
The subscriber options need to be better presented. 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.
I'm glad that FXO have come out with this information, it really helps hammer home the message that at the moment advertising is not enough to fund tournaments. Obviously we can't know for sure how well this scales up to the biggest tournaments exactly, and I would love it if the likes of Dreamhack/IPL/NASL/MLG etc would do this as well, but in general that's not likely.
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.
The larger the tournament the less percentage of ad revenue if they are relying on the likes of twitch and own3d to generate the ads. This is because the larger the numbers the more demographics that are hit and the less demographics that get ads. The ads are usually only sent to USA and popular european countries at the moment. Which takes out about 15% of our market.
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
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.
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 is why I love FXO. Always so open and educative about what you do. I really do hope for your sake that e-sports gets more profitable in the future.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
This doesn't show anything about sponsorship or PPV being viable models, only that the SC2 tournament scene is heavily over saturated at the moment. Some players have to fold before the tournaments will be able to sustain themselves, PPV or not. Line-up was good but there was literally no buzz or hype.
I want to applaud you on being transparent with all this. Creating hype is indeed the most elusive aspect of running an event. Trying to work out your own timeslot while competing with larger broadcasters is also really hard.
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.
How about if it was PPV, but the price was like .25? I'd think a lot of people are hesitant spending X$ to this and Y$to that event/weekend/tournament to watch, there's simply so many. But if you go like really really cheap, then that step to spend becomes a lot lesser.
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.).
I have thought about some things regarding PPV in SC2.
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.
Kings of Europe about $3,250 USD in prizes had over 50,000 peak viewers (across two streams in different languages) tournaments aren't about prize pool.
The prize pool of events are often generated from entrance fees so if you have 100 players paying $20 you could have a $2,000 tournament. The problem with LANs however is the cost of the venue so scaling up the players adds to the cost of space but can also help with advertising and attracting sponsors.
As stated in the original post, you need more than one stream of revenue.
NASL Season 2 lost Korean players even with $100,000 in prizes. Although prize money is needed to sustain professional gamers it is not the main motivation for gamers. Would you spend 10 hours a day 5 days a week for months practicing to win a $500 prize? Or would you rather have 1,000,000 in attendance watching as you played MMA for $1 prize?
Emulate Radio Pure audio casting. While working/driving I try to plan to go back and watch a VoD later on, though I rarely do. However I would love to be able to tune my phone to listen in to what is going on during an event. Include old school, prairie home companion'esk Ads in the audio cast. Not at all sure on the details of this being monetized but I know I would listen. Chances are that I am not the only one. Would win my vote over any radio I have had to hear while working.
Alternate streaming destinations This is really just taking the first idea further. Offering the information on more platforms. Not sure how it would work but I would love if there was a way to view/hear streams in a way similar to the way Netflix has propagated to game consoles, dvd/tvs, and smart phones. Give a multicast stream that people can put in a channel on their chat client so they can follow the event while they game. ( Tracking listeners may be a challenge here but I am sure there is a way. Bot that checks how many are in the same room/channel or have a phantom there. )
In short, I want to live and breath eSports so please give me options for when I am either not at my computer or occupied with other things. ( Heck, give me some replays and I will throw down some summary mp3s, so you can understand what I mean, that can queue up pandora style with Ads and 'are you still listening?' or just slacker radio style. Like what they here in the audio summary, they can thumbs up to watch the VoD later and skip so not to ruin the result of the match. Then if they skipped no audio is played that is dependent on that match result. All controlled from smart phone or browser. )
Thanks again for releasing this information, I wish that more events were as open with their numbers as you are. Here are some issues that I saw that may give you food for thought.
1. It was difficult to get bracket updates. This lead to me not knowing when to tune in if I wanted to catch a particular game and didn't help me to understand the impact of each series. A separate website or maybe just quick Liquipedia updates and a queue to visit there could be something worth trying.
2. The subscription option was not very prominent either in its advertisement or in its actual location on the stream page, I know I had to spend a few minutes trying to find it on Twitch's interface. Increasing the visibility of the subscription option might be something worh considering. Your prizes looked really awesome, I'm sure that more people would be likely to sign up if they knew about it.
3. Better timing for US viewers. If they are your primary source for ad revenue, streaming (or maybe restreaming) at that time might be something to consider. I thought that I saw IPL rebroadcasts on the stream list, am I mistaken or is there something else going on there?
4. Storylines/Viewer Engagement. The biggest thing that I thought was actually missing was that I didn't feel connected to the players. Maybe that is just because I don't regularly watch GSL and only know them by their results. I think that working on a storyline for the tournament would help to boost viewer numbers and is something that you could consider.
Regardless of these issues, I was pretty happy with the tournament, the matches, the casters, and the production. I was actually really happy with the time slot, but as a late night Alaskan, I know that I am not a typical US viewer.
On February 20 2012 13:33 MrCash wrote: Did this in a couple of minutes, but someone weigh in if I'm not doing this right. 2412.88/956 = $2.52 (Earned per ad) 2.52/7615 = $0.00033 (average earned per ad through the duration of the showing)
If I got my definition of CPM properly, the $0.00033 would be the CPM in this specific scenario and it's not what has been touted by any streaming companies.
It's an easily confused term. What CPM means is how much you get for every 1000 shown ad's. So your calculations don't factor in fill rate.
So would it be more appropriate to call this eCPM then? From that we can divulge what the fill rate is, if we know what the twitch is claiming to be their CPM. So if the CPM is say $2 and the eCPM is $0.33, the fill rate would be 16.5%, yes To be fair, that probably isn't even JUST the fill rate, as there are other factors to account for, like ad blockers, but that's always going to be part of the market, so eCPM would be a fair way to call this, I suppose.
(Disclaimer, I work for twitch). Fill rate already takes into account adblock, its just the rate at which for every time we request an ad from the adservers, one is successfully served.
(I am not a manager, nor do I work in renevue, I am just going to say what I know from here, but it's not the official company view, just mine):
The FXOpen ran last month. January is a terrible month for fill. Ad budgets are low after the christmas blitz, plus people don't work much at the end of December so sales people are not selling ads. In Europe it seems to take a bit longer than in the USA for stuff to catch up again. This was true for own3d as well as us from what I noticed as a viewer.
So taking all that into account, it is plausible that fill rate for the event was 15.5%
I think (I am not sure of this) that if the exact same viewer numbers happened in March the income would be higher. How much higher? I don't know. What is a realistic fill rate to expect? (I have no idea) How many people adblock, how many ads are sold in sweden etc. Taking FXOBoSS's numbers into account, there would need to be a 50% fill rate for him to break even (ish). Is that realistic?
Thanks for this, I figured you'd get more with those numbers but in reality, it's pretty low ._. I don't agree that we should depart from the sponsorship model though, there is a heavy reliance but we're not even really off the ground just yet.
Is GSL profitable? I think we need to have a sense of what is possible, and what is the baseline, before analyzing different products.
Achieving profitability is not only about changing the business model, you might have to adjust the product. Both the model and product play a role.
While I understand you put effort and money into this product, you need to realize the quality of the games and the production is at a different level from GSL. Maybe it is not profitable to hold lots of minor events, like organizers have been doing. There's a definite oversaturation of events, and it does cannibalize the mindshare of the customer base.
Long story short, like studying a build order, we need to see how other products/business models are performing before evaluating this one.
1. The timeslot because I watched some, but not most live because it starts 12am pst and runs for a long time. You said you didn't want to compete with earlier events, but I guess you would actually have to test whether or not more comp at reasonable hours vs no comp at unreasonable hours gives you more viewers.
2. Lack of foreigners. There's no question, you had the best players in your event, but the truth, which won't shock you is that unless it's GSL, the majority of foreigners like to watch other foreigners. I've seen tourneys with not even great foreigners in it get 10k+ viewers. The KSL and the weeklies don't pull huge numbers either because they're korean only. It's a sad, but true fact.
Good post there by Boss and it nicely highlights the main problem with funding Starcraft events right now. Unless you have something to sell, you cannot make a profit.
I had to tell this to someone who had a lot of money won through poker and wanted to invest in the SC scene. We talked for a while, trying to find different ways to monetise. Our conclusion was that it was nigh on impossible to generate sufficient revenue to break even, let alone earn a profit, unless you were supported by sponsors who had products to sell. Direct sponsorship, especially well supported with ads and giveaways (in the manner of stuff like Homestory Cup) can provide excellent ROI with a relatively low initial outlay. Putting in money yourself though is a mugs game. SCI4 earned $690 in ad revenue. We had 198k unique viewers the first day, 184k the second (first day was much longer so that's to be expected. Hit 50k concurrent viewers on the second day. 36 commercials ran on Day 1 and 42 on Day 2 according to our statistics. In theory, events could self-fund (with an initial investment) if they could sustain a sufficiently higher viewer base in the right countries (ie. ones that get ads) and if Twitch was able to provide higher eCPM (which also involves ensuring fill-rate is high, which it currently is not). This is in reference to online tournaments. Offline events have additional costs but also additional ways to raise revenue including door tickets, refreshments and merchandise.
Our tournament also ran in January, so we got shafted by the January rates as well.
SCI is heading in the direction of being entirely crowd-funded and by that I don't mean donations, I mean subscription fees. Since I started streaming my ladder, casts and customs as well as the Showcraft show, I've been able to generate a substantial paying subscriber base. It's not at the level it needs to be to entirely fund an SCI every month yet, but it's getting there and that's a much better situation than having to rely in part on donations or the inconsistency of ad revenue. I'll be honest, I've also been looking at Youtube's livestreaming. It seems basic at the moment but Youtube's fill-rate and my CPM are far better than Twitch's right now, I could potentially generate a lot more revenue with it and it might be worth looking into, especially since Rob Simpson just claimed that they don't take a cut of the revenue from $5k+ tournaments so SCI could go higher than it is in terms of prizepool without suffering for it.
Anyway thanks to FxOBoss for his info, it is useful to know the financial realities which we are currently facing. We may hear of the woes of MLG but one should also consider that it can be tricky to properly fund a larger online event too.
On February 20 2012 13:27 ReachTheSky wrote: Sounds like your in the wrong business if your trying to make money. Maybe you should try a different market?
I would love a suggestion of a business market that is not out for a profit.
To me the most amazing thing is how little revenue there is to be generated by ads. It seems to me that you had a TON of viewers watching for a very long time, but evidently advertisers just aren't willing to pay for this type of advertising.
IMO, the biggest problem with eSports' financial viabiility is that advertisers still aren't willing to invest large sums of money into adds. Until they do, I think a sponsorship model is the best way to go. Having some company's logo on the caster desk and on the screen during the games should frankly be worth a TON to advertisers. I mean, we're talking 400,000 hours worth of your logo in front of people's face, and unlike with adds, they can't just mute it and alt-tab away.
On February 20 2012 18:34 FXOpen wrote: Its not so easy to get guest casters. Alot of them require payment and increasing overhead without breaking even is silly. At the same time, our viewership is good. We have very high viewership numbers for the type of tournament it is. There is alot of value in that, the value is just not reaching our pockets (to sound like scrooge).
I will see if I can sell the exposure off.
Guest Casters are a sign that you are grasping for more viewers while failing. I wouldn't advise it, although it seems you understand that. Your casters are fine, as your brand grows so will they. Keep faith in your casters and stick to them. Everybody will flame on account of minor mistakes because that is who we are. They are doing a great job right now, and I'm sure are working very hard to improve, which I am sure that they will.
We as a community appreciate your transparency and will continue to support.
Also, this is just a shot in the dark but you may want to look into finding a donation type of program, such as the thing Day9 has going, where you get a nice little star or something in chat showing their generosity. I think a growing company with figureheads that the entire community can respect, such as yourself, this idea will do well.
It is interesting to see 0$ spent on advertising for this tournament. Thousands in prize pool but with nothing spent in advertising how many StarCraft 2 gamers just didn't know about it?
Pay per click campaigns might have really helped. In gaming the low cost of advertising can really benefit organizers. Key words such as StarCraft and eSports often cost as little as 0.2 cents per click. By advertising the tournament through Google Adwords you will be placed on Team Liquid and other StarCraft 2 / eSport sites.
The low cost of advertising is a huge advantage for eSport organizers and largely untapped. Team Liquid is great but as a forum site tournaments with larger prize pools fall off the first page just as fast as smaller ones.
It would be interesting to see how much difference a bit of advertising makes.
First of all, thank you Boss and TotalBiscuit for sharing this interesting information. Very much appreciated. However, I must say that those number (revenue numbers, that is) are shockingly low.
About the FIS5 event itself. I think it kinda was not hyped enough. I mean it had probably the very best players in the world, yet I only found out about it once I saw the tourney being streamed on the right TL.net bar after waking up on a Sat or Sun morning.
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
Just want to put my personal perspective out there.
1) Reducing the price-pool to $500 it would be kind of non-viable, but if it was at like $3000 or $2500, I wouldn't have cared less.
2) The real problem is probably, that I never really cared to begin with. I'm not trying to sound negative here, that's just how it seemed. An even over such a timespan just doesn't really get me interested it seems. I watched occasionally, but it was never No. 1 on my list. It's like "just another round". It seems like a real dilemma. If it is 4 events/days instead of 8, it would not double your viewership, thus not doubling your ad-income. If it was 2 days it wouldn't quadruple, etc.
Also, you do not have a real climax for each broadcasting day, where it gets really really interesting to tune in.
So it seems increasing money for ads served is really the only option. Or/And to build up some climax situations.
On February 20 2012 13:14 garbodor wrote: Your viewer numbers seem really low, like, IdrA streaming the other day had 12k. Maybe it's a result of the main tournament stream being at like 5 in the morning in the US?
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
Just want to put my personal perspective out there.
1) Reducing the price-pool to $500 it would be kind of non-viable, but if it was at like $3000 or $2500, I wouldn't have cared less.
2) The real problem is probably, that I never really cared to begin with. I'm not trying to sound negative here, that's just how it seemed. An even over such a timespan just doesn't really get me interested it seems. I watched occasionally, but it was never No. 1 on my list. It's like "just another round". It seems like a real dilemma. If it is 4 events/days instead of 8, it would not double your viewership, thus not doubling your ad-income. If it was 2 days it wouldn't quadruple, etc.
Also, you do not have a real climax for each broadcasting day, where it gets really really interesting to tune in.
So it seems increasing money for ads served is really the only option. Or/And to build up some climax situations.
Cheers and wishing all the best, JD
1. Players care afaik.
2. I think the main interest of the event was the fact that it's code S level, but online, but i'm not sure it's that appealing for alot of people (for me it's definitely the reason I watched it whenever I could)
Just wanted to thank FXO for the numbers as well as the content. I love the fact you guys are actively looking for a way to make a tournament that can support it's self. It shows you guys are commited to E-Sports and want to have a tournament that supports the players as well as the production team and you're own investments eventually.
I tuned into the event from time to time and from what I saw as well as the prizes offered I will definetly concider subscribing to your stream the next time a tournament like this is run.
Good luck to all of FXO and thank you again for the openess of your buisness. I wish other teams would follow.
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
Just want to put my personal perspective out there.
1) Reducing the price-pool to $500 it would be kind of non-viable, but if it was at like $3000 or $2500, I wouldn't have cared less.
2) The real problem is probably, that I never really cared to begin with. I'm not trying to sound negative here, that's just how it seemed. An even over such a timespan just doesn't really get me interested it seems. I watched occasionally, but it was never No. 1 on my list. It's like "just another round". It seems like a real dilemma. If it is 4 events/days instead of 8, it would not double your viewership, thus not doubling your ad-income. If it was 2 days it wouldn't quadruple, etc.
Also, you do not have a real climax for each broadcasting day, where it gets really really interesting to tune in.
So it seems increasing money for ads served is really the only option. Or/And to build up some climax situations.
Cheers and wishing all the best, JD
1. Players care afaik.
2. I think the main interest of the event was the fact that it's code S level, but online, but i'm not sure it's that appealing for alot of people (for me it's definitely the reason I watched it whenever I could)
Your prize pool should only be as high as it needs to be to get top talent to show up. If you can't get it high enough(without going crazily into debt)for them to show then just don't throw the event and save the money. I think a lot of organizations are trying to one up each other instead of being realistic with the prize pools. Just look at NASL, their $100k league didn't exactly break viewer records because the viewer doesn't care about the money and the players didn't even take it that seriously because it was an online event. Every event just needs to continue to build up their brand to where the exposure is so big enough that it matters a great deal to win it, to gain fans. The prize money is just icing on the cake.
I had a ton of fun watching tournaments during beta and those were just $50. Things have just exploded too fast too soon and you can see this clearly in the type of money that's being generated. Unless you are profitable, everyone needs to dial back prize money, the viewers will still be there. GSL set a bad precedent early on but, it was something that GSL could sustain. Others that aren't GSL tried to replicate it and are getting bit in the ass hard.
Esports is a terrible investment for anyone with a head on their shoulders. It's a bubble created by high levels of unemployed young 20s/college kids, who are supported by government loans and welfare across the US and Europe.
On February 21 2012 08:06 EternaLLegacy wrote: Esports is a terrible investment for anyone with a head on their shoulders. It's a bubble created by high levels of unemployed young 20s/college kids, who are supported by government loans and welfare across the US and Europe.
It's a niche market supported by a heavily engaged (otaku-like) fan base, which can be swayed by precisely targeted marketing. Properly monetized, can become lucrative and sustainable.
On February 21 2012 08:06 EternaLLegacy wrote: Esports is a terrible investment for anyone with a head on their shoulders. It's a bubble created by high levels of unemployed young 20s/college kids, who are supported by government loans and welfare across the US and Europe.
Not quite true. It's actually a pretty sick investment for gaming peripheral companies. Most of their sponsorships come in the form of sending people a few keyboards and mousepads... the return on that is pretty nice ;p
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
Just want to put my personal perspective out there.
1) Reducing the price-pool to $500 it would be kind of non-viable, but if it was at like $3000 or $2500, I wouldn't have cared less.
2) The real problem is probably, that I never really cared to begin with. I'm not trying to sound negative here, that's just how it seemed. An even over such a timespan just doesn't really get me interested it seems. I watched occasionally, but it was never No. 1 on my list. It's like "just another round". It seems like a real dilemma. If it is 4 events/days instead of 8, it would not double your viewership, thus not doubling your ad-income. If it was 2 days it wouldn't quadruple, etc.
Also, you do not have a real climax for each broadcasting day, where it gets really really interesting to tune in.
So it seems increasing money for ads served is really the only option. Or/And to build up some climax situations.
Cheers and wishing all the best, JD
1. Players care afaik.
2. I think the main interest of the event was the fact that it's code S level, but online, but i'm not sure it's that appealing for alot of people (for me it's definitely the reason I watched it whenever I could)
1) I agree, but I would think players would still compete for a the price money i mentioned.
What I forgot to mention is that I as a fan am not too considered about seeing "only the best level of play" or "the top Koreans". I like to see guys from my country and my continent do well. Not arguing against you guys who see this differently, just want to point out there is this kind of fan as well.
To combine everything under one hat right now must be really difficult...
Just on a side note: i watched some games, but didn't really fully commit in looking into the background off this tournament.
Correct me if i'm wrong but it's a total online tournament right? no player actually flew over to a certain place to play the games for the tournament right?
So whatever the prize pool is, players can stay "at home" and still play for a good sum off money. I REALLY like the idea off a tip jar like TotalBiscuit offered for his SCI and this actually appeals to alot of players afaik. In case of a tip jar players basically never walk hom empty handed, which in effect makes their life as a pro SC2 player a little more easy because they don't have to 100% rely on a team funding.
A tip jar also means that you can lower the price pool, and get closer to breaking even. To increase the amount of people tipping ) and perhaps subscribing) you can do raffles among the paying people, for example winning a t-shirt with autographs from all players.
I think to monetize a entertainment business you need to monetize it with merchandise, and what MVP fan wouldn't want a MVP / FXOpen tournament signed T-shirt?!
wow, i wonder how other events are coping id imagine that larger events such as the gsl are doing fine and that others are struggling to keep up, so if sc2 doesnt end up becoming huge wouldnt we just be left with a handful of dominant events
On February 21 2012 09:12 TechSc2 wrote: Just on a side note: i watched some games, but didn't really fully commit in looking into the background off this tournament.
Correct me if i'm wrong but it's a total online tournament right? no player actually flew over to a certain place to play the games for the tournament right?
So whatever the prize pool is, players can stay "at home" and still play for a good sum off money. I REALLY like the idea off a tip jar like TotalBiscuit offered for his SCI and this actually appeals to alot of players afaik. In case of a tip jar players basically never walk hom empty handed, which in effect makes their life as a pro SC2 player a little more easy because they don't have to 100% rely on a team funding.
A tip jar also means that you can lower the price pool, and get closer to breaking even. To increase the amount of people tipping ) and perhaps subscribing) you can do raffles among the paying people, for example winning a t-shirt with autographs from all players.
I think to monetize a entertainment business you need to monetize it with merchandise, and what MVP fan wouldn't want a MVP / FXOpen tournament signed T-shirt?!
Yup - I forgot to say this, but I think you're so right! I think the Tip-Jar system is amazing... any player who comes far enough in the tournament should receive really decent amounts of money. Maybe a combination with fixed price-pool, I don't know, it's subject to try.
On February 21 2012 08:06 EternaLLegacy wrote: Esports is a terrible investment for anyone with a head on their shoulders. It's a bubble created by high levels of unemployed young 20s/college kids, who are supported by government loans and welfare across the US and Europe.
Not quite true. It's actually a pretty sick investment for gaming peripheral companies. Most of their sponsorships come in the form of sending people a few keyboards and mousepads... the return on that is pretty nice ;p
Yes, but I think the point of the statement relative to the overall discussion is trying to get sponsors to actually sponsor the event in forms of production and prize money which is a different story.
EPT
among other awesome and unique prizes,![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/r33Ct.png)
.
