[IEM] Grand Finals World Championships 2014 - Page 120

On March 17 2014 03:03 YuiHirasawa wrote:
These finals were underwhelming, Protoss is really hurting this game. Good job to sOs anyway you can't win 2 tournaments that important if you're not at least (a little) good. But playing that race definitely helps.

On March 17 2014 03:05 KrazyTrumpet wrote:

Comments like this never cease to amaze me.

On March 17 2014 03:09 Master Blaster wrote:
How many viewers did the final get??? I had a bet on whether it would reach 100k...

On March 17 2014 03:09 Master Blaster wrote:
How many viewers did the final get??? I had a bet on whether it would reach 100k...

On March 17 2014 02:03 Faruko wrote:
CSGO finals where bad too, NiP dint even play them... Dont come here saying that the finals are only bad onSC2, even on Dota 2 some finals are bad

On March 17 2014 02:50 LibertyRises wrote:


How many viewers did the sc2 finals get?

On March 17 2014 03:11 purakushi wrote:


Ditto. What were the max tournament online and offline numbers?

Meanwhile... LoL has >350k online

On March 17 2014 03:36 ice-tea wrote:
It is so sad, the way tos is dominating the game is really hurting the game, i hope Blizz will do something, its already to long.

Gratz to SOS.

On March 17 2014 03:33 TotalBiscuit wrote:


Time to drop some motherfuckin stats.

100k for SC2 is GREAT. Wanna know why? Because according to SC2ranks.com, there are 328,642 ladder players active during this season. So why is this great? Well, whenever someone drops some stupid statistic like "Oh look at this LoL final getting 350,000 in their best case scenario of white dudes vs Koreans", you can look at LoL's player statistics and see that actually the conversion of players to eSports viewers is far lower. According to Riot stats, which are most likely fudged but even if they're anywhere near... you have over 60 million monthly players yet these events are only converting that into 385,000 viewers concurrent? It's impossible to know how many uniques the SC2 and LoL streams got but if we compare concurrent, you are looking in the best possible case scenario at a ridiculous 32% player to viewer ratio for Starcraft 2 and fairly pitiful 1.91% ratio for League of Legends. I'm saying best case scenario because SC2ranks is only pulling ladder player stats whereas the League stats include everyone in every possible game mode. SC2 has more than 350,000 active players doing team games, unranked customs and Arcade, but even if you tripled SC2s playerbase, the ratio is still ridiculous. SC2s audience in general is more supportive of competitive play, more interested in eSports and as a result more likely to respond passionately (and negatively) in situations such as this.

We should be celebrating that conversion ratio, not trying to chase a viewercount that passed us two years ago and is going to keep passing us whether we like it or not. We have a large, healthy playerbase who likes to watch eSports events and who is on average older with more disposable income. That's very marketable to sponsors. If organisations are savvy and careful, they can create sustainable businesses around this game. WCS continues to get strong numbers, SHOUTcraft Clan Wars, a $500 per match event, is pulling in more than 40,000 viewers across its live shows, reruns and vods and is running in the black while continuing to grow. IEM Cologne was an instudio event that peaked at over 100,000 if you include the foreign language streams, again a model of sustainability and common sense.

People are extra salty after a terrible final and a questionable prize distribution model, but can we please just take a step back, look at the facts and stop comparing ourselves to a free2play dota-clone with mass casual appeal. Guess what, we're also less popular than Angry Birds, are you going to get salty about that too? If you actually love this game as much as you all claim, then focus on enjoying great games and supporting cool events.

On March 17 2014 03:33 TotalBiscuit wrote:


Time to drop some motherfuckin stats.

100k for SC2 is GREAT. Wanna know why? Because according to SC2ranks.com, there are 328,642 ladder players active during this season. So why is this great? Well, whenever someone drops some stupid statistic like "Oh look at this LoL final getting 350,000 in their best case scenario of white dudes vs Koreans", you can look at LoL's player statistics and see that actually the conversion of players to eSports viewers is far lower. According to Riot stats, which are most likely fudged but even if they're anywhere near... you have over 60 million monthly players yet these events are only converting that into 385,000 viewers concurrent? It's impossible to know how many uniques the SC2 and LoL streams got but if we compare concurrent, you are looking in the best possible case scenario at a ridiculous 32% player to viewer ratio for Starcraft 2 and fairly pitiful 1.91% ratio for League of Legends. I'm saying best case scenario because SC2ranks is only pulling ladder player stats whereas the League stats include everyone in every possible game mode. SC2 has more than 350,000 active players doing team games, unranked customs and Arcade, but even if you tripled SC2s playerbase, the ratio is still ridiculous. SC2s audience in general is more supportive of competitive play, more interested in eSports and as a result more likely to respond passionately (and negatively) in situations such as this.

We should be celebrating that conversion ratio, not trying to chase a viewercount that passed us two years ago and is going to keep passing us whether we like it or not. We have a large, healthy playerbase who likes to watch eSports events and who is on average older with more disposable income. That's very marketable to sponsors. If organisations are savvy and careful, they can create sustainable businesses around this game. WCS continues to get strong numbers, SHOUTcraft Clan Wars, a $500 per match event, is pulling in more than 40,000 viewers across its live shows, reruns and vods and is running in the black while continuing to grow. IEM Cologne was an instudio event that peaked at over 100,000 if you include the foreign language streams, again a model of sustainability and common sense.

People are extra salty after a terrible final and a questionable prize distribution model, but can we please just take a step back, look at the facts and stop comparing ourselves to a free2play dota-clone with mass casual appeal. Guess what, we're also less popular than Angry Birds, are you going to get salty about that too? If you actually love this game as much as you all claim, then focus on enjoying great games and supporting cool events.

On March 17 2014 03:45 KrazyTrumpet wrote:

I'm pretty sure the game will be ok, we had longer periods of Terran and Zerg dominance and yet...here we still are.

edit: also, amazing post TB, gives a real nice perspective

On March 17 2014 03:55 ice-tea wrote:


You are right, but no T or Z was dominance like P in the moment.

And all tos are talking it down.

On March 17 2014 03:51 FatCat_13 wrote:


Your stats based on player base are irrelevant. I know a lot of dudes (including myself) who never launched SC2 yet still we watch big events from time to time. Cause it's SC1 that made the game fanbase. Old good times you know when we were students, no wife no kids... Nowadays we watch the game the same way some do for baseball, soccer etc.

On March 17 2014 01:43 GreenMash wrote:

go away please