On September 02 2010 02:30 djWHEAT wrote: I'll tell you why I think it's reasonable. Because I stream major events around the world... I know the time, the money, the production, everything that goes into doing something like this. So I can appreciate the fact that they have to recoup costs in order to continue to offer it to the fans.
Everyone keeps talking about how the sponsors should be footing the bill.
...
Did you see how much they are offering for prize money? I guarantee you that most (if not all) of that sponsor money went into that pool. Additionally, it's going to be ALOT harder for GOMtv to sell adverts on something like this because it's going out to a global audience.
In case people didn't know, selling adverts on a stream is alot harder than many probably believe. With a global audience, it's very difficult to even justify selling ads when you have an audience around the world. It's ineffective advertising for companies, thus making it very difficult to sell.
I can understand people just not being able to afford it, but I don't believe that should automatically make it "BAD". I can't afford a 3DTV yet but that doesn't mean they suck.
Sure they need money, but do they actually think that this is the way to get it? I can't imagine that they'll be getting very many subs with this pricing plan, especially not from the semi-serious casual masses that you need to attract in order to make an event like this profitable. Speaking entirely for myself, I like english commentary, but I don't like it nearly enough to pay $50 when a non-english, free, higher quality version of the same product exists. This business model is simply absurd on every level and is only going to encourage piracy and discontent.
Has anyone found out how long a season is yet? $240 per year for live streams and $360 per year for VODs is totally unreasonable but $20 per year and $50 per year is a lot different.
I still believe the 300K stream should be free regardless
On September 02 2010 02:32 Roffles wrote: Why should us foreigners pay for something Koreans get for free though? If anything, you're just alienating the foreign audience with a pretty hefty price tag.
They can sell ads to an exclusively Korean audience much more easily than they can to a global audience.
Their ad's effect everyone lol. I can guarantee 98% of TL would not have heard about Pocari Sweat had it not been for their adverts. I bought it once when I saw it in a store to try it out, wouldn't hav edone that if I hadn't seen it on proleague.
For less than that price I could get Pay-TV with numerous movie, documentary, tv-show, sport channels in HD + other bazillion channels. Now compare this to a low quality internet stream. It's not about being able to afford this. It's just fucking overpriced.
On September 02 2010 02:36 Kerotan wrote: 5. GOM's service is notoriously bad, stream is laggy and unstable, VODs are often broken, mislabelled and it took them 2.5 Classic seasons to work out that you should upload 3 files for a best of 3 VOD, so that the series isn't spoiled in game 1.
To me this is the best reason anyone can give for why this particular pricing model doesn't match the quality of the service you will receive. I can completely empathize with this.
On September 02 2010 02:30 djWHEAT wrote: I'll tell you why I think it's reasonable. Because I stream major events around the world... I know the time, the money, the production, everything that goes into doing something like this. So I can appreciate the fact that they have to recoup costs in order to continue to offer it to the fans.
Of course they can do it by providing a inferior, untested product at a high price.
I can assure you if the quality of the series will be the same as in Star2Gether series, then this 20$ is a joke. About 90% of people couldnt watch those events during beta using gomtv (constant buffering, ultra low quality) and had to relies on re-streamers. GomTV have already proven that their streaming service sux big time. And now they want us to pay $ 20 for a stream that we have no idea if it will even work (so a cat in a bag as someone else posted before)
for 50 bucks a month for 12 months you could afford 10 new smurf accounts per year and read the results on a TL thread later, maybe even catch a vod on youtube.
OnTopic: Sorry, 50$ is too much. I love watching the games live, but 18KST is 11am where I live. So I cannot watch the games live on weekdays. Only on saturday / sunday. But on those days I'd like to watch the games live (afraid of spoilers).
I tried to watch some of the Star2gether Siege stuff on GomTV. One time it went smoothly - the other time not. Lags. And I somehow couldnt "prebuffer" the video. When I paused and tried to resume some time later (~60sec) it either immediately started to stutter again or started the video from the beginning.
In my opinion a model like this would be better: - low quality stream for free - high quality stream (maybe even something which is worthy of the words high quality) 15$# - no low quality vods (maybe 1-2 sets each day to promote the stuff) - high quality vods 10$ - high quality vod + stream 20$
I would be willing to throw 20$ away for the sake of e-sports (if it doesnt work). Not 50$.
On September 02 2010 02:32 Roffles wrote: Why should us foreigners pay for something Koreans get for free though? If anything, you're just alienating the foreign audience with a pretty hefty price tag.
They can sell ads to an exclusively Korean audience much more easily than they can to a global audience.
i dont see why intel/tg are easier to sell to koreans then the biggest electronic markets of the world like europe/us etc.
if they were sponsored by some kimchi company i would agree. intel/tg? the foreign market is actually bigger then the korean market for them( remember why pcbangs are so common and why broodwar is so popular? because the average joe doesnt have a high end PC at home)
On September 02 2010 02:35 Pudge_172 wrote: They should do Saturday's 2 matches for free so people can see the quality and then make an informed decision on if the stream is worth the money.
That's probably really bad as many foreigners probably are only going to try to catch the foreigner games live and idra is first match.
I mean, if you live on west coast of the USA, are you really going to wake up 4am all the time to watch EVERY ro64 broadcast? probably not. At least that's my guess. Foreign audience will be higher with foreign players.
On September 02 2010 02:32 DennyR wrote: Never Buy a Cat in a Bag. Keep in mind that the gomstreams were not pretty solid in the past, and now they are charging freaking 20bucks for lowqualitystream + 30bucks for vods. Nobody knows if he can watch it lagfree yet.
20Bucks doesnt seem much, but compared to other stuff like esl premium stream or even paytvpackages its so extremely expensive, I cant even tell.
I mean for 3$ a month you can watch every freaking game that is streamed by esl in decent quality. I mean you get Counter Strike, SC2 and every other major game out there for 3 freaking bucks a month. No matter if there is a major tournament going on or just EPS and cups, you can watch it. And if you dont like to pay the 3 bucks, you can still watch it for free at low quality.
For 20euro I get a tvsportspackage including major european soccer leagues and all Champions League games. The ChampionsLeague final is the biggest sportsevent here in europe (besides World and European CUPs)and its included in a 20 euro package.
Now we got GSL... there is one month of highclass starcraft. I cant say anything against it, and charging money for streams is legit, but 20+30 bucks? Are you serious? No you cant! THiS MuST bE a JOkE!
I would totally pay 5-10$ a month for an HD stream, I mean at least 720p when the VODs are included but I dont know where they take the 20+30$ from, I mean this is a skyhigh fee. There is nothing that vindicates that. I dont even know If I can watch all games because of the timezones. Will I be at home or not? Man All I can say is, that this is stupid...
word. I'm not against making money. But Fifty dollars is absolutely ridiculous. Paying that much for a few games, is literally, ABSURD.
Anyway to respond do djwheat.. yeah its the ONLY reason but its all the most major one. For me atleast.
At the end of the day its the quality of the product that will determine its success. Unfortunantly GOMTV has a shitty track record with their stream so as a customer I will not pay for a bad product.
Its not beacuse its esports related, I'd say the same thing about any other product.
If GOMTV wants esport to grow - make a good product and sell it a reasonable price.
BTW, my apologies to the mass of TL folks who felt I lumped everyone who posted into my post. I didn't intend for that to be the case.
Being someone who's provided streaming for years (and never charged for it) - I often feel like we (community content generators) are to blame for getting people comfortable about getting content for nothing. Not everyone, but many, take this for granted (hell even I do). Additionally, unless you've been on the business side of running an event or stream, it's really difficult to understand all of the things that go into pulling these things off.
I don't feel like GOMtv is intentionally trying to gouge anyone here, I think they are trying to prove the tournament and coverage's worth to support upcoming seasons/competitions. With that being said, I do agree with many that it would be a wise idea for GOMtv to offer at least a portion of the event for free to offer a "Proof in Concept" that things will work as effectively as they should.
On September 02 2010 02:35 Pudge_172 wrote: They should do Saturday's 2 matches for free so people can see the quality and then make an informed decision on if the stream is worth the money.
That's probably really bad as many foreigners probably are only going to try to catch the foreigner games live and idra is first match.
I mean, if you live on west coast of the USA, are you really going to wake up 4am all the time to watch EVERY ro64 broadcast? probably not. At least that's my guess. Foreign audience will be higher with foreign players.
Just the opening day, not the opening round.
I'm suggesting that 2 matches be free not all 32 opening round matches.
I'm sure most of everyone who were greatly anticipating this event is now heartbroken. It's pretty ironic, from a non-business perspective, that they'd keep hyping up the english commentary, and then they suddenly throw it away with this news. I mean this is obviously being done for us. They're showing that they're making an endeavor to expand their audience with this service. But to attach such a cost to it seems very counter-intuitive. But that's from a spectator point of view, which as we know, is the most important point of view in these situations.
But yeah GL to the foreigners. Sorry that many of us won't be cheering you on live from a stream, but I hope you guys do advance far and hopefully win.
On September 02 2010 02:30 djWHEAT wrote: I'll tell you why I think it's reasonable. Because I stream major events around the world... I know the time, the money, the production, everything that goes into doing something like this. So I can appreciate the fact that they have to recoup costs in order to continue to offer it to the fans.
Everyone keeps talking about how the sponsors should be footing the bill.
...
Did you see how much they are offering for prize money? I guarantee you that most (if not all) of that sponsor money went into that pool. Additionally, it's going to be ALOT harder for GOMtv to sell adverts on something like this because it's going out to a global audience.
In case people didn't know, selling adverts on a stream is alot harder than many probably believe. With a global audience, it's very difficult to even justify selling ads when you have an audience around the world. It's ineffective advertising for companies, thus making it very difficult to sell.
I can understand people just not being able to afford it, but I don't believe that should automatically make it "BAD". I can't afford a 3DTV yet but that doesn't mean they suck.
Even if you're right, all this means is that it's doomed to fail in my opinion. It wont even get off the ground. Which is a huge shame, but a mere reality that cannot be changed. It's no good appealing to charity; people simply wont pay for this and the lack of a free option also means that it wont spread around the Internet and grow like the Avertec-Intel classic tournaments did.
And the technology should be there, in this day and age, to have region specific video advertisements in a live video stream. The numbers don't lie, there is a large audience here. I wont say that this is GomTV's fault, but they do make their own video streaming software. So they could have developed their own solution to this. Of course, it still requires them to go out there and convince advertisers. But that would be much easier with some free stream statistics to draw from. They're not looking at the long term prospects of a free option.
On September 02 2010 02:24 Roffles wrote: Gonna restream every game off OGN. Don't need overpriced GOM streams at 300/500 kbps when I can get OGN at 1500 for free.
Don't get me wrong, I love English commentary, but in this case forking out money separately for livestreams and VODs is ridiculous.
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.speedtest.net/result/934449946.png)
