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I don't think I've ever been quite so disappointed with a group of people that I consider my peers until this last week.
If you picked random threads on TL.net most of the time, you'd come to conclusion that the majority of the players here are extremely passionate about their hobby - spending most of their free time playing, watching, or reading about SC2. Everywhere you go, the rallying cry of ESPORTS can be heard.
And yet, all is not quite right with ESPORTS right now. For those who have been paying attention to the blogs of handsome individuals such as FXOBoss, it has become extremely apparent that very few people in the industry seem convinced that a sponsorship-based model with advertising is a long term, sustainable goal.
There's a couple reasons for this, such as the fact that the fillrate for ads is very low, that the effective pay per ad-view is so small as to almost be nonexistant, and the unavoidable fact that events are simply very expensive to host.
You have to pay for casters. You have to pay for computer equipment, for bandwidth, for support staff. You (may) have to pay to fly people halfway across the world, and put them up for the term of the tournie. You (may) need to pay for a venue, for staff to work at the venue. Bottom line is, costs are everywhere, and the sponsors (ASUS, Intel, etc) are probably not even coming remotely close to recouping their costs through exposure alone. IIRC, they mostly do it just to remain "cool" in the eyes the 18-24 male demographic (somebody was saying this).
So, with this ESPORTS chanting, fantatically obsessed group of fans all demanding the best of the best of the best with respect to absolutely everything, you'd expect that perhaps they'd actually be willing to support their favourite hobby financially.
Oh boy, was I wrong.
It doesn't actually surprise me that alot of people didn't buy an MLG Winter Ticket. All in all, it's probably a wee-bit on the pricy side, but it's a much smarter business strategy to start high and reduce, rather than the opposite.
What surprises me is the incredible number of people who actively went out of their way to view the stream illegally, who posted restreams, who went into the LR thread to proclaim "rofl I'm watching for free sucks to be you guys who paid", who posted all over TL how to exploit the paywall. This is really nonsensical. This can only hurt MLG and hurt sc2. Thankfully, TL.net took a fairly good stance on the matter and responded as quickly as possible to remove restreams and requests for them, but honestly, I wish they'd gone farther. I wish that everybody bragging about how they exploited the paywall was banned.
"But why so extreme?", you might ask. "What other people do doesn't affect your experience", you might add, amicably. However, this is simply untrue. I, as a sc2 fan and a viewer, want extremely high quality products. I want to watch my streams in 1080p, 2 at a time. I like sleek interfaces. I like the fact that my favourite players are flown out and that I get to watch international behemoths duke it out. I want all these things, and I want more.
But I'm willing to pay for all the things I want. When people go out of their way to try to make a business venture like MLG's Winter Arena fail, it actually prevents me from getting these things, because companies will simply not be able to provide that level of production for free. Nobody is making any money in this business - break even is probably a goal many organizations have yet to achieve. If any actual growth is to be achieved, they need a sustainable source of income from the base of fans itself. This is no different than ANY other form of entertainment.
So, in conclusion, I am angry and disgusted at the effects of many in the sc2 community to try to sabotage MLG's PPV experiment. I hope that MLG succeeds regardless of the attempts of these individuals to selfishly hamper the growth of esports as a sustainable business, and that we see more PPV high-quality productions in the future.
 
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I didn't pay for mlg winter ticket, because of my budget and willing to wait for the games to be recasted, but i didn't go and watch illegal streams on mlg because i wanted to, people who do that don't deserve to come to team liquid or play starcraft 2 like anybody else, because they are the plaque on the rest of us...
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As awesome as the community is, you'll always have people who want stuff for free and go out of their way(probably a google search) to get it and boast. People will be people.
The thing about ad revenue is that it works very nicely if you have a large audience(angry birds makes a ton of money through purely ad revenue on android),other wise it isnt going to be much.
e-Sports is pretty much a niche market still even though we've grown a lot and usually people pay more for niche products to ensure that the person who makes the product gets the money so that they can make more..but then we have so much free content that it's tough to persuade a person to pay money. It's just a really tough spot to be in as a tournament organizer, lets see if the other tournaments can think of other revenue methods.
It will interesting to see how the community reacts if the price is brought down to 10$, and the gold members just have to pay 5$ more. The loss in revenue per person might be made up more by the sheer numbers...but you will still have restreams going on, like how gsl hq is restreamed even though there is a free sq stream.
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I agree with your sentiment that these people are hurting esports.
However consider this the demographic of Esports it 13-to what 25 and these people arent the richest demographic out there alot in high school or college. Also they are tech savvy tho and if they really want to watch something they can find it for free.
I know i watch dexter for free on my computer i dont have the money for cable and i dont plan on getting it.
I think that for that reason the pay to play model probably wont work for that reason. Its possible they can find away to implement it. But i think the best way to see growth in esports, Is the way every business makes money in sports. Advertisements. If there is an audience to Esports we will see growth and people like to target the male youth demographic.
Just my two cents
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people on the internet feel entitled to everything for free, did you expect the SC2 community (which exists on the internet) to be any different?
I didn't buy MLG pass because i dont have time this week to watch any of it, but if i had the time i would have paid for it. MLG has always been a great service and provided excellent games and although 20$ is a bit steep, i figure I watched all the past MLGs for free so its fair had i bought it
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I didn't have to exploit anything to watch it free. I just went to the website and the stream played. I didn't watch it for very long though, I spent enough time this weekend watching the ASUS ROG, so I don't know if that ever got fixed.
Anyway, I think you're creating a straw man. One of the most popular tournaments to date has been the TSL3 which had the bare minimum production value (not to diminish the work that went into it, but it was far from fancy). TB's invitationals have sustained themselves with ad revenue and it's pretty much just him casting games from home on battle.net. I don't think people are simultaneously demanding super high quality and demanding it be free. As you said, most of the people watching are 18-24 year old males, may or may not have a job, and are probably paying for school. Maybe you want 4 streams at 1080p and are willing to pay $20 for it, but I'm content with a 480p freestream I can have running on another monitor all weekend while I play other games/work.
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On February 26 2012 16:18 jaybrundage wrote:
I agree with your sentiment that these people are hurting esports.
However consider this the demographic of Esports it 13-to what 25 and these people arent the richest demographic out there alot in high school or college. Also they are tech savvy tho and if they really want to watch something they can find it for free.
Pretty much what I was going to say.
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On February 26 2012 16:19 Gheed wrote:
I didn't have to exploit anything to watch it free. I just went to the website and the stream played. I didn't watch it for very long though, I spent enough time this weekend watching the ASUS ROG, so I don't know if that ever got fixed.
Anyway, I think you're creating a straw man. One of the most popular tournaments to date has been the TSL3 which had the bare minimum production value (not to diminish the work that went into it, but it was far from fancy). TB's invitationals have sustained themselves with ad revenue and it's pretty much just him casting games from home on battle.net. I don't think people are simultaneously demanding super high quality and demanding it be free. As you said, most of the people watching are 18-24 year old males, may or may not have a job, and are probably paying for school. Maybe you want 4 streams at 1080p and are willing to pay $20 for it, but I'm content with a 480p freestream I can have running on another monitor all weekend while I play other games/work.
^ This
I don't have a lot of time nor money to watch sc2 and until I do I'm not going to pay good money for what I consider a hobby (gsl excluded, I'm happy to pay for that). If Sundance wants me to pay to watch mlg then I'm just going to go back to writing literature reviews on RO technology instead of wasting both my time and money on something that does not benefit me at all.
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Those people are everywhere.
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So it doesn't surprise you that people didn't pay for it, but it does surprise you that people tried to view it for free? I went to their stream and it just played for me... I'm not really sure if they were even enforcing the PPV pass to begin with.
After watching a little bit of it I can say with certainty there was no way I could justify paying 20$ to watch when ROG was going on for free at the same time.
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Ah come on mate, you are blowing it out of proportion. Of course there are people who ask and post and boast restreams and stuff, but it's a vocal minority as ever. There are 10k active on TL more or less and the number of people who did it is probably in the hundreds. Of course I somehow doubt they got enough money from PPV to break even or make a profit, but it's not like every TL'er is going around breaking paywalls and stuff.
Also, I'm kinda sure you can substitute "SC2" for any other game and it would still stand. 
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This reminds me of a news story a long time ago, where poachers in Africa killed the last living rhinoceros of a certain species for its horn.
It's human nature to place the satisfaction of immediate needs over long-term goals, regardless of how much we actually stand to gain.
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Australia7069 Posts
On February 26 2012 15:58 Fission wrote:
I don't think I've ever been quite so disappointed with a group of people that I consider my peers until this last week.
If you picked random threads on TL.net most of the time, you'd come to conclusion that the majority of the players here are extremely passionate about their hobby - spending most of their free time playing, watching, or reading about SC2. Everywhere you go, the rallying cry of ESPORTS can be heard.
And yet, all is not quite right with ESPORTS right now. For those who have been paying attention to the blogs of handsome individuals such as FXOBoss, it has become extremely apparent that very few people in the industry seem convinced that a sponsorship-based model with advertising is a long term, sustainable goal.
There's a couple reasons for this, such as the fact that the fillrate for ads is very low, that the effective pay per ad-view is so small as to almost be nonexistant, and the unavoidable fact that events are simply very expensive to host.
You have to pay for casters. You have to pay for computer equipment, for bandwidth, for support staff. You (may) have to pay to fly people halfway across the world, and put them up for the term of the tournie. You (may) need to pay for a venue, for staff to work at the venue. Bottom line is, costs are everywhere, and the sponsors (ASUS, Intel, etc) are probably not even coming remotely close to recouping their costs through exposure alone. IIRC, they mostly do it just to remain "cool" in the eyes the 18-24 male demographic (somebody was saying this).
So, with this ESPORTS chanting, fantatically obsessed group of fans all demanding the best of the best of the best with respect to absolutely everything, you'd expect that perhaps they'd actually be willing to support their favourite hobby financially.
Oh boy, was I wrong.
It doesn't actually surprise me that alot of people didn't buy an MLG Winter Ticket. All in all, it's probably a wee-bit on the pricy side, but it's a much smarter business strategy to start high and reduce, rather than the opposite.
What surprises me is the incredible number of people who actively went out of their way to view the stream illegally, who posted restreams, who went into the LR thread to proclaim "rofl I'm watching for free sucks to be you guys who paid", who posted all over TL how to exploit the paywall. This is really nonsensical. This can only hurt MLG and hurt sc2. Thankfully, TL.net took a fairly good stance on the matter and responded as quickly as possible to remove restreams and requests for them, but honestly, I wish they'd gone farther. I wish that everybody bragging about how they exploited the paywall was banned.
"But why so extreme?", you might ask. "What other people do doesn't affect your experience", you might add, amicably. However, this is simply untrue. I, as a sc2 fan and a viewer, want extremely high quality products. I want to watch my streams in 1080p, 2 at a time. I like sleek interfaces. I like the fact that my favourite players are flown out and that I get to watch international behemoths duke it out. I want all these things, and I want more.
But I'm willing to pay for all the things I want. When people go out of their way to try to make a business venture like MLG's Winter Arena fail, it actually prevents me from getting these things, because companies will simply not be able to provide that level of production for free. Nobody is making any money in this business - break even is probably a goal many organizations have yet to achieve. If any actual growth is to be achieved, they need a sustainable source of income from the base of fans itself. This is no different than ANY other form of entertainment.
So, in conclusion, I am angry and disgusted at the effects of many in the sc2 community to try to sabotage MLG's PPV experiment. I hope that MLG succeeds regardless of the attempts of these individuals to selfishly hamper the growth of esports as a sustainable business, and that we see more PPV high-quality productions in the future.
Your post is really dumb. what you're saying is "some people in the community did something less than honest,therefore the community as a whole is rancid".
What about all the people who bought it legitimately and helped sundance read his goals in terms of viewership? Bad apples exist everywhere but to condemn an entire community (ps: you'll probably find most of the people posting restream links got banned too...) is silly.
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Yeah bro, the entire community is in the wrong here, and you're like a Jesus paying for our sins.
Thx yo.
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On February 26 2012 16:19 Gheed wrote:
I didn't have to exploit anything to watch it free. I just went to the website and the stream played. I didn't watch it for very long though, I spent enough time this weekend watching the ASUS ROG, so I don't know if that ever got fixed.
Anyway, I think you're creating a straw man. One of the most popular tournaments to date has been the TSL3 which had the bare minimum production value (not to diminish the work that went into it, but it was far from fancy). TB's invitationals have sustained themselves with ad revenue and it's pretty much just him casting games from home on battle.net. I don't think people are simultaneously demanding super high quality and demanding it be free. As you said, most of the people watching are 18-24 year old males, may or may not have a job, and are probably paying for school. Maybe you want 4 streams at 1080p and are willing to pay $20 for it, but I'm content with a 480p freestream I can have running on another monitor all weekend while I play other games/work.
QFT. Very well said and expresses my feelings much better than I could have about the PPV "experiment."
Give me the 480p freestream too.
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1st - Going from free to $20 is steep. Steeper than most people are willing to pay.
2nd - There are always going to be people who use addblock on streams. If they don't want ads, then they shouldn't be forced seeing as the stream is free.
3rd - How many people actually "watch" the adverts on TV, this isnt much different except the pay per view model.
4th - For every person who used adblock and watched a free restream. There are probably 10 others who turn their adblock off and payed for/didnt watch MLG.
Minorities will always exist. If SC2 wasnt viable then people would have realised a long time ago..
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I knew it was going to happen. First guys to attempt it and they don't know what the fuck they're doing and yes Twitch screwed up on their main site as I heard. It happens and you have to take the proper precautions beforehand which they obviously didn't.
So many loose ends on their end. You didn't even need a restream to watch it.
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Sounds like you're just mad that you paid for it while other people found ways to get it for free tbh.
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On February 26 2012 22:39 hersenen wrote:
Sounds like you're just mad that you paid for it while other people found ways to get it for free tbh.
no he doesnt, he sounds like a spoilt little kid. everyone wants to support sc2, but if their budget or whatever doesnt allow, thats cool. watching adverts and streams is still a positive thing for the streaming organisation, is buying a $20 ppv better for them? sure, but its still a plus to have more viewers where possible.
i paid for the mlg pass, but im not gonna sit here and whine like a little bitch at anyone who didnt. thats their choice. if mlg wants to be a legit business they need to stop crying out for more support like a charity. they are a business, its their job to deliver a product people want to buy, at a price mlg want to sell it. all this talk of people who dont pay hurting esports or being tight or whatever pisses me off, people can pay for what they want to pay for.
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the only thing "hurting esports" is puting a 20$ pricetag as the only option, i personally payed 30$ just to watch the dreamhack semifinals/finals but i was there in the audience(they filled the arena with 4k people iirc). watching from home should have a free alternative generating money from ads so people that cant afford paying can support esports by watching anyway.
also its so ignorant and stupid to assume that a person watching a restream is stealing a potential costumer. i didnt watch mlg at all this weekend because imo its them hurting esports.
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I would have to agree with many other people so far, there are a lot of scummy people everywhere, and SC2 is no different, but the posts get reported and the users are banned and the vast majority of people either either agree with the decision and/or the price or disagree.
I would have liked to watch MLG but I felt $20 was over priced and so I look forward to future events and hope for a change but because of that I've had literally no reason to go in to threads (besides this one) and state that view. I would imagine I'm very far from alone in that.
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If businesses arent making enough money with the current, non PPV business model, it is because the SC2 popularity bubble is bursting. We could artificially inflate it by making every major tournament PPV and the fans could think they are "supporting esports" but they are really just supporting the companies that strive to profit from our scene.
Recently, Canada Cup Gaming's 2011 winter tournament, a free quality stream was featured, riddled with ads, and an HQ stream was offered which also featured access to the VODs, for $8.95. The community rejected this so fully and passionately that CCG released the archive to the public and refunded those who bought the HQ stream service. The CCG chat was continuously filled with shouts of "895" for each day that It aired.
The MLG PPV business model is much more ugly than what CCG was trying to do in the Fighting Game Community. And yet we have blog posts about how "its not so bad" and that anyone who opposes it is "hurting esports".
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United States5162 Posts
Let's not act like MLG is innocent in this whole ordeal. They went to PPV in an after-the-fact, and imo, pretty shady way that pulled a fast one on gold members who get less this year then they got last year(that in unarguable, despite any opinion on whether they should have got the arena for free).
Then they can't even properly implement their paywall so people can just turn on the official stream and watch for free. It didn't even take any special setup. I was watching with regular FF without adblock. That's not good business.
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Calgary25993 Posts
You're pretty dramatic. People take the path of least resistance - no need to be disgusted by it. I'm sure tons of people bought the pass even after knowing they could get it for free.
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Hong Kong9169 Posts
Black markets arise when people are priced out of something they desire. This is a simple economic fact. If this galls you so much, then the 'real' world and how it works should absolutely gall you as well.
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On February 27 2012 01:11 itsjustatank wrote:
Black markets arise when people are priced out of something they desire. This is a simple economic fact. If this galls you so much, then the 'real' world and how it works should absolutely gall you as well.
Of course, agreed, but I agree with the OP to the extent that we are rather hypocritical when we want esports to succeed so much, but in the latest example of supporting MLG (who typically provide fantastic tournaments) with our money (of those of us that HAVE it of course), we failed to do so.
Just an interesting point, and perhaps we should reflect a bit.
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On February 26 2012 20:21 Saechiis wrote:
Yeah bro, the entire community is in the wrong here, and you're like a Jesus paying for our sins.
Thx yo.
hahahahah 5/5
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People have been downloading music/movies for free, watching PPV restreams of sports events, and pirating software since the Internet was born. There's no reason to assume that this is a specific problem of the SC2 scene. So I think you're a bit overdramatic in that regard.
I'm not saying ppl should watch restream, but I'd be happy to see that this kind of business model MLG introduced with the Winter Arena dies out. Having to pay 20$ for such a event is too much, especially if you're a student. A lot of people would be excluded from events. This is not the direction E-Sports should be moving in. The prior MLG events were awesome the way they were, no reason to reinvent the wheel.
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Hong Kong9169 Posts
On February 27 2012 01:22 Comeh wrote:Show nested quote +On February 27 2012 01:11 itsjustatank wrote:
Black markets arise when people are priced out of something they desire. This is a simple economic fact. If this galls you so much, then the 'real' world and how it works should absolutely gall you as well. Of course, agreed, but I agree with the OP to the extent that we are rather hypocritical when we want esports to succeed so much, but in the latest example of supporting MLG (who typically provide fantastic tournaments) with our money (of those of us that HAVE it of course), we failed to do so. Just an interesting point, and perhaps we should reflect a bit.
No one is 'obligated' to support MLG and, by extension, ESPORTS, with their money. Each individual is a rational economic actor. Some rationally choose to spend their money and buy certain goods and services. Others choose to abstain, whether they can afford it or not; this is economic voting. Still others choose to use the black market approach, which, in a sense, is economic voting as well.
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All in all, it's probably a wee-bit on the pricy side, but it's a much smarter business strategy to start high and reduce, rather than the opposite.
Lots of businesses actually do the opposite. You bait people with samples and demos and low prices, and then when they know they like the content they get the premium service. You can do this either by offering special introductory events and prices which the customer knows is not the regular price, or you can do it by offering low quality versions of the normal stream, like 360p or something where you can just tell what's going on but it's costing almost no bandwidth to keep up.
In 2012 we have a try before you buy mentality (and sometimes we just go to the free alternative). That people were bragging about watching the illegal stream to paying customers is certainly stupid, but this is the internet. Most of those kids probably don't even have credit cards with which to pay for the service. The demographic is almost entirely bored/drunk/bad-with-money college students and young adults. One of those doesn't even have much money to burn to begin with lol.
There's a limit to how much you can blame customers. If you buy a service you might be a rarity that is appealed to by a strange business model. But most sports and such get people addicted with high quality free content (at least, content that comes with their cable package). That is the standard and that is what people expect. ESPORTS might be different, but BW wasn't and it did pretty well. You're in a period where all sorts of people are trying to figure out how they can make money with SC2, and there are no guarantees any of them will work. Paying to watch people play video games seems a little on the ridiculous side, since 90% of the viewers watch because they're bored and have nothing better to do, not because it's better than buying something actually fun. The other 10% are hard-core fans, so you better have a big 10% if you want to turn them into 100% of your viewership.
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So, you're saying that the same exact individuals who post frequently about propagating ESPORTS are the same people who decided to watch MLG for free?
On February 27 2012 02:06 Chef wrote:
The demographic is almost entirely bored/drunk/bad-with-money college students and young adults. One of those doesn't even have much money to burn to begin with lol.
I'm assuming you did an in-depth study before posting this.
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On February 26 2012 15:58 Fission wrote:
What surprises me is the incredible number of people who actively went out of their way to view the stream illegally, who posted restreams, who went into the LR thread to proclaim "rofl I'm watching for free sucks to be you guys who paid", who posted all over TL how to exploit the paywall. This is really nonsensical.
Not everyone feels they have to support esports at all costs. If the price goes up, demand will fall, and people who are no longer willing to pay will find other means. This should not surprise you.
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The primary demographic for ESports in the West is poor unemployed high school/college kids. It's just a bad demographic to build a business around.
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EPT
