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When I first found out that I would have to pay 20 dollars to wach the MLG winter arena in NYC I found myself contemplating whether I wanted to pay it and watch it. Immediately TL/Twitter/facebook exploded with people exclaiming how MLG was a greedy fuked up organization and Sundance was the head evil,greedy asshole at the top. I kinda had to agree for about 1 day.... I slept on it thinking in my head "wtf mlg...i'm not paying this sht to watch sc2 even if it is just 20 dollars...." I woke up the next day and I still was thinking I wasnt going to pay/watch mlg at the end of february. Later on in the afternoon I read some old tweets and 1 of them was of course Kennigit's saying something along the lines of "20 dollars is really nothing, compare it to 20 dollars times x amount for GSL seasons" Now I've paid so much g d money to GomTV for GSL seasons but its freakin GSL man... I am kind of addicted to GomTV at this point in my life....
Kennigits tweet kind of started my deline in hate for MLG for the week....
Come later on, Sundance did live on three of course with djwheat,sirscoots, and slasher.
Main thing I really listened to was Sundance and he summed it up saying "I had to do this at this event/time because if in 2012 we are not at this point to charge for amazing content for 3 days then this hobby is just an expensive as fuk hobby and we are going nowhere with it." Now I think Sundance truly does care and does this out of love/passion, thats why I like the guy. If anyone else out there ran MLG and truly didnt give a fuk then MLG wouldnt invest this much time/money into esports and we would be watching some other shitty tournament ran by some god awful organization like ESEA and blowing up facebook,twitter,TL about it.
To the people who were comparing this 20 dollar PPV to UFC/MMA/w/e the fuk else. E-Sports to me in 2012 is nowhere even fuking close to any of those PPVs. Can we get there in the future? Maybe if people didnt bich about 20 dollars and continue to support E-sports because they love it and its their passion. Is E-sports getting there? I truly am a believer when I say yes because in Brood War, there was no such thing as a foreign brood war scene. You either were pro in broodwar with kespa/korea or u were just watching/playing in some other country. SC2 is played/broadcasted/monetized in NA/EU/KR/rest of the world. Blizzard is an amazing developer that is supporting SC2/E-sports. I realized I was being kind of ignorant when I said "fuking greedy MLG charging 20 dollar PPV" I plan on either buying it or watching it at Barcraft nearest by. In the end, I realize MLG needs to do things like this for not just SC2 but for E-sports to grow. If this truly is a business wich it is then companies need profitable business models/profits. I hope in 2012 not just mlg succeeds with live lan events, but IEM,Dreamhack,GSL,etc.etc. succeed because if not then this truly is just a really expensive hobby after all.
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I will gladly pay the 20 to support mlg and watch some great games. I agree 100% with sundance with the hobby comparison. If it can't work out in the long run e-sports just isn't worth it.
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I support the organizations I like, and I pay for the content I want.
I have really enjoyed MLG in the past, and I bought a gold membership to watch the MLG events in HQ streams.
Now, this isn't part of what I paid for somehow. That really disappoints me, because I was looking forward to the event and intended to watch as much of it as I could.
Can I understand the reasoning behind it? Certainly. But I feel cheated somewhat.
Probably, I would have felt different about it - and bought it - if it from the start was marketed as another special event, not part of the normal MLG events, and up front before qualifiers we were told it would be PPV only.
Now I see two reasons for them not doing it that way:
- The budget fell through, they had hoped to attract more sponsors, more companies to pay for commercials, whatever, and this is an attempt to make it because otherwise it would cost too much.
- The bandwidth needed to stream an event like this to so many people cost a ton. I would not be surprised if they save a few hundred thousand doing it this way.
If it was originally intended to be a PPV event, they promoted and marketed it the stupidest way possible. And come across as complete morons.
I don't know why they did it the way they did, but I hope it was for budget reasoning ... however, there are so many good tournaments (MLG, GSL, Assembly, Dreamhack, Homestory, and yes - upcoming stuff like Iron Squid (probably), and daily tournaments, and ... so to try to sell the event as 'promoting esports' just feels fake to me. And therefore, I won't be buying it.
I hope they learn and the next PPV event is marketed as such from the start.
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Canada13407 Posts
On February 20 2012 22:39 aebriol wrote:
I support the organizations I like, and I pay for the content I want.
I have really enjoyed MLG in the past, and I bought a gold membership to watch the MLG events in HQ streams.
Now, this isn't part of what I paid for somehow. That really disappoints me, because I was looking forward to the event and intended to watch as much of it as I could.
Can I understand the reasoning behind it? Certainly. But I feel cheated somewhat.
Probably, I would have felt different about it - and bought it - if it from the start was marketed as another special event, not part of the normal MLG events, and up front before qualifiers we were told it would be PPV only.
Now I see two reasons for them not doing it that way:
- The budget fell through, they had hoped to attract more sponsors, more companies to pay for commercials, whatever, and this is an attempt to make it because otherwise it would cost too much.
- The bandwidth needed to stream an event like this to so many people cost a ton. I would not be surprised if they save a few hundred thousand doing it this way.
If it was originally intended to be a PPV event, they promoted and marketed it the stupidest way possible. And come across as complete morons.
I don't know why they did it the way they did, but I hope it was for budget reasoning ... however, there are so many good tournaments (MLG, GSL, Assembly, Dreamhack, Homestory, and yes - upcoming stuff like Iron Squid (probably), and daily tournaments, and ... so to try to sell the event as 'promoting esports' just feels fake to me. And therefore, I won't be buying it.
I hope they learn and the next PPV event is marketed as such from the start.
For those of us with gold memberships this is basically the way it feels to many.
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On February 20 2012 22:39 aebriol wrote:
I support the organizations I like, and I pay for the content I want.
I have really enjoyed MLG in the past, and I bought a gold membership to watch the MLG events in HQ streams.
Now, this isn't part of what I paid for somehow. That really disappoints me, because I was looking forward to the event and intended to watch as much of it as I could.
Can I understand the reasoning behind it? Certainly. But I feel cheated somewhat.
Probably, I would have felt different about it - and bought it - if it from the start was marketed as another special event, not part of the normal MLG events, and up front before qualifiers we were told it would be PPV only.
Now I see two reasons for them not doing it that way:
- The budget fell through, they had hoped to attract more sponsors, more companies to pay for commercials, whatever, and this is an attempt to make it because otherwise it would cost too much.
- The bandwidth needed to stream an event like this to so many people cost a ton. I would not be surprised if they save a few hundred thousand doing it this way.
If it was originally intended to be a PPV event, they promoted and marketed it the stupidest way possible. And come across as complete morons.
I don't know why they did it the way they did, but I hope it was for budget reasoning ... however, there are so many good tournaments (MLG, GSL, Assembly, Dreamhack, Homestory, and yes - upcoming stuff like Iron Squid (probably), and daily tournaments, and ... so to try to sell the event as 'promoting esports' just feels fake to me. And therefore, I won't be buying it.
I hope they learn and the next PPV event is marketed as such from the start.
I fully agree with this sentiment. I lost a lot of respect for MLG with how they promoted Gold passes and promoted this tournament before suddenly letting fans know this was going to be a PPV.
I'm also fed up with hearing "support esports". Winter arena is not an "esport" event. It's JUST a sc2 tournament. If you want to support MLG do so. If you want to watch the event and think it's worth $20 that's fine, we're all entitled to different opinions and can spend money however we want. But (as Sundance even said) regular MLG "esports" events are going to stay the same.
You have a choice this weekend; support a PPV model or support FREE tournaments...
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It's not like all tournaments are going to be PPV, heck even MLG is just going with PPV for this event because its the first time they've ever done something like this. I'm glad they have expanded and are working at providing even more sc2 coverage, those that want to support can pay and support, those that choose not to choose not to. You don't see kids bitching about having to pay to watch UFC/MMA or other PPV stuff on TV, why is this any different? It's not like anyone is being forced to pay...
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I just wish that it wasn't right before midterms.
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MLG secured about $15,000,000 in startup capital about 6 years ago. so while Sundance probably does like esports, he isn't investing in it with his own money. he's just trying to spend the 15 million in whatever way will churn out the maximum profits. they've run at a loss over the past few years and are now hoping that it's reached the breakeven point and may even be profitable.
the problem is, this would only work if they were in a monopoly. unfortunately for MLG, they face a lot of competition at the moment and so by charging money they have devalued their product significantly in comsumer's eyes.
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Are you saying that we should pay the 20 dollers because we enjoy esports?
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On February 21 2012 00:36 TBone- wrote:
I just wish that it wasn't right before midterms.
dude that sucks, my school goes in trimesters and our last exam for the second tri is the same friday so there's no interference :D
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I'm hoping MLG releases their revenue from streams post MLG winter arena, itll be real interesting and an eye opener. Sadly I don't think they will, and I don't expect it to do very well from all the negative hype.
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EPT
