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On December 03 2010 05:41 gozima wrote:
Do you honestly believe ESPN will be remotely interested in promoting some niche RTS game that draws at most some 20-40 thousand online viewers?
ESPN viewership is in the millions, and I doubt advertisers would be interested in promoting SC2.
Lets be happy with our little corner of the internet and help ensure that it stays alive for years to come. Expanding our E-Sports universe is going to take baby steps not giant leaps of faith.
Listen, they show the fucking spelling bee on ESPN-2. If you're telling me a well produced SC2 show shouldn't even be CONSIDERED for ESPN I think all of e-sports should just pack it in right now. But, since you're wrong I think we can move along now. I'm not saying that e-sports will definitely be TV big in the US, but we should fucking try.
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mention about artosis and tasteless having to broadcast in korea for the english speaking audience
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Okay people. If you don't think it will fly you're probably right but I don't care.
Either help us and contribute/copy paste this email when it's finished or stop bitching and stay out of this thread.
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Just like everyone has said, I applaud the effort but unlikely to happen. You have better chances with G4TV. When I worked at an Internet cafe several years ago, they came to the place 2-3 times to have tournaments.
If you can get Olivia Munn to say she likes it, then you're set!
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On December 03 2010 05:52 MoreFasho wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2010 05:41 gozima wrote:
Do you honestly believe ESPN will be remotely interested in promoting some niche RTS game that draws at most some 20-40 thousand online viewers?
ESPN viewership is in the millions, and I doubt advertisers would be interested in promoting SC2.
Lets be happy with our little corner of the internet and help ensure that it stays alive for years to come. Expanding our E-Sports universe is going to take baby steps not giant leaps of faith. Listen, they show the fucking spelling bee on ESPN-2. If you're telling me a well produced SC2 show shouldn't even be CONSIDERED for ESPN I think all of e-sports should just pack it in right now. But, since you're wrong I think we can move along now. I'm not saying that e-sports will definitely be TV big in the US, but we should fucking try.
the spelling bee drew more viewers than the Stanley Cup Finals. you have no idea what you're talking about.
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I'm not optimistic about the chance of success, but why not try?
If they show poker, darts, baseball, and golf, surely people will come around and realize SC2 is far more fun to watch  .
And to reiterate what most others have said, it is indeed "pastime", not "pass time" as the first reply suggested.
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If Poker can make it, SC2 can do it too!
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If they can show the madden nation I bet they can do the same with starcraft.
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ESPN would welcome a Madden videogame tourney or something, but SC2? To them they'd be like, "wtf is this nerdy shit?".
You'd be better off going to the Syfy or G4 channel or something, where the audience is more inclined to care about SC2.
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The problem with SC2 is that it's not enjoyable to watch unless you have a good understanding of the game.
A normal person will not understand the value of workers, they will not know what it means if someone is building a barracks. If ESPN dedicated 1hr/week to SC2 then the cast would have to be so simplistic that not a single SC fan would be watching it.
Either that or they would cap at 10k viewers.
As I said in another thread; why do you want the game to be played on television? It's much better if we just keep it here on the internet, I never watch television and for SC it would suck since I would not have access to Liquipedia and would not be able to postwhore in the live report thread.
What I'm trying to say is; WHY do you want SC to be featured on ESPN when you know that it will be such a small thing? Would it not make more sense to get a proper Web-tv running, with a 10 man staff that broadcasts SC for five hours/day. Then people from allover the world could watch and that would be much better as well.
At least we should let the game mature for a bit, the game really is not that interesting in it's current state if you are not deeply into the community. No teams to cheer for, lot's of uninteresting no-namers in the GSL, different people winning every tournament etc.
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On December 03 2010 05:49 drgoats wrote:
Magic the Gathering was shown on ESPN several times. The do show the Madden Challenge, which would probably draw more viewers, but it is a video game. There is a lot of garbage on ESPN and ESPN 2 during non-peak hours and you never know if there is a spot for this.
especially considering that most starcraft matches are between the hours of 3 a.m (west coasters) and 6 a.m. (east coasters) in the US...lol
that's if they did live stuff.
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On December 03 2010 05:57 ishboh wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2010 05:49 drgoats wrote:
Magic the Gathering was shown on ESPN several times. The do show the Madden Challenge, which would probably draw more viewers, but it is a video game. There is a lot of garbage on ESPN and ESPN 2 during non-peak hours and you never know if there is a spot for this. especially considering that most starcraft matches are between the hours of 3 a.m (west coasters) and 6 a.m. (east coasters) in the US...lol that's if they did live stuff.
If they put it on live at this time that would be awesome for us and there might actually be interest for early morning time-slot when just us super nerds would watch. Of course I would hope for a more regular time-slot eventually, but a start is a start. Once they have rights to programming like that they can re-cast it when ever.
I will definitely share the love of this email and I hope to all that is good and right that we see SC2 on TV.
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On December 03 2010 05:29 Torture wrote:
To Whom it May Concern,
I am writing to urge you to consider Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty matches as a programming option on ESPN.
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty is a military science-fiction real-time strategy video game developed and released by Blizzard Entertainment. Starcraft II sold over 1.5 million copies during its first two days of sale making it the fastest selling strategy game of all time. During the first month of sales that number increased to 3 million, and to date it has sold ______(Anybody know how many?) copies.
You want to get rid of this paragraph break between the first sentence and this second paragraph. Readers are inclined only to read the first paragraph so you want to accurately describe just what the hell Starcraft 2 is right off the bat. You should also insert viewership numbers in this description so they get a sense of how popular it is, game sales alone are not a complete barometer of popularity.
On December 03 2010 05:29 Torture wrote:
Starcraft II’s predecessor Brood War is the most successful e-Sport in the world and is considered a national pastime in Korea. With the release of Starcraft II e-Sports continue to grow in Korea and are growing at a grassroots level in North America.
This one's just my opinion, but you should get rid of the first sentence since it doesn't relate exactly to the focus of this letter, which is Starcraft 2. Instead, change this around so that you're describing Starcraft 2 to the fullest, it's okay if you embellish a little. For example:
With the release of Starcraft II, e-Sports is continuing to grow in South Korea and in North America. Starcraft II is considered a national pastime in South Korea and is considered the most successful e-Sport in the world.
On December 03 2010 05:29 Torture wrote:
On websites such as Reddit and Team Liquid hundreds of thousands of people meet to discuss the game, strategy, and share replays.
After "hundreds of thousands of people meet", you should insert a timeframe such as daily, or weekly, or whatever, to give the reader a sense of the activity of the community. A blanket statement about population size does not give a complete sense of frequency of activity.
On December 03 2010 05:29 Torture wrote:
Here in North America Major League Gaming (MLG) recently added Starcraft II to their pro circuit. At a recent tournament in ___ (Dallas, Raleigh, wherever we can find stats for) MLG attracted _____ viewers, with a prize pool of $7,000 for regular season tournaments.
Get rid of the mention of the prize pool here, it pales in significance with the prize pool of the GSL and will cause scale whiplash in the reader particularly as they are both in the same paragraph. Just insert a weasel word instead, like it has a "major" prize pool or something.
On December 03 2010 05:29 Torture wrote:
I strongly urge you to consider broadcasting Starcraft II and to contact Blizzard Entertainment regarding broadcasting rights. There is a tremendous opportunity here for ESPN. For your convenience, the following is the appropriate email to contact Blizzard Entertainment. (Insert relevant Blizzard email, anybody know it?)
You should get rid of the stuff about Blizzard. You are basically telling the reader what to do and assuming this ever gets to a decently high-ranking guy at ESPN, they won't appreciate that. Also definitely watch out for personal pronouns, it makes you sound familiar and like an insincere asshole. Just end it at "consider broadcasting Starcraft II" and insert some platitudes at the end about how great the game and e-Sports are. For example:
I strongly urge ESPN to consider broadcasting Starcraft II. There is a tremendous opportunity here for ESPN. e-Sports are a growing scene worldwide and Starcraft II, as the largest and newest e-Sport, is leading the way.
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I would subscribe to ESPN if they cast SC2 tournaments regularly, maybe with the focus on NA/Europe circuit. Something that the audience can relate to.
thanks for this.
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It seems like a kind of bourgeois arrogance to demand that a national network broadcast a game that caters to such a limited demographic -- essentially a demographic within a demographic. Sports covered on ESPN are so much more accessible to all groups of people, including those without high speed internet access or a quality home PC. That's one of the best things about football, basketball, baseball, soccer -- I met kids in Haiti who derived so much pleasure simply from playing soccer barefoot in a rocky field. It's elemental, the physical confrontation, the camaraderie of a team, etc.
And in America, who really wants to see it? Think about how small the amount of copies sold is in relationship to our population. Compare that with the accessibility of any sport shown on ESPN. Not to mention that starcraft is crippled by its proportional inaccessibility more so than any traditional sport would be, since you really need to have a fairly decent knowledge of the game to enjoy casts beyond the point of their novelty wearing away.
And beyond that, the casters don't really understand the human side of sport's appeal at a level that even the most terrible sports journalists do. I don't know why, but there's not a lot of analysis regarding players' philosophical tendencies with respect to strategy in casts. At least, nothing that goes very far beyond "Kyrix is an aggressive Zerg." Even the English-Speaking players in the GSL are barely covered in this regard. Team Liquid's feature articles are the only easily accessible source of this kind of coverage, even as the community obviously hungers for it -- the main example I can think of being how popular blog-style first person reports on the foreign scene are on the forums here.
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What games would they broadcast? MLG has the north american broadcasting rights, gomtv the Korean rights.
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Some things you might want to say:
Help attract the "geek" part of our society, which is already rapidly growing.
The fact that we can have 20000 people just watching a tournement while lacking major advertisemnts. Imagine if they have it on tv, its not infeasible for 100k me thinks.
The time to jump on the e-sports boom is now.
Some starcraft commentators have over 300000 subscribors on youtube.
obviously phrase better though
also I might leave out the day9 portion.
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On December 03 2010 06:04 McIver wrote:
It seems like a kind of bourgeois arrogance to demand that a national network broadcast a game that caters to such a limited demographic -- essentially a demographic within a demographic. Sports covered on ESPN are so much more accessible to all groups of people, including those without high speed internet access or a quality home PC. That's one of the best things about football, basketball, baseball, soccer -- I met kids in Haiti who derived so much pleasure simply from playing soccer barefoot in a rocky field. It's elemental, the physical confrontation, the camaraderie of a team, etc.
And in America, who really wants to see it? Think about how small the amount of copies sold is in relationship to our population. Compare that with the accessibility of any sport shown on ESPN. Not to mention that starcraft is crippled by its proportional inaccessibility more so than any traditional sport would be, since you really need to have a fairly decent knowledge of the game to enjoy casts beyond the point of their novelty wearing away.
And beyond that, the casters don't really understand the human side of sport's appeal at a level that even the most terrible sports journalists do. I don't know why, but there's not a lot of analysis regarding players' philosophical tendencies with respect to strategy in casts. At least, nothing that goes very far beyond "Kyrix is an aggressive Zerg." Even the English-Speaking players in the GSL are barely covered in this regard. Team Liquid's feature articles are the only easily accessible source of this kind of coverage, even as the community obviously hungers for it -- the main example I can think of being how popular blog-style first person reports on the foreign scene are on the forums here.
Seriously, now? Broadcasting starcraft is class warfare because some people don't have good computers? Please.
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On December 03 2010 05:29 Torture wrote:
Sean "Day9" Plott........ blabla some sort of sentence about Day9 because he's awesome and the ambassador of eSports in the West.
(Link to HuskyStarcraft or Day9 or an exciting cast of some sort...any recommendations?
maybe link the 100 episode of day9
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United States12235 Posts
As someone who has dealt (albeit unsuccessfully) with the CEO of the CPL, I can tell you that these emails do actually get through and they do get read. Make it as professional and straightforward as possible, and eliminate superfluous adjectives. I'd also avoid the nebulous "To Whom It May Concern" (I've always hated that) and instead find a specific contact within the company to address directly.
You want to convey the target demographic as well as maybe suggest ESPN-2 for coverage. If you discover that ESPN-2 has a different command structure (it probably does) then send this email to a member of the management there instead.
As far as the Blizzard contact, find someone in the Blizzard e-Sports department. Rob Simpson perhaps (he casts most of the Blizzard events)? Company email addresses are typically first initial last name, maybe you'll have luck with him as a contact. Be sure you consult him beforehand, since it's possible they've already pursued talks with ESPN.
I like how quantitative your email is. The more relevant facts and statistics you can provide, the easier it will be for them to start a discussion internally.
Best of luck.
EDIT: Krigwin had a good post above and it reminded me of something. You need to specify what exactly your aims are here. When I emailed CPL, it was to get Starcraft added as a game in the CPL, which had established, annual tournaments. Do you want ESPN to create their own tournament? Cover other tournaments in conjunction with MLG? In conjunction with GOM? That part wasn't very clear in your email.
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EPT
