Breaking Out Season 3 Post Mortem

Recently, I finished the third season of the show/tournament I run called Breaking Out/The Breakout Invitational. In many ways, this was the most successful season. In regards to the invitational, it finally broke the 1k viewer wall that it's struggled with in the past, it had big name casters like iNcontroL and Day[9], and overall was, in my view, a really big success. But with every success comes gaps and areas for improvement. I figured I'd write my thoughts up here.

Statistics

First, let's start with the hard statistics. Now I haven't done in depth statistic releases for the show mainly because it's annoying to collect for every show and make sense of it. Sometimes the show overlaps with WCS or Dreamhack. Sometimes I get a huge bump from a host. Sometimes the stream bugs and I lose the TL calendar event. On top of that, Season 1 happened 6 days a week for ~30 minute shows, Season 2 happened 3 days a week ~1 hour shows and Season 3 happened 2 days a week for ~3 hour shows.

All sorts of crazy stuff can happen so it's important to keep in mind when looking at these stats.

With that being said, here are the stats broken down by season.

Season 1: September-November 2013
+ Show Spoiler +

Max Concurrent / Average Concurrent / Uniques

Week 1:
62 - 38 - 220
23 - 13 - 160
42 - 18 - 140
56 - 23 - 200
22 - 13 - 80
20 - 9 - 140

Week 2
50 - 30 - 220
16 - 8 - 40
54 - 22 - 200
5 - 3 - 40
34 - 14 - 120
26 - 14 - 220

Week 3
36 - 22 - 340
22 - 13 - 80
33 - 17 - 80
9 - 5 - 60
61 - 38 - 360
20 - 13 - 260

Week 4
37 - 20 - 180
37 - 22 - 140
12 - 6 - 60
7 - 6 - 0
45 - 21 - 60
14 - 8 - 20

Week 5
14 - 9 - 60
19 - 11 - 100
11 - 6 - 60
43 - 23 - 120
5 - 3 - 0
21 - 14 - 160

Week 6
54 - 16 - 160
28 - 32 - 100
9 - 16 - 20
26 - 5 - 40
9 - 18 - 100
238 - 127 - 860

Week 7
42 - 21 - 360
32 - 17 - 100
51 - 27 - 60
26 - 15 - 80
5 - 3 - 20
6 - 5 - 0

Week 8
26 - 18 - 200
35 - 23 - 80
22 - 15 - 80
26 - 14 - 100
12 - 8 - 120
45 - 23 - 380

Invitational
738 - 403 - 3480
494 - 323 - 2600
325 - 234 - 1840

Season 2: March-May 2014
+ Show Spoiler +

Max Concurrent / Average Concurrent / Uniques

Week 1
47 - 26 - 180
31 - 21 - 40
60 - 35 - 340

Week 2
30 - 17 - 80
36 - 20 - 160
60 - 35 - 180

Week 3
10 - 7 - 0
48 - 28 - 120
69 - 43 - 300

Week 4
43 - 32 - 240
32 - 15 - 20
36 - 26 - 240

Week 5
38 - 25 - 100
42 - 24 - 120
64 - 39 - 220

Week 6
27 - 14 - 100
43 - 19 - 200
53 - 32 - 280

Week 7
47 - 31 - 180
45 - 26 - 140
79 - 49 - 240

Week 8
35 - 22 - 20
76 - 48 - 240
53 - 36 - 220

Invitational
534 - 266 - 1980
559 - 410 - 2240
494 - 250 - 2120

Season 3: September-October 2014
+ Show Spoiler +

Max Concurrent / Average Concurrent / Uniques

Day 1
63 - 43 - 340

Day 2
59 - 39 - 340

Day 3
637 - 150 - 1240

Day 4
38 - 20 - 300

Day 5
592 - 93 - 1040

Day 6
71 - 49 - 260

Day 7
56 - 37 - 200

Day 8
16 - 11 - 0

Invitational
692 - 545 - 3660
2024 - 910 - 6560
2226 - 1137 - 11620

What the Hell Do Those Numbers Mean

I honestly am not totally sure. You've likely clicked those spoiler tags, saw how many numbers there were and closed them because there's a LOT of data there. Maybe you glanced down and saw the numbers for the invitationals. So what can I say about the numbers? There has been growth, even if it isn't 100% clear. The growth was mostly shown during the Breakout Invitaitonal itself, but it must be stated that there were some big bumps given by Nathanias on Day 1 and BasetradeTV on day 2 and 3. I'm not entirely sure what viewership would have been without those bumps. I will say though that twitch recently let me see on the statistics page how many viewers came from a host, and while Days 1 and 2 had a hefty number of viewers coming from Nathanias and BasetradeTV, on Day 3, most of the viewers were watching the event on my channel itself.

Overall, I think the show has grown as well, though it may not immediately be apparent. While many of the statistics are the same, I've only provided the daily statistics, not the hourly(forgive me if I don't want to transcribe down literally hundreds of those stats for you). The show has increased drastically in length between Season 1 and 3(about 6 times as long now per broadcast), and it actually manages to consistently climb in viewership over the course of the 3 hours. Is the show where I want it to be yet in terms of viewership? No. But I'm a big believer in improving a product until people feel it is worth watching, whilst staying consistent.

Thoughts About the Invitational

I've already said I consider the event a huge success. I also spoke briefly on desRow's show Remax and Nanman's show SC2 Up & Coming about how I feel some aspects of the tournament went. I could probably try and write pages and pages of text on this but I'm instead going to put up a 20 minute video that briefly(I know 20 minutes isn't brief but I could talk for close to 3 hours on this) about how I felt the invitational went.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. If you have any feedback on how the show or invitational went, please let me know. Or maybe you know how to make better sense of the numbers on the show/tournament than I do, in which case, I would love to hear your input. I read and really think about every piece of feedback I get. Final shout out to Filthyrake for sponsoring the event. You've been an amazing support for the tournament in the past and I'm grateful for all the time you spent.

Edit:

Financial side

Since I had a few people ask about it, the finances for the show right now are very simple. I put in $1000 for the base prize pool but I also purchase zergling plushies for the giveaway that end up being roughly $25-30 per person with shipping. While I have never been asked to, I also do try and give some sort of compensation($200) for my video editor, Sybert, though it's nowhere near his actual value. Casters were not paid, nor told they were paid but after the tournament I sent them all a small thank you for the time they put into casting the tournament($75). I want to reiterate, not a single person involved in the production of the show asked for a single penny, but I want to make this something sustainable in the future. If I'm constantly relying on charity from others, the show becomes dependent on factors outside of my control. For now, I will happily eat the costs, being grateful that the people who have done any work for the show are willing to do so at a cost lower than their actual value for now.

The total cost of the tournament totaled to roughly $1590 USD.

Places where I can cut costs are giveaways being done by sponsor products rather than things I have to purchase, ad and subscriptions revenue on my newly partnered twitch stream to help cut down the $1000 prize pool, as well as a reduced cost by reusing assets made by Sybert/MinnyMaus so they do not have to put in (much) additional work for the show. For example, MinnyMaus had very little additional work from Season 3 because she did such a great job with assets from Season 2. Sybert did a fantastic job with assets from Season 3 so I will likely not need him to do nearly as much for Season 4.

Breaking Out Season 3 Post Mortem

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