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United States33327 Posts
Korea Economic Daily: AfreecaTV will undergo a major rebrand in March of 2024, with the streaming platform changing its name to "SOOP" ("forest" in Korean). AfreecaTV will also rename terms that are unique to the platform, such as
"BJ" (streamer) and "star balloon" (the internal donation currency).
Digtal Daily: Chae Jung Won (yes, the "Mr. Chae" of the GSL), head of Esports and Gaming content at AfreecaTV, said "We've offered global service for a while, but Korea still makes up over 95% of our regional viewers" and "We still have a low share (of the market) overseas, but we've brought in a lot of overseas viewers recently through Valorant and other esports events." He also said "In particular, the recent global Valorant tournament AVL (AfreecaTV Valorant League) recorded 120,000 simultaneous overseas viewers during the finals" and "For AfreecaTV, it was the first broadcast that got over 100,000 simultaneous views from overseas users, not Korean users, and we saw the potential in that. We'll try harder to make global esports content that's competitive."
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are they gonna keep the league names like ASL or will it be SSL (Soop SL)?
Btw anybody knows how easily afreeca integrates with like SplitOBS and the like? Does it need a special afreeca dedicated program?
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Did they say the reason behind the rebrand? Is it mainly to make more internationally friendly names/terms?
+1 on the question of renaming ASL
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but Korea still makes up over 95% of our regional viewers
That's because your website blows ass to watch on outside of Korea with the constant buffering and lag zzzzzz Hopefully they actually attempt to solve for that somehow.
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United States33327 Posts
On January 05 2024 04:29 Master of DalK wrote:That's because your website blows ass to watch on outside of Korea with the constant buffering and lag zzzzzz Hopefully they actually attempt to solve for that somehow.
AVL went over pretty well; the comparative lack of complaining from Valorant makes me wonder if the SC2 community misses out on some tailwind from Afreeca/SOOP's esports investment because they incessantly whine about the platform and make it the entire discourse on every internet thread.
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On January 05 2024 05:00 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2024 04:29 Master of DalK wrote: but Korea still makes up over 95% of our regional viewers That's because your website blows ass to watch on outside of Korea with the constant buffering and lag zzzzzz Hopefully they actually attempt to solve for that somehow. AVL went over pretty well; the comparative lack of complaining makes me wonder if the SC2 community misses out on some tailwind because they're incessant whiners 
I've got 3gb/s FTTB at home, and I still struggle to watch afreeca live streams (for ASL) while something like CHZZK is perfectly fine 
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United States33327 Posts
On January 05 2024 04:21 Lazyer wrote:
Did they say the reason behind the rebrand? Is it mainly to make more internationally friendly names/terms?
+1 on the question of renaming ASL
From reading articles, I think the general assumption is that it's to be more global friendly + distance from some bad domestic reputation associated with the AfreecaTV brand. Outside of gaming, it has the rep of being the platform where people will do anything for attention/money/donations, whether that's risque content or just generally saying/doing intentionally provocative things.
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On January 05 2024 05:06 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2024 04:21 Lazyer wrote:
Did they say the reason behind the rebrand? Is it mainly to make more internationally friendly names/terms?
+1 on the question of renaming ASL From reading articles, I think the general assumption is that it's to be more global friendly + distance from some bad domestic reputation associated with the AfreecaTV brand. Outside of gaming, it has the rep of being the platform where people will do anything for attention/money/donations, whether that's risque content or just generally saying/doing intentionally provocative things.
How will renaming the platform change that exactly? Everyone will still know it's "AfreecaTV" just renamed to "SOOP". Will terms of use change along with the name, so people can't seek for attention by doing weird/creepy/risque stuff anymore?
Because if not, then that's a pretty bizarre reason for such a big move, tbh.
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I don't see how changing couple of names will make the platform suddenly more "globally friendly" either.
Whatever. I guess we're getting a 3rd major BW league with "SSL" abbreviation then, lol :3
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On January 05 2024 04:29 Master of DalK wrote:That's because your website blows ass to watch on outside of Korea with the constant buffering and lag zzzzzz Hopefully they actually attempt to solve for that somehow.
Could it be something with your ISP? I m also in Canada and have no issue either on my phone or pc (fiber as well)
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On January 05 2024 04:29 Master of DalK wrote:That's because your website blows ass to watch on outside of Korea with the constant buffering and lag zzzzzz Hopefully they actually attempt to solve for that somehow.
I’ve never had problems with lag or stuttering on aftv..
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I'm rather curious if this re-branding is a direct response from AfreecaTV to Twitch leaving South Korea, and trying to capture a more worldwide viewer audience as a result.
It's either that, or maybe it's related to competition from the rumored upcoming streaming platform from Naver.
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I don't understand this. The claim is to rebrand to realize potential in foreign viewership. Ok,thats cool. Then they go ahead and call themselves soup. Don't get me wrong, I like soup. I eat soup fairly regularly. But Soup is not exciting. In fact soup might be the most boing food item there is, in a dinner kind of context.
From an english marketing perspective, this rebranding makes no sense. Is this just kt fingerbang all over again? Or does soop mean something exciting in chinese?
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ALLEYCAT BLUES50107 Posts
On January 05 2024 03:47 WGT-Baal wrote:
are they gonna keep the league names like ASL or will it be SSL (Soop SL)?
Btw anybody knows how easily afreeca integrates with like SplitOBS and the like? Does it need a special afreeca dedicated program?
AFAIK at least for the upcoming season its still ASL, beyond that I do not know.
also Soop still a better name than Naver's streaming platform, CHZZK
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United Kingdom12022 Posts
On January 05 2024 04:29 Master of DalK wrote:That's because your website blows ass to watch on outside of Korea with the constant buffering and lag zzzzzz Hopefully they actually attempt to solve for that somehow.
That's a bit of a shitty cycle as well, nobody will watch because the website sucks, but they won't spend the money to update the website and host global servers because of the fact nobody watches.
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On January 05 2024 03:47 WGT-Baal wrote:
are they gonna keep the league names like ASL or will it be SSL (Soop SL)?
I suppose one possible option would be to change it to the AfreecaTV/SOOP StarLeague (ASSL).
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Yeah renaming "BJ" is definitely a good move.
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huh. I mean if they have a more global viewership with Valorant and stuff they may have it in them to continue with SC2.
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When they ban folks for whatever reason I hope they say "NO SOOP FOR YOU"
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Northern Ireland24934 Posts
SOOP? Hey not as bad as Ragnarok becoming ‘SHIN’ but it’s really not doing it for me
Changing the term BJ does make rather a lot more sense if we’re talking the international market, with all it entails elsewhere
Others more knowledgeable than I have chimed in already, if it’s purely a rebrand rather than accompanied with other changes I don’t see how it fixes the twin problems of a certain bad reputation domestically, or largely failing to penetrate internationally.
Guess we’ll learn more down the line
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Bisutopia19225 Posts
I’m hoping for Ramen sponsors next tournament!
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The two times I tried Afreeca to get rid of the irritating border around youtube, it was bad, and I stuck with the border. So unless they invest in infrastructure as well, I don't see how this fixes anything.
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On January 06 2024 01:08 Chris_Havoc wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2024 03:47 WGT-Baal wrote:
are they gonna keep the league names like ASL or will it be SSL (Soop SL)?
I suppose one possible option would be to change it to the AfreecaTV/SOOP StarLeague (ASSL).
I would advise against rebranding as the ASS League.
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On January 06 2024 12:52 BisuDagger wrote:
I’m hoping for Ramen sponsors next tournament!
Made me laught so hard, I spilled noodle soup in my lap
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Echoing the point that while changing "BJ" is long overdue, the website is still unusable overseas (as in, cannot get streams and vods to load half the time on PC/mobile)
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Sorry for sounding ignorant even though I follow ASL quite a fair bit and occasionally watch their live stream. But what exactly is the domestic bad reputation of Afreeca? Most streaming platforms like Twitch have their own share of NSFW content. How is Afreeca any different? Or is it more of a cultural issue? Or some big scandal?
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On January 07 2024 21:25 RKC wrote:
Sorry for sounding ignorant even though I follow ASL quite a fair bit and occasionally watch their live stream. But what exactly is the domestic bad reputation of Afreeca? Most streaming platforms like Twitch have their own share of NSFW content. How is Afreeca any different? Or is it more of a cultural issue? Or some big scandal?
I think it is also that in Korea the other ones (local) are less NSFW I suppose. So bit of a cultural thing but they may have had other scandals. Twitch is irrelevant there.
Note in Korea it is also quite common to rebrand and change names, for instance political parties do this almost every election.
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Hong Kong9152 Posts
SOOP
a portmanteau of broth and noodles
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Afreeca loads just fine on both PC and mobile (app). I suspect a lot of people have shitty ISPs and instead wrongly blame the foreign site which they've used once-twice before going to their favourite whining spot of choice, whether that be TL, Reddit, Discord, Twitch chats or Youtube comments. (+ in the case of SC2, Afreeca already receives a bunch of hate for not subsidizing dead Korean SC2 even harder than it already does).
The real issue is that the international version of the PC site doesn't have game categories ala the Korean one, so you can't easily see all/most viewed SC streams, for instance. In the mobile app you can do this even when abroad.
Once you have direct links to relevant streamers though, it's a completely fine platform IMO. (Hint: https://bwstreams.appspot.com/ )
IMO, Afreeca provides a way better viewing experience than for instance Chinese ones like Douyu/Douyin/Bilibili or Japanese ones like Niconico. Insane that somehow back in the 2000s, most Asian video platforms decided that chat messages and comments rolling across the video screen was a good idea.
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EPT
