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Before you even read further why listen to me? Well, I do commentary for SCII, I've even had some decent success doing casting for MLG as my highlight thus far. I also because of where I am at work with tons of people in the exact position I'm in. Helping to make the great eSports machine work, but we are on the outside looking in as far as making a living off it so we can make it our sole focus in life. Yet we continue on in hopes that all our work and hard effort can grow this industry into something that can put us in a position to quit our day job, and not spend 48 hours straight without sleep just to bring people a decent quality product. Also of course we love it!
Where are we really in eSports?
I find it interesting as I read through many posts how many people make perfectly valid points about something they like or dislike. Then follow it up with a completely made up 'fact', because they are 'positive' x must be so because they think so.
I don't think it is necessarily the persons fault this happens, I think to many larger extents it's due to the over inflated perception people seem to have, or should I say some people have. In regards to exactly where eSports really is in the whole grand scheme of things.
If I believed random poster X, MLG/IPL/GOMTV are all making advertising money like crazy and getting silly fat and rich off eSports. Right now Sundance has a yacht and he's cruising around with a taco stand on board in between events off the crazy money MLG makes.
![[image loading]](http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a189/spatial/yachtspoof.jpg)
Sundance kicking it leo style on his yacht...
Now for a bit of reality now that we've had our bit of fun.
For any business to be truly successful what do you need to make it work. In specific will look directly at the sports business. Then will compare it to where eSports is actually at to give you an idea of how far we still have to go before people can continue their dreams of ESPN SCII/DOTA2/LOL.
1. You have to have players who can play the sport and only the sport and be professionals. Well we have a few of those, but very very few are making a truly 'professional' living off eSports at this juncture. Most are lucky if they can pay to live in an apartment with 3 other guys or gals. So we've got quite a ways to go there before anyone in eSports as a player is going to be buying a Ferrari off salary and prize money alone. The vast majority of our player talent probably isn't getting paid enough to move out of mom and dads basement.
![[image loading]](http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a189/spatial/baseballspoof.jpg)
Momma said you better hit that ball boy!
2. You have to have commentators to call the action to allow you to entertain people and explain the 'sport' to the masses. Well we have a few of those who are making enough to support themselves, but lets think about how many of those we still don't have. Reality is you have the same say 7 or 8 guys jet setting around the world covering a lot of events. None the less they can't cover them all so you are starting to see a couple of new faces appear in the area's of IEM, MLG, DH, etc. However, I bet you'd be surprised to learn quite a few of those new faces if they are lucky are being paid hardly anything at all. Just as an example TB has posted many of times he if anything has lost money doing eSports despite the fact he's decently well known. So we are really no where near having a truly 'professional' core of commentators.
Perspective: Think of how many commentators it takes to cover a day of play in the NFL, NBA, or MLB. Now think of the eSports leagues more like teams and you'll get the idea as far as what we have and what we need to truly cover everything with professionals.
3. You need to have the leagues for all the above to be showcased in. Well we have several, but you additionally need them to be profitable so they can continue to grow and evolve. They also have to be profitable enough to higher on people to be professionals in running and bringing you coverage of the league. The reality is that most leagues are losing money if anything right now in the hopes they can find a way to grow eSports enough to become profitable and make back losses in the future.
Perspective: So maybe 'bowling' isn't your sport, but quite a few of the leagues that were televised only as far back as the 80's have nearly gone completely out of business since then because they couldn't make a profit. Leaving only 1 that has truly found a way to barely survive over time, and there was some really tough years for all involved in keeping it alive, the PBA. It's back on TV now but only recently so and people involved are making decent money again.
4. Finally you need the tens of people who you will never see the face of unless you go to a live event that do video production, ref, setup, tear down, blog, do media...etc and onward. The reality at this point for these people is probably nearly 99% of them do it all for nothing. They possibly get their expenses paid for the trip and that's all she wrote. Very very few of them are actually getting a weekly, bi-weekly, check or yearly salary to do it all. Yet without all these people nothing you see on a regular basis is really possible.
Perspective: Do you think anyone would work for the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL....etc. If those leagues told them hey I got a job for you but oh by the way we can't afford to pay you so you'll get a free flight out and hotel but that's really all we can do for you. Or if they were willing to do so how many would be capable of doing half the jobs they needed them to do as well as 'paid staff'.
![[image loading]](http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a189/spatial/helpspoof.jpg)
A day at the game but all the workers didn't show up.....
Conclusion
Be it players, commentators, hosts, refs, crew, and onward. Most of what makes eSports work at this point in time runs on pure charity. Yet the masses want their 'professional' quality events without all of them being willing to help foot the bill so the people who make it possible can truly be 'professionals' at what they do. Heck some even complain if they see an advertisement run on a player stream and gloat about their 'ad-blocker' because they won't even give 30 seconds of their time to support a player they are watching for nothing.
Now, does all the above mean you should quickly go empty your bank accounts and give all the money to IPL/GomTV/MLG. No of course not, you should only pay for whatever a product is worth to you based on the excess funds you have available.
However, at least use the above to be educated in exactly where we are really at. So the next time IPL/GomTV/MLG says hey were running an event but it's going to cost you X dollars because advertisers don't give us enough to pay all these people. At least have an educated opinion and a good well thought out reason to get mad about paying people trying to grow an industry.
The alternative is to only want everything eSports related to be free and it'll hopefully grow, but the growth will be slower. You might not get the best play out of players because they work a 9 to 5 then come home to practice and take off work to play a tournament. Some commentators may not know the players as well as you'd like, or may make mistakes. A stream might be off, or look funny and need fixing. A ref at a tournament might DQ one guy after 15 minutes and let another guy slide in 30 minutes late. But hey, at least it's all for free right?
![[image loading]](http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a189/spatial/refspoof.jpg)
NFL refs discussing a call on the field with the coach....
At the end of the day you get what you pay for, it's a universal truth. So pay and get more quicker or don't pay and get less. At least though at the end of the day realize where things are really at before you run that ad-blocker, or cry foul when someone trys to see if you'd be willing to pay for X product.
 
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Part of the problem is the tournament organisers themselves, always wanting to improve, making events bigger, more flashy production wise etc etc. Whenever "growth" is mentioned it always seems to be from the perspective of the organisers and taken to mean growing their own business, tournaments and events.
Maybe they should be considering the growth of their viewer numbers more first. Stop trying to make their own production better and better which costs a significant amount of money and concentrate on simpler more cost effective solutions. Have the patience and commitment to be satisfied with more natural growth of viewers through word of mouth and basic marketing and advertising.
Every opinion I read from organisers and people who are involved in production seems to be the same, viewers must contribute. However, this "viewers must contribute" mantra is because of the cost of the decisions and direction the people producing tournaments have made. They are the ones who may have decided on an ever expanding budget that may not covered by their current business. They are the ones who have decided to risk future tournaments on projected incomes and estimated numbers of who will pay.
Don't put everything on the viewers and tell them it's up to them if esports succeeds or fails. The already tired "sense of entitlement" line that gets thrown in the faces of viewers works for tournament organisers as well.
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On February 24 2012 20:31 Full.tilt wrote:
Part of the problem is the tournament organisers themselves, always wanting to improve, making events bigger, more flashy production wise etc etc. Whenever "growth" is mentioned it always seems to be from the perspective of the organisers and taken to mean growing their own business, tournaments and events.
Well yeah, that kind of is the goal of having any type of business. Shitty amateurish run tournaments aren't gonna draw sponsors looking for a more polished product, and people don't want to watch crappy looking things with mediocre talent. High quality streams cost buku money. Staff to put together even the most basic tournament costs money. You need a good prize pool to attract good players, and to generate those funds you need advertisers who aren't gonna be forking over dough for a shitty product.
what are some 'cost effective' ways of growing? The amateur volunteer model is crap and is not how you create a sustainable, reliable business.
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@Hawk pretty well said about the why of where tournament organizers drop money. As far as 'cost effective' ways of growing, honestly based on statistics I've been aware of I really don't think short of charging people for content there is really a 'cost effective' way to grow. At least not without dramatic cut backs to expenditures which will decrease prize pools, production value, etc. Which would put eSports moving backwards in growth and not forwards which isn't in the overall good for anyone involved.
You can be smart about how you spend, and I think we've seen a shift in that for some organizations with MLG trying to potentially consolidate to the much cheaper Columbus, and IGN partnering with a casino to run it's events. Though it's harder for the western scene since they can't be as consolidated as the Korean organizers are in Seoul. At least not without leaving a lot of fans / players forced to always travel hours upon hours to events.
Overall the goal of this entire blog was for people who seem to over estimate the growth we've experienced. They perceive that these organizations are making money hand over fist, and all the people involved are getting fat and happy with them. So I thought a blog with a bit of perspective on where your average eSports 'worker' and the organizations are at would shed some light as to why some of these organizations are looking for new sources of revenue.
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I always hear ipl and nasl being examples of tournaments that are running at a loss. The thing is with these 2 tournaments specifically they only started their business this year. Almost every company runs a loss the first year because of the initial investments that must be made. Only after a couple of years they will start running profits but that's only natural.
Then you also have a tournament like IEM but they don't focus specifically on sc2 they may as well run a profit on sc2 but a loss on other games which results in a net loss for the company.
What I want to say is that it's to early to tell if the viewers really have to contribute more for these tournaments to run a profit and sustain themself.
By the way consumers having to pay for ore for the product is only going to stifle growth it will be a lot harder for newcomers to get into watching the game if they have to pay money for it.
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I've been pushing my argument regarding this issue for quite a while now, and let me dig up what I wrote in a similar thread some days ago:
On February 24 2012 04:07 OpticalShot wrote:
eSports (heavily relying on SCBW) is already "there" in Korea. It's been at that stage since like 2002-2005 and it's been doing well until the recent series of troubles (match-fixing scandal, Blizzard IP legal battle). Even so, it does well enough to continue and adopt new games (LoL is the new big thing). Financially, KeSPA handles almost everything. It's not a "separate" governing entity - KeSPA consists largely of sponsor representatives (like KT, SK, etc.) that act in the best interests of the whole scene, not individual needs. Of course that's what it says on paper, and I'm sure each executive tries to pull strings to favour his company in little ways. Still, the fact is that there is a central governing body and it is critical to the longevity of the scene. Despite the flaws and stumbles, KeSPA held eSports together for a decade and it looks like they'll continue to do that in the future. Attending live events was free from the beginning and still remains free. VODs are available for free (might not be high quality, but whatever). You do need cable TV to watch it live on TV. Most of the finances are managed by sponsorship, and each sponsor is represented properly as a part of KeSPA.
Elsewhere in the world - i.e. outside Korea - we don't have that. GOM is trying to give off that sort of that "centralized" image with GSL and stuff, but GOM is a company with its own interests. It does not have the financial power nor the influence to lead the entire scene on its own shoulders. Sponsors for teams and tournaments act in their best interest, but actually have limited power and organization when it comes to the scene as a whole. When organizers and teams turn to online stream-based revenue to sustain themselves, there are far too many problems and conflicts for everyone to grow together on the same grounds.
Maybe I went off-topic a bit with this centralized organization stuff, but I truly believe that it is the missing piece - and also the key piece - that is needed in the global eSports scene.
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I think so long as there is entry level content that is free, such as the MLG Championships, IPL4, GomTV's free stream, assembly, DH. You won't create a barrier to entry for viewers, so I don't think that'll be an issue.
With the current mostly free models you can't create the infrastructure in people you need to make sure everything stays 100% professional. Quite a large majority of the machine that makes eSports work is people who are charity workers and unpaid for their contributions less maybe covering costs of travel. Which can be problematic as we have seen when one player gets a DQ for being 15 minutes late by ref A but another player is allowed to show up 30 minutes late by ref B. To maintain quality and consistency you have to be able to pay those people to be professionals. So that if they can't do their job you more easily have people ready and willing to replace them because they might be able to quit their 9-5 at the local fast food joint to do it
I think free 'can' work, but then you are banking on eSports to continue to grow as rapidly viewership wise as it did the last 2 years. Essentially we went from the first MLG's and GSL's with limited viewership and SCII not even main stage for MLG, and probably views decently under 100k to nearly half a million viewers for many events in todays times and attendance records set for every live event almost. Additionally you have games like LoL becoming insanely popular as far as viewership goes. So I'd think any organization losing money right now doing everything for free, is essentially putting their eggs in the basket of 'we can get to millions of viewers' and in turn increase their advertising revenue dramatically over the next couple years. Anyone else is probably going to use more pay for content, such that you see GomTV and MLG doing already.
As far as needing a Western version of KESPA, I am not 100% certain that is needed in that same way or right this very moment; but I would agree that higher levels of organization are needed down the road. Things like a centralized players 'union' would make sense, so that players on teams that don't have the financials of an EG can still have their interests represented at the bargaining table. Then the leagues can still govern themselves but they'd have to be careful not to mistreat the players. I also wouldn't mind seeing more revenue sharing options on the table should leagues become profitable. Right now though I don't think either of the two above are truly 100% practical until eSports organizations are making decent profits or drawing huge viewer numbers (talking in the millions) in the western scene.
Right now I think the next logical step in eSports evolution would be to continue to broaden the audience base, explore ways to create more revenue. Then before you go completely crazy on upping production levels, build the infrastructure of professionals you need to make sure increases in production quality can be sustained. IE as you can afford to pay more people to focus all their efforts in work on eSports alone and be professionals, you increase the production levels accordingly.
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EPT
