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Calgary26003 Posts
On September 02 2010 04:12 deo1 wrote:I'm not too bothered by charging to see the games, however I think their price point is way off. If 2000* people pay $50 for the stream and VODS then they'd make $100,000 off of that and cover over half the prize winnings of the gsl. However, if they charged $10 for stream and VODS and 10000 people subscribed (more reasonable scenario I think, more people tuned into the TSL2*), they would make just as much money* and get way more exposure. I don't know how they set the price point, but based on my little knowledge of foreign viewership tendencies, I think they could vastly improve both viewership count and their own profit. * + Show Spoiler +(notes: *even 2000 seems like a stretch.
*tsl was free, but sc2 is way more popular.
*more viewers means more bandwidth means higher cost so the 2 scenarios are not identical earnings but I think it's a reasonable comparison. higher viewership counts also increases likelihood of sponsorship.)
To give some credit to your numbers, 20,000 watched the HDH finals and their VODs typically get 150,000 views with 150,000 subscribers. 20,000 also watched the TSL2 finals but it's kind of irrelevant.
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On September 01 2010 22:59 Inkarnate wrote:
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i wonder if blizzard is to blame too
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I think the VOD pricing is way off, 30$ for a service you can only use for 1 season, is way too much.
I think it would be in their interest, if they are unwilling to provide a constant free stream, atleast provide a free stream each week of one of the popular matchups, idra or TLO or the OGS guys vs whoever, to let people get an idea of what it is like. Stream the entire match for free, and if people like the quality of the stream but want more then just the one feature match a week, they can get the live pass etc.
I mean on NFL Sundays and mondays you can usually watch the most popular match up for the week on the basic cable channels, but the NFL subscription service (which is NOT cheap) expands it so you can watch a ton of games every week.
VODs should be cheaper though, include it in the stream price or bundle it so a season pass is like 20-30$, and let us watch it for as long as we subscribe, not just one season.
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On September 02 2010 04:16 Magnacx wrote:
i wonder if blizzard is to blame too
Blame Bobby Kotick! This so reeks of him.
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What's awful is that VODs for one season cost more than the live stream for that same season. Why do you pay more to watch it later? I don't understand.
Also, do you lose ability to watch old VODs when the next season begins? Because paying $30 for VOD rentals is way overpriced. You can buy a season of TV shows to own on iTunes for less money.
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I've never payed for a gaming stream and i never will. Cmon do you really expect me to pay for something that as a spectator is so new to me? How about you people reality check yourself!
- There is no pro-scene
- There are no big names i care about / am emotionally attached to
- Right now i couldn't care less who wins
- Your production quality has been sub par to what i'm used to from OGN & MBC
Thank you for the effort but this isn't for me then. Or with the words of Danny Archer:
"I like to get kissed before I get fucked"
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After ten years of e-sports development Korean SC:BW still can't get people to pay for tickets to live events. Why does GOM think they can soak foreigners for up to $50 each and not get some pushback?
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This is a great disappointment. With a little more solicitation in foreign markets (for instance, go talk to MLG's sponsors or other businesses in their industres), GOM could have easily picked up sponsors who may have at least covered costs for the broadcast in the foreign markets to help GOM establish themselves.
First impressions are everything. If GOM really wanted to move to a Charge-a-Premium model, why not take a loss for this broadcast to garner a massive viewership in the foreign market, and then somewhere down the road start charging a fee? Instead, by giving the foreign market a very rude gesture in the very first broadcast, GOM is making a very bad entry into the foreign scene, and may be quickly closing the door on a huge market that right now is eager and willing to support their business.
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it is absolutely amazing to me how much feedback this thread generated ^^
gomtv surely will respond to this? i mean, thats impressive ^^
TL community really is awesome
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On September 02 2010 04:10 xs101 wrote:
I'm amazed that in Korea, the land of starcraft esports, gomtv can't gather enough sponsors to pay their bills and have to charge like 20$ (ridiculous) for a stream.
No need to be amazed the Korean stream is free (with ads).
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What quality VODs are we talking? How many games will be covered / how long does season 1 last?
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United States12607 Posts
On September 02 2010 04:01 Chill wrote:
it was said as "We set up this international tournament and put in effort to cater to foreigners; By the way, if you are foreign, you will pay."
This is spot on, and what really grinds my gears. Why is GOM punishing viewers outside of Korea? 
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Getting a server in the US or EU is dirt cheap, I can find several colocs that give you 3TB bandwidth a month for around $300 + cheap rack server($800) one time cost so for the three months
BW calculactions
(500/8.0*60*100)/1024.0 = 366.2109375 MegaBytes per 100 minutes and user for payload add 20% for overhead(protocol overhead, peoples software doing stupid stuff etc)
366.2109375* 1.2 = 439.453125MB
# Amount of viewers able to view 100 minutes of stream with 3TB of bw per month
3*1024*1024/439.453125
7158.2788266666666
Doesn't seem enough... So let's move on
1Mbit costs around $10 per month if you buy it directly(they should have their own network infrastructure)
100Mbit + cost of router.= ~$1500 a month over a year's period.
$1500 * 12 = $18000... Way too costly so let's not go with an unmetered amount per second connection...
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$300*12(minimum of one year on the contract)
$300*12+$800=$4400
Amount of $$$ required for handling
$4400/20.0 = 220 subscriber for a year of hosting, BW becomes cheaper as you increase it.
$10 000 Should probably give you around 30k 100 minutes viewers per month in a 500kbit/s stream scenario. That's 500 20$ subscribers... WHAT THE FUCK?
Or USE a one demand solution for a CDN which have cost plans that make you pay as you go and add on-demand payments about $0.02 per MB that is $1 for them to pay for a 100 minutes of 500kbit stream, they probably could go cheaper if they did a sponsor deal with them...
Suggestions:
Pay on demand, as it's EXTREMELY easy to estimate how much you cost, $1 per for a WHOLE game set is a okay price(or perhaps $2 or whatever)
I've not including any licenses costs for their software, e.g. they run on windows or have 3rd party apps...
As I don't have any usage numbers from their BW streams or IEM games I can't do any better, but in my opinion as a person who has worked with large scale streaming on the network/hosting side the pricing seems silly...
I'd suspect that someone on their operations side have no knowledge about building an infrastructure outside of korea(the whole of south korea is silly cheap to buy BW for as long as you don't leave south korea) and gave an waaay to high estimate. Might also be someone that thought they could make an easy buck and get away with this kind of bullshit.
If anyone from GomTV or other tournament makers would like to discuss costs and technical solutions I'll offer any advice for free, just send me a PM! I'll help as much as I can to more people interested in pro gaming.
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Please everyone stop comparing this tournament to the NFL or EPL football. If you think there's even a remote comparison then you don't understand how any of this works.
eSports is a tiny market here in the US. I know it feels like it's already arrived and thriving to us, but we're the nerds who spend all day on TL forums...watching streams of people we hardly know, analyzing replays of tournaments long ago.
Look in the top left corner of the page right now...it should say something like 6400 active members. That's globally. That's the community here...a tiny market. Don't get me wrong, I love TL since I started lurking about a year ago and recently posting here and there. It's a great community...I'm just saying it's smaller than you probably think.
You can't support a broadcast to this small of a market with advertising alone. It just isn't possible. If you want to bring mainstream sporting events into the discussion, here in the US only the NFL gets every game broadcasted for free on the networks. Every other sport is 90% on paid cable television. Some playoff games are even on paid cable.
Now, are the prices too high? Probably...it isn't surprising that they would start at a high price. It's much easier to lower prices than to raise them, especially this demographic. They'll work out the pricing in the future...and eventually if this gets big enough you'll see the prices gradually fall as sponsors start to pay for more of the bills.
By all means, if you don't think the price is worth it, don't buy it! I probably won't buy it either, the price seems a bit off personally. But to go off on how this will "kill eSports" or how they're an evil greedy company is kind of ridiculous. If you're pissed about this it's because of this: You want to watch the tournament but are not willing to pay. And that's fine...but this overdramatic death speak has to stop. It reminds me of the age poll thread from yesterday and how half of us are under 22 years old or something.
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Okay if this is the truth 50$ is outrageous, laughably so.
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On September 02 2010 04:14 Chill wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2010 04:12 deo1 wrote:I'm not too bothered by charging to see the games, however I think their price point is way off. If 2000* people pay $50 for the stream and VODS then they'd make $100,000 off of that and cover over half the prize winnings of the gsl. However, if they charged $10 for stream and VODS and 10000 people subscribed (more reasonable scenario I think, more people tuned into the TSL2*), they would make just as much money* and get way more exposure. I don't know how they set the price point, but based on my little knowledge of foreign viewership tendencies, I think they could vastly improve both viewership count and their own profit. * + Show Spoiler +(notes: *even 2000 seems like a stretch.
*tsl was free, but sc2 is way more popular.
*more viewers means more bandwidth means higher cost so the 2 scenarios are not identical earnings but I think it's a reasonable comparison. higher viewership counts also increases likelihood of sponsorship.) To give some credit to your numbers, 20,000 watched the HDH finals and their VODs typically get 150,000 views with 200,000 subscribers. 20,000 also watched the TSL2 finals but it's kind of irrelevant.
Thinking about it GOM might not even have the infrastructure to stream or provide VODs to 20-50000+ people outside Korea, unless they used Octoshape or partnered with Ustream or another streaming service.
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On September 02 2010 04:26 Ome wrote:Okay if this is the truth 50$ is outrageous, laughably so.
They didn't say it was free. Don't think they ever did. The only time "free" is used in that post is for the KBS 88 Stadium.
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EPT
