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On September 02 2010 07:44 Cade wrote:
I think GOM's reasoning is sound, and in fact I support their decision to charge for this event fully. I think charging $30 for VODS is overkill, and should be combo'd w/ the live stream for $30 total. But I don't think that $20 for the live stream is outlandish at all
Do you realize that their $20 "HQ" live stream (500K) is actually lower quality than MLG's free stream?
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On September 02 2010 07:52 Chronald wrote:
Look at the poll on the TL homepage.
85% of the people WILL NOT PAY for your matches. Have fun running yourselves into the ground Gretech...
Yeah I think they could get way more revenue with a smaller price. If 85% of this site thinks it is too high... where are you gonna get people? I can't imagine getting anywhere close to 5000. 1000 might be a stretch.
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On September 02 2010 08:13 Dionyseus wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2010 07:44 Cade wrote:
I think GOM's reasoning is sound, and in fact I support their decision to charge for this event fully. I think charging $30 for VODS is overkill, and should be combo'd w/ the live stream for $30 total. But I don't think that $20 for the live stream is outlandish at all Do you realize that their $20 "HQ" live stream (500K) is actually lower quality that MLG's free stream?
Do you realize that their "HQ" stream won't be HQ? LQ apparently because they have bandwith issues since we're not in korea.
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So is OGN really not showing GSL now? Because I think Dish Network customers can buy OGN for like $5 a month.
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So... about these "illegal" restreams, if in the near future that kind of streams appear, will TL allow the community to link them and talk about them? or not
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well if you're going to offer a prize pool that's 3x Broodwar's with a far smaller viewing audience and no television channels, it only makes sense to charge for VODs and Streams to recoup your costs.
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On September 02 2010 08:12 Meta wrote:
If they are so shafted for funding why don't they just lower the ridiculously huge prize pool they promised? Boo-hoo, funding the most financially straining multi-league tournament in the history of e-sports is turning out to be harder than expected... How on earth did they not see this coming? Passing the funding buck onto the fans is not the way to do it. We don't care if the prize pool is $170,000 or $150,000, it doesn't really matter to anybody but the gamers.
Furthermore the extreme discrepancy between the winnings of first and second place (I believe first place recieves something like $85,000, whereas second recieves only $25,000). If you just cut the first place prize money by $10,000 that's still EXTREMELY generous. I can't think of another tournament, ever, that had such a huge margin between 1st and 2nd place. I'm sure 1st place would be just as happy with $75,000, and then you could use the leftover to provide solid commentary to the fans without having to drain and alienate us.
So true, something simple like reducing the prize pool by $10,000 should have been enough to cover the costs of streaming.
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On September 02 2010 08:01 Full.tilt wrote:
If it's as bad as the email from -- states why the heck did Blizzard choose them to deal with?
Like defenders of the decision to charge money have said, it's a business and their aim is to make money. If they are bad at it then go bankrupt and gtfo the way so someone more competent can handle things.
blizzard had only gretek to make partnership with. they couldn't make contract with on-gamenet or mbc-gaming since they are associated with kespa.
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On September 02 2010 08:16 shire wrote:
blizzard had only gretek to make partnership with. they couldn't make contract with on-gamenet or mbc-gaming since they are associated with kespa.
iirc gretech owner owns ogn
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On September 02 2010 08:11 fishyjoes wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2010 07:52 Chronald wrote:
Look at the poll on the TL homepage.
85% of the people WILL NOT PAY for your matches. Have fun running yourselves into the ground Gretech... I don't like what GomTV is doing and hope they will give in. But when it comes to poll and such on the internet people seam to changed their minds pretty quickly: + Show Spoiler +
its a whole another story.
you cant compare people still buying one of the most succesful brands in the gaming industry (even tho i dont get why) for 50$ to a 1month korean sc2 tournament english coverage of unknown quality for 50$.
there are WOOORRLDS difference.
i would easily say that 99% of the potential viewers will not pay for this. i would even say that not even 5% of the TL users (which are the by far most dedicated when it comes to sc) will get it.
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On September 02 2010 08:16 shire wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2010 08:01 Full.tilt wrote:
If it's as bad as the email from -- states why the heck did Blizzard choose them to deal with?
Like defenders of the decision to charge money have said, it's a business and their aim is to make money. If they are bad at it then go bankrupt and gtfo the way so someone more competent can handle things. blizzard had only gretek to make partnership with. they couldn't make contract with on-gamenet or mbc-gaming since they are associated with kespa.
Makes you wish that Blizzard had their own league / broadcasting group doesn't it? Instead of Kespa or MBC / OGN, you can watch Blizzard games like starcraft or warcraft on a channel owned and run by blizzard. They'd make money, they'd regulate leagues,they'd make more money, they'd regulate the games and tournaments directly, they'd make even more money, and they'd be able to advertise directly to the korean fan base. Not to mention they could have an international web hub so us foreigners could watch.
But of course, Blizzard / Activision doesn't do that. Only make games and charge increasingly high amounts for their products. Not to mention monthly fees. And yes, they do make money and money is the driving force behind everything.
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Seriously I don't see this GSL thing going anywhere. No way SC2 is going to become as big as SC1 w/o KeSPA (Flash & Co). Throwing big money at a game has been done before and failed in the long run (remember CPL and its 1 million $ Painkiller World Tour?). It doesn't matter if they charge for the stream or not - it's still amateurs playing. Most people probably only care about IdrA & Co anyway - there'll be other tournaments to watch.
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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 150,000 subscribers. 20,000 also watched the TSL2 finals but it's kind of irrelevant.
More modern example: MLG got an estimated 40k live viewers for SC2 at one point. Not sure how much IEM got. I'm not sure how many of those viewers were paid viewers for either event. Maybe someone on the inside could find a way to contact Sundance/Carmac but I doubt they want to release that information.
On September 02 2010 07:57 djWHEAT wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2010 07:23 thopol wrote:
I'm glad to finaly recieve an email. I was not allowed to write the reason we are doing this form some reason. However for this email I will tell you honestly why such decision was made.
First of all many of you seem to think that there is no reason for you to pay when there are alternatives. Let me tell you, there won;t be any alternatives. All sites that have been streaming SC2 such as OGN or MBC have been banned from braodcasting GSL. What if someone puts them on utube or on any other source? They will be found and they too will be banned. What about Korean Gomtv site? All IP from outside Korea will be blocked.
I have reported your reaction rowards the policy and the decision makers are aware of it. Everyone including me thinks it would be much more profitable in the long run if we broadcast the streams without charge, at least for this season.
One thing that many foreigners, or even Koreans are not well aware of is that Gomtv hardly has enough reesources to broadcast it even within Korea. We are relatively new in the market and conventional gaming channel are hogging all the sponsors. Most sponsors think there s no need to sponsor SC2 when SC1 is doing just fine. Also our balance sheet has been on negative side for very long time. We almost thought of giving up the whole e-sports thing because KeSPA and other channels have been giving us very hard time until Blizzard signed exclusive contract with us.
We have 2 more seasons to run just this year and yet we are underfunded and understaffed. The expense to host a server in US and providing English stream was much higher than we had anticipated. Probably why conventional channels never tried to expand beyond Korea. We desperately need money if we are to improve oversea service at this stage, and gaining sponsors is easier said than done.
I haven't read any posts after this was posted, but this is hard to read. I believe I could have put together a Global English Streaming Solution that would cost them a FRACTION of what they are probably putting into this. A company like UStream would probably jump at the chance to be involved with something as big as this, and with the already massive amounts of community casters, it wouldn't be that difficult to provide talent. From a production standpoint, it might not be the same quality as a Korean SCBW Broadcast, but if we had access to the studio (which already exists and isn't really a cost at this point) - it would have been easy. If they were simply handing the feed over to our production equipment and we used the same thing we use to stream from LAN events and the like... you could integrate English Speaking Commentary with EASE. This is the kind of thing that we've been doing for the past 8 years... Why? Cause we don't have a fucking TV station to put it on. I don't even understand. It's a cultural thing surely. North America / Europe... we seem to GET IT when it comes to the streaming and coverage part, and it's a shame they just don't know to leverage those resources. Maybe it's just the fact that they don't know this stuff exists... but I find it hard to believe that someone over there isn't privy to the numbers that "foreigners" have been pulling during SC2 streams, show matches, and competitions. It's really really sad. I simply feel foolish for having put any level of confidence that they could stream globally... but it's my professional opinion that they must have no idea how they could deliver a high-quality stream with LITTLE cost to them. Cause that part I bolded over there... that's unfortunately just a lack of knowledge. And now "outside of Korea" is gonna pay (literally). This is a major missed opportunity for both GOM, the community, SC2, and Blizzard. Hope there's room... I'm getting on the train.
It's funny, if they are saying the options were between streaming to korea or charging americans, I'll bet you team liquid has plenty of people who would just restream the korean cast, and just like proleague and msl/osl for the past few YEARS, we'll have someone who is fluent in korean translate the cast onto the chat.
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On September 02 2010 08:15 d_so wrote:
well if you're going to offer a prize pool that's 3x Broodwar's with a far smaller viewing audience and no television channels, it only makes sense to charge for VODs and Streams to recoup your costs.
would make sense if ppl actually paid the cost. As many have pointed out, this will make the sc2 fanbase for GSL tiny to begin with, so no new and bigger sponsors will be attracted. It doesnt take to be a genius to figure out they will ultimately lose a lot more money than they will gain from a decision like this. The email is especially ridiculous. Its basically as if a company producing soap would say "hey we are running the business horribly and thus have a large debt. so in order to get back on track, were going to have to charge 20$ per piece of soap. Sry guys!". This is not how economy works ^^
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Everyone here needs to post on GomTV.net's website, then they may actually change their minds...
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On September 02 2010 08:12 Meta wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2010 08:11 fishyjoes wrote:On September 02 2010 07:52 Chronald wrote:
Look at the poll on the TL homepage.
85% of the people WILL NOT PAY for your matches. Have fun running yourselves into the ground Gretech... I don't like what GomTV is doing and hope they will give in. But when it comes to poll and such on the internet people seam to changed their minds pretty quickly: + Show Spoiler + That's totally different. They want dedicated servers, but they aren't just going to not play. It's much easier for me to just not watch this particular tournament, I can still watch every other tournament and play as much as I want without costing me a dime.
Yes it's different in the way you discribed. But still what I wanted to point is that people don't really stick to what they vote in a poll or sign in a petition. Activision knew that. Blizzard knew that when people said SC2 is rubbish and they won't buy it without chat channels.
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On September 02 2010 08:15 Dionyseus wrote:Show nested quote +On September 02 2010 08:12 Meta wrote:
If they are so shafted for funding why don't they just lower the ridiculously huge prize pool they promised? Boo-hoo, funding the most financially straining multi-league tournament in the history of e-sports is turning out to be harder than expected... How on earth did they not see this coming? Passing the funding buck onto the fans is not the way to do it. We don't care if the prize pool is $170,000 or $150,000, it doesn't really matter to anybody but the gamers.
Furthermore the extreme discrepancy between the winnings of first and second place (I believe first place recieves something like $85,000, whereas second recieves only $25,000). If you just cut the first place prize money by $10,000 that's still EXTREMELY generous. I can't think of another tournament, ever, that had such a huge margin between 1st and 2nd place. I'm sure 1st place would be just as happy with $75,000, and then you could use the leftover to provide solid commentary to the fans without having to drain and alienate us.
So true, something simple like reducing the prize pool by $10,000 should have been enough to cover the costs of streaming.
isn't it obvious why their prize pool is so high? They're competing for BW players and their audience, and it's kinda cute really how similar it is to poker. If the 40,000 dollar prize for BW players is the big blind, GomTV is the mid-position player early game with the premium hand and is raising the bet to 3x or 4x the big blind.
Unfortunately, imo this is a flawed strategy simply because I believe they've mis-assigned the relevance of the prize pool. GOMTV's prize pool looks like to me an attempt to sway player demand... but what I don't think they realize is that player demand is pretty much constant, and that the BW prize pool actually reflects the most efficient valuation of spectator demand. I wrote about it here : http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=142288¤tpage=5#85 but it got super ignored; maybe i'll blog about it someday
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People, please post your concerns at the GOMtv site. You have to sign up, but it's quick and painless. There are hardly any posts over there compared to the amount here, which they said they won't be checking as much. We need to overwhelm their forums with distinct IP addresses from around the world if we want our opinions to be heard and games to be streamed for free. Everyone here knows the pricing is ridiculous, but it's time to let them know by posting on their forums. I know the SC community can gather force when needed as seen in WCG voting among other things, but now is the time we need you the most. This is the future of E-Sports we're talking about.
http://www.gomtv.net/2010gslopens1/forum/
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On September 02 2010 08:28 Devolved wrote:People, please post your concerns at the GOMtv site. You have to sign up, but it's quick and painless. There are hardly any posts over there compared to the amount here, which they said they won't be checking as much. We need to overwhelm their forums with distinct IP addresses from around the world if we want our opinions to be heard and games to be streamed for free. Everyone here knows the pricing is ridiculous, but it's time to let them know by posting on their forums. I know the SC community can gather force when needed as seen in WCG voting among other things, but now is the time we need you the most. This is the future of E-Sports we're talking about. http://www.gomtv.net/2010gslopens1/forum/
This^
Everyone in this thread should just go and signup, open a new forum and copy and paste their points to the GOMTV website. If theres enough community outrage over this, GOM mite actually see the error in their ways.
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your poker analogy is so flawed that its just stupid. let me hustle you real quick
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