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On August 29 2012 03:24 johnny123 wrote:
And about FXO, that team will only stay alive as long as FXO Boss has the passion to keep it alive since i dont see any other sponsors except for razor.
Actually this is untrue, see
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=347978
esports has shown to be a worthwhile investment for our team, regardless of boss's passion it will be around for a long time barring any drastic things coming up in the future.
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This is the best, most informative blog I've ever read regarding eSports.
Thank you so much TotalBiscuit.
Is there anything fans can do to help?
Other than maybe facebook like a brand a post a pic of yourself with say a Razer keyboard for sponsoring your favorite player?
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Calgary25954 Posts
On August 29 2012 06:41 FXOUnstable wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2012 03:24 johnny123 wrote:
And about FXO, that team will only stay alive as long as FXO Boss has the passion to keep it alive since i dont see any other sponsors except for razor. Actually this is untrue, see http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=347978esports has shown to be a worthwhile investment for our team, regardless of boss's passion it will be around for a long time barring any drastic things coming up in the future.
I missed this the first time around and just wanted to let you know I found it really interesting.
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On August 29 2012 06:02 Diamond wrote:
Having a lot of work in Korea I think the Korean problem is a problem with most team manager being bad at business. Let me give two some examples of the mind numbing stuff I have seen out of Korean coaches:
1: I knew what dire straights ZeNEX was in at the end of it's life and came up with some cool promotional ideas (mind you I re-wrote the "ZeNEX wants THE THING" post for them, so I had done good work for them in the past.) I offered a small partnership with ESV TV where we would cast replays of cool games from ZeNEX players and promote THE SHIT out of the players/team to get some exposure at a needed time. It would not really have benefited ESV TV is any way, but I did not want to see the team die.
However I was turned down flat because the coach felt that they should be paid well for it, and even then he didn't want the players to reveal strats. I explained this could be simply ladder replays of super standard play. Didn't matter, a team on the verge of death turned me down flat for free promotion at it's direst hour.
By comparison, if I go to Liquid the most well known foreign team that I can likely offer little exposure to (since a lot of my traffic comes from here), they JUMP ALL OVER IT. "You want TaeJa reps right? How about TLO, Haypro, Ret, or anyone else? Want replays from the entire team? Whatever you want man!"
2: About 13 months ago right around the start of the KW I realized you could not buy Korean team gear anywhere (pre Primezangg) outside of Korea, and shipping from Korea is insanely high. I came up with a really cool business plan for a gear shop to stock Korean teams gear. It was unique in that because we could keep it small, and with my basing in the US, we could offer the stuff for a VERY reasonable cost, and put A LOT of money into the Korean teams pockets who needed it (and still do apparently). I don't remember the number specifics but it was a REALLY good deal, something like 60% of all profits, and they could still do their own stuff in Asia so as not to effect that.
Every Korean team turned me down. Several told me they just were not interested (don't want free money?), but several told me that they had already signed deals (why would you talk to me then?) and would have their lines out within a week. They all wanted $5K+ a month plus the insane good deal I was offering citing they already were getting that (which destroyed any way to make a profit or break even). I knew this was obviously bullshit and went on my way. Here we stand 13+ months later, and ONE team sells their gear (Prime), and you still cannot buy an NsHS or MvP jersey.....
These are but a couple things. In my time in Korea I have found that team managers/coaches are very good managers/coaches, but AWFUL businessman, they have a self inflated sense of value, and refuse to do things to help themselves out because they don't understand how it will help.
Also running online tournaments in Korea is one of the most frustrating things I have EVER done. I send out on average about 30+ emails PER WEEK reminding seven teams to sign up. I spend a 12 hour period on battle.net beforehand bugging players to sign up because most coaches just ignore the emails. This is all to get like 30 players, which is not really much. When GSTL hits, it becomes borderline impossible to run the tournaments as teams are OBSESSED with it and refuse to let most players play if they have a match in the next 3-4 weeks. For example Crank was always asking to play in the Korean Weekly when on SlayerS, but since he was their PvZ sniper they did not allow him to enter at all (or maybe one time, can't remember offhand) in S3 because they were afraid of people scouting him. Fair sentiment but this is a guy that made 0 salary, and needed promotion bad. Did this matter? Lol no, notice the lack Crank in all S3. Can't make stream money either, since anyone in the SlayerS house cannot stream. So 0 income for Crank.
Now add in the third problem of GOM TV. GOM TV is composed of some amazing people (<3 Mr Chae) but one of the most frustrating companies to work with, everything takes months on end to set up with them (I spent 3'ish months getting approval on the Korean Weekly), and they do not ever work with online tournaments. For example the Korean Weekly was set up for Saturday nights in Korea, and GOM was aware of this. It was set up this way because there was never GSL on those nights. GOM however after a season or two moves GSTL to Saturday night with no prior warning to tournament organizers. This put me in a spot where for S3 I was already committed on dates/times and lost MANY participants because of this move. I understand GOM is big, but to not shoot off an email or Skype message when I was seeking approval for S3 saying "Hey might want to move the dates to Sunday" would have saved me much trouble.
Anyways the small player turnout and difficulty of running these tournaments has made securing sponsors very very very hard and we were forced to put S4 on an indefinite hold (hopefully just until HotS retail), so the one "regular" event isn't even a regular event anymore. Add in the fact there's a -42,800% chance of KeSPA players in an online tournament (people want the new shiny Koreans), and all of a sudden you have an environment that it does not make sense to run tournaments.
So in short, the Korean teams are the Korean teams own worst enemy. They make silly decisions on a regular basis, lack basic communication, and do things that only hurt their exposure in the long term. The fact that every team does not have an NA/EU member to do marketing to NA/EU companies and help them do all the things is beyond me and shows they do not understand the need to connect in the right way with foreign companies and fans.
Edit: Also important is when do you actually broadcast to get an ROI anymore? MLG, IPL, NASL, or another major league is ALWAYS on. ESV was always the exception of a company that can compete without millions of $, but now even these days we cannot, because we NEED such a larger viewership than them to be sustainable where they don't need top notch viewership every day to stay afloat.
Tons of good info here. I hope the SC2 teams make better business decisions in the future.
Also props to TB for keeping the e-sports dream alive.
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You're awesome TotalBiscuit. The SCII scene is lucky to have you
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On August 29 2012 02:31 TotalBiscuit wrote:
Forgive me if I don't rely on or trust KESPA to do things right.
I think it's already been proven that KESPA don't have the ability to throw their weight anywhere near as much as they did before. We'll see how the situation evolves however, somehow I don't think we'll be able to have our cake and eat it, i.e. have KESPA's legions of Korean fans but avoid ridiculous power plays by them. More viewers = more power.
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On August 29 2012 01:46 Snoodles wrote:
TB, with the recent kespa drama, do you think KeSPA would get in the way of top players competing in your hypothetical online tournaments?
I dount TB's tourney will be aimed at Kespa players. Literally worlds apart.
Respect TB, good luck and please based your streaming time around GMT. Cheers 
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Good luck TB! Get MightyAtom to help out if you can!
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Some Teams are clearly better organized than others. Take the NASL open tournament. Slayers has signed up half their team every time while most others haven't signed up anyone with only a handful of exceptions. MVP signed up for the wildcard tournament, and now TSL have signed up for the final NASL season 4 qualifier.
Perhaps NASL could allow some space on the players screen for Team Sponsors. I do know that NASL had a little trouble last season getting Official Player Portraits, I am curious if we will get shots of Arthur & Dark!
It's frustrating that some teams just refuse to help themselves.
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For a tournament that's essentially charity to help out players, featuring their sponsors is a great idea. For regular tournaments, I don't see any reason it has to work that way. Teams are limited in what they can attend, because of time and money and strategy-revealing and so forth. Tournaments compete to get those players, because (as Diamond explained very well) if they don't get the top players they can't get sponsors or ticket-buyers or whatever they need to stay alive. Tournaments compete for players in a number of ways - prize money, travel expenses covered, exposure for the team's sponsors, etc.
MLG isn't just showing team sponsors out of the good of their heart - they're doing it because they know that doing so is part of why they can get those players to come to MLG. Of course, they could limit the amount they show team sponsors and instead give more attention to their own. In order to keep the same player draw, they'd have to use that extra sponsorship money to increase the prize pool and/or cover more of the tournament expenses for players and/or increase their total viewership enough to keep the total exposure the same. It's not obvious to me that it's somehow better for the sponsorship money to come in primarily through teams rather than tournaments or vice versa.
That said, I don't think this is something that many tournament organizers realize. Maybe the Korean Weekly would have gotten better players if they featured the sponsors more. Maybe pointing out to online tournaments that this is a tool they could be using will help a lot.
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SC2 games are not a good medium for sponsorship and advertising. This means that the entire sponsorship model of esports is under threat, because the medium is fundamentally flawed from a advertiser standpoint.
Simply put, team sponsors don't see a ROI (return on investment).
Its a business model problem IMO... esports is still clinging to a 2002 type business model and its now 2012. The old esports business model doesn't work. There are too many highly trackable, measurable advertising mediums for companies to chose from now like Google/Facebook/Twitter, that simple generic sponsorship get thrown out by marketing departments because their ROI is weaker and less easily measured.
For the current model to succeed, SC2 teams would need to show how sponsoring them brought new business to their advertisers. I don't think they can show that.... and in 2012, there are lots of ad sellers that can.
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I completely applaud what you're doing. You've basically identified THE main problem for players -- how to promote sponsors while in tournaments? Sure, in personal streams exposure to sponsors is easy, but in tournaments it isn't unless a person actually researches your team website, THEN views who's sponsoring it.
Here's my suggestion for how the tournament should run:
Part 1
You want to give Koreans exposure, however I don't think that this opportunity has to JUST extend to koreans living in korea. Instead of putting any kind of racial or location lock on who can join the tournament, think along the lines of a series of "Korean Daily's." Whether you choose to have them every day, or 3 times a week/once a week, your choice. These are open tournaments, allowing however many people want to join, but on the KOREAN server. The dailies should have ~$100 prize pool to gather attention of korean pros, with you casting using your format.
Don't just force players to only be streamed on your stream -- your stream, the "main stream," picks and chooses which matches it wants to cast while community streams can cast other matches or replays (more viewership for the event, bigger buildup for the finals)
Part 2
This is the kicker, the big eye catcher for players/potential viewers. The top 2, 4, or 8 players from each daily (depending on how many dailies you have per week/month) after X amount of daily's are invited to a "special event" of some kind. This event has a sizable prize pool. Additionally, in order to ASSURE viewership is high, invite ~4 extremely popular players to the event (whether these guys are just popular in the community or just damn good). Go through the tournament, cast live until the Ro8, then cast ALL ro8 replays through finals off of replays or whatever, ectect.
^ Is how I would like to see a tournament run, one what I would play in as well as watch if I wasn't participating. Thoughts?
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On August 29 2012 06:46 Chill wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2012 06:41 FXOUnstable wrote:On August 29 2012 03:24 johnny123 wrote:
And about FXO, that team will only stay alive as long as FXO Boss has the passion to keep it alive since i dont see any other sponsors except for razor. Actually this is untrue, see http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=347978esports has shown to be a worthwhile investment for our team, regardless of boss's passion it will be around for a long time barring any drastic things coming up in the future. I missed this the first time around and just wanted to let you know I found it really interesting.
You weren't the only one who missed it, Chill...
Very interesting indeed...
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Fighting the good fight, I support you 100% TB  Will be sure to tune in to all future SCI's
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I think the Koreans can start off by taking a lesson from EG and actually promote their sponsors. How hard is it really to say "thanks to our sponsors company x, y and z" in an interview?
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1) The sponsorship situation in Korea is worse than I thought and the only team that is really well sponsored right now is LG-IM (none of them mentioned FXO though I assume they are doing well too atm)
When did you ever think it was stable/decent/good?
Currently Active Teams:
NSHoseo - School team.
StarTale - As you said, and as it was reported are currently facing financial difficulties.
Team SCV Life - Has gone through a large number of sponsors, Coach Lee even admitting that the situation was not good, and thought about closing doors at one point.
NOTE: Other teams do have sponsors to some degree and have not posted many problems. However, Prime did have problems in the first year of their teams' existence and even posted on TL.net about looking for sponsors.
Disbanded Teams
ZeNEX (now part of StarTale - who have financial troubles)
Old Generations
F.United
WeRRa
fOu (Bought by FXO)
WeMade FOX
Rising Star
Even the Starcraft BroodWar teams under KeSPA have been having incredible difficulties over the past few years, forcing the creation of "Team 8" just so they can operate properly.
2) The online tournament scene in Korea is essentially non-existent.
The online tournament scene in Korea has always been terrible - even for BroodWar and Warcraft 3.
Startale recently announced that it would shut down it's League of Legends team due to limited funds and focus entirely on it's SC2 division. Good news for SC2 fans of course and no doubt much cheering and jeering occurred, however it reveals a deep-seated problem. If a team as successful as Startale, who has within it's ranks so much success, cannot maintain it's League of Legends team due to lack of funds, then what on earth is going on over there in terms of sponsorship?
As a Starcraft 2 fan, this does not sound like good news to me. When a top tier team is shutting down an entire division of its operation because it is having funding issues - arguably a more profitable division considering OGN/RIOT's commitments to League of Legends, I worry. Why do I worry? Because that tells me their team is unstable, and that their Starcraft 2 division (only remaining division) is next on the chopping block.
Why is the sponsorship situation so difficult? Well unlike SC1, teams are in an awkward spot when it comes to sponsorship ROI. ROI = Return on Investment, you want to at least break even on the value you get out based on the value you put in. If you have a product to sell, ROI could be as simple as selling X more units because of your sponsorship. More often than not though it's much trickier than that, it's hard to directly prove ROI. If I see LG's logo on Nestea's shirt and then go and buy an LG television, how does LG know the cause? Some companies gather data via referral links though that is clearly not relevant in most cases. Others allow you to tell them as you "check out" where you found out about them, but that only really applies if you're buying direct. If I buy an LG TV from Amazon, how on earth can I possibly let LG know that it's because of Nestea? Short answer is, I cannot. As a result, sponsorship ROI often has to be a lot higher than you might think, because you can't accurately track it.
I would argue that is relevant in most cases, considering sponsors track those promotions to see if they are successful, and why they are successful and how they can continue with that success. Yes it is difficult, and sometimes impossible to truly account for ROI in terms of advertising efforts. That said, there are tools that can give advertisers and the ad agencies they use a good picture of what kind of effect the advertising is having.
That's right, the United States of America. One of the reasons that Koreans want to come to MLG besides the large prize-pool and good shot at winning it, is the sponsorship exposure
The only conceivable way this is true is if a teams' sponsorship is considered global, or is North American region based (or even more specific, the USA). I would argue that most of the sponsorships on current teams, are region based. I know some of the larger teams are based on global sponsorships, but most of them are region based. This is especially true for Korean teams. So for MVP to send DRG to an event, it is pointless (in terms of the sponsor exposure you think he is getting) considering the BURN energy drink isn't even sold in the US.
If I am the regional marketing manager for a company in China, and I sponsor a Chinese team, do you think I really care if they go out of China? I don't. If I am not meeting my targets within my region, I am not properly doing my job, I will most likely get fired.
Alright, now why did I mention online tournaments? I asked the Koreans how many there were and the answer? 1. 1 regular event. There have been a handful of attempts but aside from the Korean weekly, that's really about it. I asked if Korean players disliked online events and they said no, actually they enjoy them and want more. It's a chance to win some money, gain some exposure, but not have to travel to the other side of the planet to do it. It's low-risk high-reward for them and also the reason some try to compete in foreign online tournaments though as the skill level of SC2 continues to rise, cross-server player becomes less and less viable and cross-server results less and less important.
As I said earlier, the online tournament scene has always been bad in Korea for RTS games. Those players have been dominating western online tournaments for years. Since ZOTAC for Warcraft 3 - it is still dominated by Koreans and Chinese if I am not mistaken. Now look at Playhem/ZOTAC and any online qualification for a major tournament that hasn't been region restricted - Koreans dominate.
Right now online tournaments also suffer from another problem, lack of sponsorship ROI. Sure, if you win a big online event, your team will get recognition, but it's not even close to being as effective as that logo on a shirt in 1080p on a big stage with cheering fans. Some teams, realizing this, have taken matters into their own hands with so-called "title sponsorship". This involves placing the sponsor in the user ID of the player. EG is a recent example of this with Raidcall, as are Fnatic. Mousesports also do it with Card Coaches. It's smart but not necessarily effective. Neither of these brands are well known for their acronym. You put LG in IM's name and you know what it is, you put RC or CC and explanation is required. This ambiguity can work in the favor of a sponsor since curious viewers will go and look for information on what these sponsors do, but it also tosses an element of unreliability into the mix.
One word - streaming. I don't see IdrA playing in a lot of online cups like Playhem or ZOTAC. I do see IdrA streaming A LOT. He has a nice looking overlay, a nice webcam where I can see him in his jersey. He interacts with fans, they love it, he earns money for himself, and his sponsors (global and regional) earn exposure - and he remains relevant in the community.
During July, 8 of the top 50 streamers are Korean. Some of which are on foreign teams. Only one Korean is in the top 10.
Online tournaments are primarily watched by Americans, at least according to the analytics from my Twitch and Youtube channels. This is a good thing, sponsors like the American demographic and it opens up a lot of sponsorship options due to the sheer number of products available in such a large and wealthy country.
I need you to clarify something for me here: What is the "American Demographic". North America, or even more specifically, the USA, is comprised of countless demographics.
Valve understands the problem and implemented an in-game solution in the form of in-game branding. Super smart and considering Valve's history of ineptitude when it comes to eSports, quite the surprise. SC2 has no such system and there's no sign of it coming in either. Sad thing is Blizzard could pull it off, they already have a logo-decal system in the game. If you see MMA play on his European account he clearly has a Blizzcon logo and it looks good. Blizzard could implement a system which would allow authorized teams to display sponsorship logos on command structures for instance. However this probably will not happen so who is responsible for the promotion of sponsors?
In-game advertising has been done by eSports teams and tournaments in Warcraft 3 (Blizzard made game) in tournaments like NGL-ONE and others. It continues to this day in Chinese Warcraft 3 tournaments.
Additionally, VALVE let teams create their own maps that were branded in Counter-Strike 1.6 and Source (3D AIM map anyone?). I mean come on, Fnatic even has their own GUI for Counter-Strike and it is extremely successful. Leagues like CEVO have also done it in the past.
Yes these are examples done by eSports organizations and not the game developers, but isn't that what you want anyway? And it has been done in Starcraft 2 with regard to the loading screens. In the game itself, not yet - but that is why we have overlays, commercials and everything else in-between.
Also, Blizzard used to advertise A LOT (products, eSports events, etc.) on the original Battle.net. They still do.
If you are strictly talking about teams getting their logo's or team names on the lesser known tournament streams - overlays. It is not difficult to add the team name and logo to an overlay. It has been before in Starcraft 2. Example - EG's Masters Cup.
Teams can only do so much. How on earth do you promote your sponsors during an online event without having a title sponsor? There is no stage, no cameras, no live audience, your jersey is irrelevant and you might as well be wearing it on your head. Quite frankly, I think this responsibility needs to start falling to tournament organizers. If you broadcast a tournament you have the ability to display sponsorship information in your overlay. The scoreboard would be an ideal place to do so, as would winner splash-screens. I particularly like the idea of displaying the sponsors if the player wins, it just makes sense in a competitive eSport. Win and make your sponsors happy!
Relevance. The point of these online cups and tournaments (the smaller ones that are weekly) is to allow for players to earn a name for themselves. As a fan, I don't need to see their team name or sponsors or their face. I need to see their alias, and I need to see them play. Those cups are proving grounds for players, nothing more.
This all comes back around to the original topic, the sponsorship situation in Korea. It occurs to me that SCI has been focused in the wrong place. While foreigners frequently struggle to get results against Korean players, they are more often than not well-sponsored and at least get paid a nominal amount. Many Korean players don't get paid a thing and their teams struggle to find sponsorship. What Korean team has the number of sponsors that EG is sporting right now? Short answer, none of them do.
Western teams like EG and Fnatic have money because they have developed brands over years. They have done so with multiple teams and players. They catered to their fans, and their fans can easily relate to them.
There is a reason why MC is so favored amongst the Koreans - he has personality. He has a way about him that makes fans relate to him. His cocky attitude, his ridiculous ceremonies, his showmanship in interviews and in the game - these actions earn fans. How many Koreans do you see doing this on a regular basis? Hardly any.
Fact - it is easier for me to relate to IdrA than it is for me to relate to NSH San.
Also, western teams have numerous staff members and volunteers. There are dedicated marketing people on these teams. Not many of the ESF/GSL Korean teams have this kind of infrastructure.
Results do not equate sponsorship dollars, teams have been saying this for years. When a player wins a tournament, leaves their current team, or maybe was teamless to begin with - they automatically expect a huge sponsor/team deal and money bags to fall from the sky. That does not happen.
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On August 29 2012 02:31 TotalBiscuit wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2012 02:30 NoobSkills wrote:
In the end Biscuit you're talking about the current which isn't relevant now that the BW pros are switching over. ROI will be received when the Korean fans and old BW fanboys are forced to switch over. Sure, they say they don't like the game, but when their old BW pros are making a run for an OSL, GSL, or whatever they will be watching. You might lose some people to the switch, but I would guess that the old fans won't die out just because the game is switched up they're invested in their players/teams. When all that is said and done, then it is up to the ESF teams to get that money. If they don't then KESPA has their next power play. Forgive me if I don't rely on or trust KESPA to do things right.
Well, you say the right, but being a money hungry business isn't necessarily wrong. Besides that though you're right I full expect them to attempt to eliminate GOM ASAP. My point wasn't that KESPA was going to give GOM a pass. My point is that GOM/ESF need to step up their game because they're about to have tens of thousands of new eyes coming to SC2. GOM/ESF need to secure that sponsorship money NOW, because if they do wait, KESPA has the bankroll to snipe every single decent SC2 player from GOM and pay them a salary which will in turn kill ESF/GOM.
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On August 29 2012 01:19 TotalBiscuit wrote: Sad thing is Blizzard could pull it off, they already have a logo-decal system in the game. If you see MMA play on his European account he clearly has a Blizzcon logo and it looks good. Blizzard could implement a system which would allow authorized teams to display sponsorship logos on command structures for instance. However this probably will not happen so who is responsible for the promotion of sponsors?
This right here!
I'm an EG fan, why can't i buy from EG their logo to proudly display my support in game? Someone make this happen!
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Thanks for the insight!
I've been suggesting inbuilt battle.net tournaments since 2010. It's so sad to see that Battle.Net 0.2 is slowly killing SC2. Props to Valve for showing incompetent Blizzard how to build an online platform.
What's worse is that for HotS Blizzard is introducing attack move units that take no skill like the warhound. Starcraft 2 needs exciting new units that require micro to make it more spectator friendly and grow it in Korea. End of the Blizzard rant but their incompetence is frustrating.
On topic, I believe raising brand awareness is an excellent idea! Hopefully Blizzard will do something in HotS to help out as well.
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I think another huge gateway into sponsors are maps. Making maps with sponsor decals that don't change the gameplay could be huge. For instance, since GSL has plenty of time to prepare for each round, they could customize the maps for each match to display the sponsors for both player's teams.
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EPT
