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On October 28 2010 23:57 battarro wrote:If you are a musical group and you make covers of the Beatles, and you play in local clubs. Nobody will come after you. But if you become successful that you play to sold out arenas every other week, you can guarantee the owner of the Beatles music rights ( Michael Jackson' Family oddly enough ) will come after you asking for money. Post edit Show nested quote +On October 28 2010 23:50 ffreakk wrote:
It seems that many people are taking condition of Blizz "Rights to audit Kespa" lightly..
No matter what kind of organisation you are, even the Government needs a DAMN good reason to audit ur finances at any time.. So giving another firm the rights to audit your finances anytime is as ridiculous a condition as it gets.. I do not know, but i firmly believe that never before has such a condition been agreed upon outside of parent-child companies.
That said, other conditions of Blizz were about as ridiculous too, so there =/ Auditing a company is common in negotiations when companies wanting to become partners in a specif business venture. Specially if there is a lack of trust among the players. Kespa had every right to say no to the audit. But it does not looks good, when they say "No, you can not look at our books", but then come around ans say. "we are broke and we are operating at a loss every year" The phrase, "we reinvest all profits into the operating costs" is what brings a red flag. Like someone already pointed out, salaries are operating costs. Someone could have bought a very nice house under their name, then rent it to the team as a team practice/ storage room and then it would be covered under operating costs.
about the audit subject you are given yourself the answer, they are not becoming real partners and this is not a joint venture so there is not normal to be audited, I own a company that is a wholesaler of some producers here, when i go to the negotation table, I present my finances in order to get some trust but in not way I am going to let that my suppliers of a product or service audit my finances, that would be out outrageous, when you audit a firm you get all the information that makes that firm valuable in the market. Secondly they are not saying they are broke (where did you read that?), they are telling you that they have operational losses that are being settle from another kind of income, after all of this I think the goverment is pushing Kespa to get the negotations go in the right way, but I believe there is a point where Kespa can just not admit Blizzards demands.
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"KeSPA is reinvesting all profits made from the sale of broadcasting rights into the operation of leagues."
Notice, they don't specify that the leagues are only BW. Again, the reason Bliz have been after them for a while is because said profits have been redirected to fund development of competitive titles (for use in leagues). KeSPA isn't lying, they are just careful with their words. People want to think KeSPA is doing everything for BW when KeSPA would usurp BW and replace it with one of their own funded projects in a heartbeat; however, so far, they've only funded utter shit.
"The individual leagues are being run at the level where they are barely avoiding a loss."
Such a fantastic example of careful wording... "barely avoiding a loss" doesn't sound like a profit, but actually it is if you apply logic. Makes you wonder why they are so against audits.
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the difference between Kespa and things like ICCup is that kespa is a huge organisation, responsible for all BW in Korea, they broadcast on TV and have massive companies sponsoring them, they do not have any rights from blizz to run said tourneys/leagues or the rights to broadcast them on TV.
ICCUP etc have all had to apply for licences to run tourneys, none of them broadcast on TV, only the internet, and ESL probably DO have to pay blizzard a fee. follow this link to visit the sc2 esports page at blizz http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/community/esports/
and this is their post about why you need a licence to run tourneys:http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/374722123
ICCup etc have all had to have their operations reviewed by blizz and keep to specific rules etc, some of them probably have to pay for the right to broadcast if they charge for a "premium" service.
have a read, then you will see the difference between what ICCUP do and what Kespa does.
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On October 29 2010 01:12 sk` wrote:
"KeSPA is reinvesting all profits made from the sale of broadcasting rights into the operation of leagues."
Notice, they don't specify that the leagues are only BW. Again, the reason Bliz have been after them for a while is because said profits have been redirected to fund development of competitive titles (for use in leagues). KeSPA isn't lying, they are just careful with their words. People want to think KeSPA is doing everything for BW when KeSPA would usurp BW and replace it with one of their own funded projects in a heartbeat; however, so far, they've only funded utter shit.
Well KeSPA is supposed to be for all eSports right? So i don't see whats wrong with this? They are not going to drop BW unless it completely fails. Even if something else popular managed to overtake it they would just run it and change timeslots i'm guessing. By the time it's not worth running i can't imagine any of us will still care if it does.
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On October 29 2010 01:12 sk` wrote:
"KeSPA is reinvesting all profits made from the sale of broadcasting rights into the operation of leagues."
Notice, they don't specify that the leagues are only BW. Again, the reason Bliz have been after them for a while is because said profits have been redirected to fund development of competitive titles (for use in leagues). KeSPA isn't lying, they are just careful with their words. People want to think KeSPA is doing everything for BW when KeSPA would usurp BW and replace it with one of their own funded projects in a heartbeat; however, so far, they've only funded utter shit.
What? BW is right now the star of Kespa, but you cant just broadcast one game 7/24 or make teams exclusively for that, that would be the ruin of e-sports, Kespa must have part of the income and costs for other games aside of BW.
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What what? Iccup asks for permission for their SC2 tournaments and Blizzard also gives it?
You get banned for even mentioning iccup on the b.net forums for "promoting piracy".
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On October 29 2010 01:12 sk` wrote:
People want to think KeSPA is doing everything for BW when KeSPA would usurp BW and replace it with one of their own funded projects in a heartbeat; however, so far, they've only funded utter shit.
huh?
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KeSPA should pay Blizzard for the IP rights to use Starcraft: Broodwar.
It is no different than being paid for designing a web page or other piece of intellectual property such as a photograph or even professional sports footage.
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Trying to make sense of the finances here...
IEG pays KeSPA for Proleague rights. OGN/MBC then pay IEG. KeSPA invests on OGN/MBC productions (for smaller games?) Not sure about the word invests here, as it would indicate they expect to get that money back while MBC is saying they don't even make a profit. Team sponsors pay KeSPA ("board membership fee") and pay the players' salaries and other expenses of the team. League sponsors pay... OGN/MBC for OSL/MSL and KeSPA for PL I guess? Anyway, KeSPA saying that the proleague makes a loss just means that the money from IEG and Shinhan Bank doesn't cover it fully. They still make money from the board membership fees that keep their finances running.
Overview of the organizations of the "unprofitable" industry:
OGN: profiting? High profile sponsors, quick deal with Gretech, no bad news from them
MBC: breaking even as said in their report, troubles finding sponsors sometimes
KeSPA: non-profit
IEG: I don't even know what this company does but they seem to buy 1.7 billion worth of stuff and then sell it for 1.2 billion
Team/league sponsors: ask their marketing department, nobody knows
As for the rest of the statement, it's about as "unfortunate" that they're getting sued than it was "unfortunate" for Gretech that PL got started without a license. It's quite stupid that Gretech's asking the same amount of money for a 3 month MSL than for a 10 month PL season. They probably just decided an amount of money they want for keeping the BW scene running as it is and divided it by the number of tournaments per year and won't negotiate for smaller deals. Good position for Gretech anyway - owning the rights to your competitors' main business.
PS. Funny old poll: http://www.teamliquid.net/poll/index.php?poll_id=169
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On October 28 2010 23:26 w1kk wrote:
Sorry but i dont trust you Kespa.
I also do not trust blizzard anymore.
two childs fighting for the swing on the playground.
Exactly, I feel like both companies are just in a giant spin cycle and it's spinning nothing but BS for us. I personally don't trust either right now...
Here's a chopped up quote from a earlier translated news piece from TL:
Here's a big catch: Kespa offered Gretech 300,000,000 won (267332.10 dollars) for Proleague+OSL+MSL for a year... Now some of you may say that 300,000,000 won is a lot of money. In this case, this is relatively low money:
300 mil would be relatively low but would 700 million won a year be considered a lot of money for the boardcasting/licensing fee? (it's about $625,000 according to google).
Personally I find it a little BS when kespa claims that it's barely keeping everything afloat. That's a publicity/number twisting move, like the NBA claiming that over half of it's teams are not profitable.
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United States238 Posts
Then again, what kind of press release will a company reveal that would put them in a bad light, and put the other guys in a good light?
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What some of the users don't understand here is the lack of sponsers that are open to MBCGame and OnGameNet for their individual leagues. Remember way back in the early 2000s when the StarLeague had some big name sponsers such as Gillette, Coca-Cola, Snickers (MSL), Pringles (MSL).
These sponers are not much interested in these individual leagues anymore and it's getting harder and harder to find good sponsers for them. OnGameNet has been sponsered by KTF EVER like 5 seasons now? Bacchus to sponser a 3rd season now? It's like OGN is having to go back and hoping for these companies (although big, but not as big as say Coca-Cola, etc) to sponser again. MBCGame is winding up with some more and more obscure businesses and in some cases (Hana Daetoo) having to start without a sponser for a short amount of time.
The smaller the company is, the more lack of funding there is to manage tournaments. It's not really shocking that OGN and MBCGame are reporting just barely treading the water to stay alive here.
It would be nice to see some huge companies invest that can afford it (Microsoft StarLeague, Google MSL, etc). Maybe they can offer some more help to reach out to international audiences more as well.
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Its blizzards product, and just because your reinvesting the profits doesn't mean you get a pass on paying for rights.
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On October 28 2010 22:42 GTR wrote:
MLG thrives on advertising from big companies such as Dr. Pepper, Doritos etc. KeSPA doesn't have that.
How exactly does this work? Do all televised advertisement profits go straight to MBC/OGN, no quarter to KeSPA, because it's non-profit? With advertising and sponsorship deals all over the place, you think they'd have something set-up where they weren't in debt.
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Dang! Don't you hate this? I mean: this double-sided truth... As many have already remarked: hard to see who is right thru all this fog. But yet again, hope they come to an agreement for the benefit of the players and fans.
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On October 28 2010 22:42 GTR wrote:
MLG thrives on advertising from big companies such as Dr. Pepper, Doritos etc. KeSPA doesn't have that.
Isn't that partly KeSPA's own fault? Genuine question. I was under the assumption that as much as KeSPA wants esports to survive that they want their brand of esports to survive more. They couldn't even handle a blizzard sponsorship or the GOM tourney.
Would KeSPA even accept non-korean sponsorships? I've heard so many examples of how stubborn Koreans are about supporting Korean things the Korean way that I worry KeSPA will die by it.
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United States33316 Posts
On October 29 2010 03:20 Cedstick wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2010 22:42 GTR wrote:
MLG thrives on advertising from big companies such as Dr. Pepper, Doritos etc. KeSPA doesn't have that. How exactly does this work? Do all televised advertisement profits go straight to MBC/OGN, no quarter to KeSPA, because it's non-profit? With advertising and sponsorship deals all over the place, you think they'd have something set-up where they weren't in debt.
They'd snap up a foreign sponsor paying money in an instant.
There's always a bit of nationalism going in any country, and each country has it's own brand. However, it's often very complicated and conditional... I'd just say it's more productive to avoid discussions based on nationalism regarding this issue, unless it's brought up by someone who is proven to be knowledgeable about how it works in business (such as MightyAtom).
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On October 29 2010 02:55 purecarnagge wrote:
Its blizzards product, and just because your reinvesting the profits doesn't mean you get a pass on paying for rights.
It is this thought process that is killing the scene we have so loved for years. I'm experiencing some seriously illimitable frustration on this whole thing. Once Thanksgiving rolls around and I get some time, I plan on making a ridiculously large post about how these events have more to do with your freedom and their (Activision/Blizzard) greed than any perceived infringement on intellectual property rights.
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poor kespa, oh woe, oh alas. please understand our plights~
...
no seriously, financial transparency is quite a standard approach in business if you would like to gain the trust of your industry and stakeholders and audience. i do not see a lot of openness from kespa, only a lot of excuses and smoke-and-mirrors.
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Honestly, if the only snagging point is the money I'm rather confused. Gretech/Blizzard's primary concern should be securing recognition of their IP rights and their role in broadcasting games which use the said rights. Even having a barebones agreement which just acknowledges the IP is worth a ton as a precident between the two companies if it does go to litigation further down the line.
My opinion is that there's probably a snagging point to do with Gretech attepting to dictate timeslots for BW. Prime time viewership is worth more than 700million/year, imo.
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EPT
