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United States1222 Posts
Tasteless, myself, Ziggy, and State are here to announce our new crowdfunded tournament series, RSL: Revival! We're super excited to finally announce this as we've been putting a lot of thought and work into it, and there's lot's of ways for you all to get involved, including being able to vote for player invites, map pool changes, and more! We'll be producing the event LIVE from Korea with a broadcasting studio as well, and with enough support we will even be having an OFFLINE FINAL here in Seoul.
Check it out and help us bring back some of the glory days of SC2 here in the Mecca of esports, Seoul, South Korea!
Patreon link
StarCraft II has been a meaningful part of our lives, but with support for the game fading, it's clear we can no longer wait and hope—it's time to act. Every year we wait for someone else to keep SC2 alive, but no more. Nick 'Tasteless' Plott and other key community members based in Seoul are launching a new SC2 event series from a new studio in Seoul, and with your support, we’ll grow this into the world-class event the game deserves - if we can reach our goals, we will produce an offline grand finals with an in-person audience. The more the community rallies behind this, the bigger and better it becomes—no more waiting, no more doubt, just the best players on Earth doing what they do best, with top-tier commentary to match. Join us, and help carry the torch of SC2 into the future.
GOALS
Goal 1: Base level - we will be operating at this level for 2025 regardless of what level we hit
Event Scope: Two online seasons of your StarCraft 2 tournament.
Prize Pool: 5 million KRW per season (10 million KRW total).
Hosted from a new studio space in Seoul, casters would be offline and together for the broadcast
Features:
Professional broadcast production. 2 broadcasts a week during the season with professional commentators in person and together (State, Gemini, Tasteless, and more!)
Goal 2: Enhanced Online Seasons ($11,000/month)
Event Scope: Three online seasons of your Starcraft 2 tournament.
All features from Goal 1
Launch a regular Patreon-only podcast hosted by Gemini and Ziggy to discuss events, have guest pros and community figures on for interviews.
Increased marketing and promotion efforts.
Potentially bring in guest commentators or analysts for certain matches.
Community engagement initiatives (e.g., player spotlights, fan contests).
Goal 3: 3 Seasons, offline season final ($15,000/month)
Event Scope: Three online seasons + a two-day offline Grand Finals weekend event in Seoul with spectators and other side events.
Prize Pool: 10 million KRW per season (30 million KRW total).
Features:
All features from Goal 2.
Secure a full scale venue for a live show with audience throughout an entire weekend in Seoul, a full on STARCRAFT 2 festival.
Cover travel and accommodation costs for qualified players.
Produce high-quality coverage of the offline event, including interviews and behind-the-scenes content.
Goal 4: Map Contest + Documentary! ($17,500/month)
Features:
Host a $1000 Map contest, with the prize being awarded to the winning mapmaker, and the best map being featured in the following season - winning map would be based on voting by patrons
Produce a professionally produced mini-documentary capturing the excitement and stories of the Grand Finals weekend.
Bring special casting legends to Korea to cast the Grand Finals weekend in person alongside Tasteless.
Additional prize pool.
Goal 5: Team Tournament ($20,000/month)
Features:
Introduce a mid-year 3 on 3 team tournament with a 10 million KRW prize pool. The finals for this would also take place on the GRAND FINALS weekend in Seoul, South Korea
Teams would feature 1 prominent StarCraft 2 streamer/influencer or former pro + 2 pro players and hold an online DRAFT format
Expand broadcast coverage to include the team tournament.
Commit to year 2 (2026) immediately upon reaching this goal.
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United States33222 Posts
highly amused that a tasteless-involved crowdfund project includes a documentary 
Anyway, very interesting to see an org set the crowdfund line at a high level like this. It's important for the post-ESL scene to find its funding ceiling, so I think it's good for someone to push the bar like this (assuming they can follow through to some reasonable extent).
Cynically speaking, a single org asking for potentially what could be a huge chunk of the available pot of viewer money will force everyone else to get their ducks in a row, and figure out what they really want to do besides small/mid-size cups (one of my annoyances with the scene right now).
My gut feeling here is that viewers will be wary of funding a tournament where a large % of funding goes to production, when most of the matches are online. It's too easy to compare to streamers running stuff out of their home studios and giving away a much bigger share to prize pool. Still, personally, I feel like having two casters to keep each other in "this is a serious broadcast" mode offers a good amount of baseline value over general solo-streaming (especially when the hours go long). Not sure what dollar value I'm putting on it, though.
I feel like this could have used a proof-of-concept tournament/showmatch before launching the Patreon to show us what kind of value/production qualities they can provide above a 'normal' online event held by a streamer. I think it's something I'd find enough value in paying a small fee for, but hard to tell without seeing the product.
Also, hope the TLMC (TasteLessMapContest) works out ^_^
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Awesome initiative. Fairly lofty goals but I hope this works out. Nick Plott you beautiful bastard...
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This is awesome, holy shit.
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These are some huge goals but here's hoping. Maybe some sponsors could be lined up to lessen the goal?
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The prize pool of 5 Million Won is underwhelming considering the patreon costs, that is like 3000 $ /€, right?
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I love that you guys are doing this. It just seems this is for basically the same audience as gsl and they already have all the Potential Patreon funding
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Northern Ireland24446 Posts
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Northern Ireland24446 Posts
On April 19 2025 22:32 Harris1st wrote:
I love that you guys are doing this. It just seems this is for basically the same audience as gsl and they already have all the Potential Patreon funding
Given the scope of this, I’d imagine it’s been in the works for a while
It’s tricky as an outsider, perhaps as an insider these days! I mean is it intended to supplement GSL, or was it an attempt to fill that void for meaningful tournies in Korea before we got the ‘oh btw there’s some GSL’ announcement the other day?
It’s really hard to assess anything these days. I love the initiative regardless, as you say!
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SC2 ALIVE GAME!
TAKE MY MONEY!!!
I LOVE YOU GUYS
Keep it alive before it's too late!!!
Holy there's already 420 patrons / $3300 a month!! That's amazing!!!
Also there seems to be a distinct anti-zerg bias in the patreon tiers. I mean, no Queen tier? What do you have against QUEENS?
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not sure if im misunderstanding or just stupid - $11,000 a month to get 3 seasons with a combined prize pool of $10,000? Where's the other $120,000 for the year going?
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On April 20 2025 20:58 atrox_ wrote:
not sure if im misunderstanding or just stupid - $11,000 a month to get 3 seasons with a combined prize pool of $10,000? Where's the other $120,000 for the year going?
I'll just focus on Goal 3 since that seems to be the main goal (since it has an offline venue)
Goal 3 = $180k/year, minus patreon fees = ~$153k/year, minus the prize pool there's $130k left.
You'd have to pay the venue for an entire weekend which may cost $25k for 3 days, then another ~$10k for cost and travel accomodation for 8 non-KR players, and then $95k leftover.
Then you have your patreon rewards like artwork, documentaries, KR tour, LAN party, etc. So maybe $90k leftover.
Then you have your operational costs like cameramen, referees, observers, people managing the streaming.
You also have your graphics/art assets for the stream itself and ads, and promotions.
You have $60k, maybe $75k at best leftover between 3-4 casters doing 3 seasons a year, as well as managing the league itself (communications, negotiations, invoices, taxes, legal, scheduling, budgeting, managing the Patreon etc.)
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On April 20 2025 21:32 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On April 20 2025 20:58 atrox_ wrote:
not sure if im misunderstanding or just stupid - $11,000 a month to get 3 seasons with a combined prize pool of $10,000? Where's the other $120,000 for the year going? I'll just focus on Goal 3 since that seems to be the main goal (since it has an offline venue) Goal 3 = $180k/year, minus patreon fees = ~$153k/year, minus the prize pool there's $130k left. You'd have to pay the venue for an entire weekend which may cost $25k for 3 days, then another ~$10k for cost and travel accomodation for 8 non-KR players, and then $95k leftover. Then you have your patreon rewards like artwork, documentaries, KR tour, LAN party, etc. So maybe $90k leftover. Then you have your operational costs like cameramen, referees, observers, people managing the streaming. You also have your graphics/art assets for the stream itself and ads, and promotions. You have $60k, maybe $75k at best leftover between 3-4 casters doing 3 seasons a year, as well as managing the league itself (communications, negotiations, invoices, taxes, legal, scheduling, budgeting, managing the Patreon etc.)
sure goal 3 you can see where the costs are - 4k is a big step up from an already high goal of 11k for goal 2 though so who knows if it will even get there? My original question - $120,000 for a year of 3 online tournaments is a hard ask with 0 transparency about where it's going.
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United States33222 Posts
On April 20 2025 21:32 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On April 20 2025 20:58 atrox_ wrote:
not sure if im misunderstanding or just stupid - $11,000 a month to get 3 seasons with a combined prize pool of $10,000? Where's the other $120,000 for the year going? I'll just focus on Goal 3 since that seems to be the main goal (since it has an offline venue) Goal 3 = $180k/year, minus patreon fees = ~$153k/year, minus the prize pool there's $130k left. You'd have to pay the venue for an entire weekend which may cost $25k for 3 days, then another ~$10k for cost and travel accomodation for 8 non-KR players, and then $95k leftover. Then you have your patreon rewards like artwork, documentaries, KR tour, LAN party, etc. So maybe $90k leftover. Then you have your operational costs like cameramen, referees, observers, people managing the streaming. You also have your graphics/art assets for the stream itself and ads, and promotions. You have $60k, maybe $75k at best leftover between 3-4 casters doing 3 seasons a year, as well as managing the league itself (communications, negotiations, invoices, taxes, legal, scheduling, budgeting, managing the Patreon etc.)
Your napkin math is very nitpickable, but putting that aside, this is really the kind of thing I'd want to see some proof-of-concept for before putting my money in. With crowdfunding, you could get NationWars or StayAt HomeStory Cup, but sometimes you get NASL season 1.
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On April 21 2025 01:55 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On April 20 2025 21:32 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On April 20 2025 20:58 atrox_ wrote:
not sure if im misunderstanding or just stupid - $11,000 a month to get 3 seasons with a combined prize pool of $10,000? Where's the other $120,000 for the year going? I'll just focus on Goal 3 since that seems to be the main goal (since it has an offline venue) Goal 3 = $180k/year, minus patreon fees = ~$153k/year, minus the prize pool there's $130k left. You'd have to pay the venue for an entire weekend which may cost $25k for 3 days, then another ~$10k for cost and travel accomodation for 8 non-KR players, and then $95k leftover. Then you have your patreon rewards like artwork, documentaries, KR tour, LAN party, etc. So maybe $90k leftover. Then you have your operational costs like cameramen, referees, observers, people managing the streaming. You also have your graphics/art assets for the stream itself and ads, and promotions. You have $60k, maybe $75k at best leftover between 3-4 casters doing 3 seasons a year, as well as managing the league itself (communications, negotiations, invoices, taxes, legal, scheduling, budgeting, managing the Patreon etc.) Your napkin math is very nitpickable, but putting that aside, this is really the kind of thing I'd want to see some proof-of-concept for before putting my money in. With crowdfunding, you could get NationWars or StayAt HomeStory Cup, but sometimes you get NASL season 1.
Don't know what financial approach the organizers are taking, but needing to make money puts you in a very different position in terms of how far you can stretch each dollar versus just needing to break even (or even running at a slight loss). It's very hard to feed yourself doing starcraft, and I know a lot of other orgs have basically kept it on as a passion project and rely on other stuff to make ends meet.
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So happy to see this. I was sad when State stopped streaming SC2, but so happy to see that he and Tasteless still have passion to cast the game and keep it alive (Gemini always had the passion). Will support this the best I can.
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On April 21 2025 01:55 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On April 20 2025 21:32 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On April 20 2025 20:58 atrox_ wrote:
not sure if im misunderstanding or just stupid - $11,000 a month to get 3 seasons with a combined prize pool of $10,000? Where's the other $120,000 for the year going? I'll just focus on Goal 3 since that seems to be the main goal (since it has an offline venue) Goal 3 = $180k/year, minus patreon fees = ~$153k/year, minus the prize pool there's $130k left. You'd have to pay the venue for an entire weekend which may cost $25k for 3 days, then another ~$10k for cost and travel accomodation for 8 non-KR players, and then $95k leftover. Then you have your patreon rewards like artwork, documentaries, KR tour, LAN party, etc. So maybe $90k leftover. Then you have your operational costs like cameramen, referees, observers, people managing the streaming. You also have your graphics/art assets for the stream itself and ads, and promotions. You have $60k, maybe $75k at best leftover between 3-4 casters doing 3 seasons a year, as well as managing the league itself (communications, negotiations, invoices, taxes, legal, scheduling, budgeting, managing the Patreon etc.) Your napkin math is very nitpickable, but putting that aside, this is really the kind of thing I'd want to see some proof-of-concept for before putting my money in. With crowdfunding, you could get NationWars or StayAt HomeStory Cup, but sometimes you get NASL season 1.
Of course, it's just rough estimates, since none of us know the details ^^
The point i wanted to make is just that money goes dry quickly when you have a patreon funding the whole league, not just contributing to the prize pool like GSL's
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I will definitely support this, and I hope others will also; I think the SC2 community is certainly large enough and well-funded enough to sustain something like this, and other things as well.
I do agree that it would be good to eventually get a public cost breakdown on how the money's being spent, though; for a crowdfunded tournament, that's pretty important for creating and maintaining confidence. The people involved, though, have certainly earned my trust enough to support.
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EPT
