EPTPaying to watch GSL matches... Is it a good idea? - Page 8
| Forum Index > SC2 General |
|
xBillehx
United States1289 Posts
| ||
Chill
Calgary25981 Posts
| ||
|
Nayl
Canada413 Posts
On January 31 2011 07:49 heishe wrote: The "mainstream populace" will never watch the GSL unless it's aired on big sports channels in the US and EU anyways. You'll never find a non-gamer visiting GomTV.net and watch Starcraft 2 because he's genuinely interested in it. If he was interested in Starcraft 2 or in SC2 as an eSport, he'd be playing SC2 and thus not be a non-gamer. eSport just isn't like normal sport. People who likes to watch youtube casts would definitely watch the GSL. Last I checked, some youtube casts get well over 100,000 hits. It's not exactly mainstream, but its a good place to start. | ||
|
Enzyme
Australia183 Posts
On January 31 2011 07:49 heishe wrote: The "mainstream populace" will never watch the GSL unless it's aired on big sports channels in the US and EU anyways. You'll never find a non-gamer visiting GomTV.net and watch Starcraft 2 because he's genuinely interested in it. If he was interested in Starcraft 2 or in SC2 as an eSport, he'd be playing SC2 and thus not be a non-gamer. eSport just isn't like normal sport. I am a non-gamer, and yet I spend most of my mornings on TL and have watched and paid for every GSL season. | ||
|
Meta
United States6225 Posts
On January 31 2011 07:46 eviltomahawk wrote: Well, paying for the VODs and HQ stream is still supporting the e-sports scene. Despite what people say about GOM being greedy and such, they are still the only provider of SC2 in Korea and are supporting one of the biggest e-sports tournaments currently. It would be awesome for them to compensate their inconvenient broadcasting time with a restream or temporarily free VODs, though. Not all of us can spend money so easily, especially younger audiences who probably will have difficulty convincing their parents to pay so much money for videos of a computer game tournament. Then again, I'm sure there are ways of illegally obtaining the VODs, though piracy will benefit you at the detriment of hurting the well-being of the e-sports scene. If 5 people watch the games for free when otherwise 1 person would have paid to watch them, I don't see how that's detrimental to e-sports. I just wanted to add that when they first announced the GSL would be pay-to-watch, they said they'd charge $50, and suddenly lowered the price of season 1 to $20. Obviously that was a business tactic (drop the bomb, soften the blow), and it's clearly worked. If I had $10 to spare, would I buy the ticket this month? Probably, but I plan on being a starcraft fan for life, and a lifetime subscription to the GSL ends up being very costly. Doing the math, the time/cost ratio for the GSL still ends up being far and away higher than a WoW subscription, and there's hardly any gamers that would have more fun watching the GSL than playing WoW (teamliquid excluded). It's also a slap in the face to give the winner an exorbitant amount of money, and the rest of the players such a tiny, unlivable amount of money. All the while they charge the non-korean fans to pay for such a lopsided prize distribution. It just feels like the people who paid for the stream/vods are being used, from where I'm standing. | ||
|
Sworn
Canada920 Posts
| ||
|
theBOOCH
United States832 Posts
| ||
|
Bijan
United States286 Posts
| ||
|
beat farm
United States478 Posts
On January 31 2011 07:55 theBOOCH wrote: It's freaking cheap. I feel like I'm stealing. It's 5 dollars for GSTL, it was 10 for last season which was like 50 hours worth of games. Blizzcon was $40 and was awful. I think it's a great deal. blizzcon had a free option that was not streamed at 3am. i do agree it was awful. | ||
|
Asha
United Kingdom38256 Posts
On January 31 2011 07:37 beat farm wrote: exactly. if they restreamed it at like 9pm est time i would fall in love with gom so much. This is incidentally another problem, you can never satisfy everyone even with a restream of the event. 9pm EST for most of the EU fans is like 3am, and given that the initial broadcast is during work/school hours that's still going to be awkward for some heh. On January 31 2011 07:50 dabom88 wrote: Like Ryan, says, Regular TV happens at regular time, regular TV isn't on at 2am-5am. This might be true for a lot of things, but doesn't necessarily hold for everything. Let's say I want to watch the superbowl over here for whatever reason, then I have to be up at 2-5AM because it's not something that is worthwhile for broadcasters to reshow. In smaller niche sports (or markets) it isn't actually that uncommon at all for events not to be broadcast at a more accessible hour. Some kind of restream is still the way to go imo though given the delivery platform is the web. | ||
|
Koshi
Belgium38799 Posts
+ Show Spoiler + People who say "there's a free Live Stream, it's fine" are spouting absolute BS. The times the GSL is on in parts of the world are simply unreasonable to watch them live, like 2-5 AM. Some people have things like school and work they need to do, so saying that there's a "free Live Stream" when people around the world simply watch them due to their time schedules or it being live at an unreasonable time. So no, saying that a free Live Stream that comes on at like 2-5AM is not "fine" if they are trying to broaden their audience. The GoMTV monthly fee is very reasonable. Especially because it is the only real big tournament in the world right now. 10 dollar or 7 euro is nothing. | ||
|
Node
United States2159 Posts
| ||
|
LeFroMaGe
United States628 Posts
| ||
|
Ighox
Norway580 Posts
I think everyone just needs to get used to and accept the fact that paying for entertainment is ok, yes even on the internet. | ||
|
GP
United States1056 Posts
On January 31 2011 06:34 heyoka wrote: Not VODs. I think its an awful policy that shows very little understanding of how to grow a sport. Historically things like baseball became much bigger when they began to give out content for free (like when baseball was first put on the radio). If I was new to the scene and ran across the GSL website, I would be out of there immediately as soon as I saw you need to pay. It would turn me to something else and make me forget about SC2 instantly. I think a lot people are missing the point that GOM is a Korean company. Baseball got popular because it was an American sport broadcasting to Americans while being supported by local American commercials. It wasn't costing MLB money to broadcast games. GOM can't just broadcast for free, it's really expensive, they need sponsors to support the broadcasting. The GSL is supported by Sony Erickson, but I doubt there was some guy in the corporate office in Japan who decided to sponsor a Korean game tournament, I'm sure it was a local division that wanted to reach out to Koreans. And on top of that, it's being supported by Korean music. It's costing GOM money to even have a low quality live broadcast, no one's supporting the international stream. Don't Koreans get the content for free? That's because all of the advertising that supports that content is targeted at Koreans. If GOM wants to make the GSL popular like the radio made The MLB popular, they're going to have to find international sponsors. I think that is a daunting task, especially for a Korean company. I'm fine with paying ten dollars a month for now. If someone from GOM figures out how to get multinational sponsors to support foreign content, then that's even better. But I think you guys are asking to much from a moderately sized Korean company. | ||
|
Bobster
Germany3075 Posts
On January 31 2011 07:44 Ryan375 wrote: Uh, no. Regular TV happens 24/7. If the program you want to watch runs at 2am-5am (btw, it runs from 10am-2pm over here), what do you do?Regular TV happens at regular time lol (not 2am-5am)  | ||
|
supersoft
Germany3729 Posts
And since 2011 the HQ livestream and the HQ VODs are loading perfectly. The question is not, do you think it's good for you. The question is, is it good for GOMtv. Well I think it's not good for sc2. Right now they pull off a skimming strategy. What is pretty bad for SC2 as an esport. But right now, I think it's the proper strategy for GOM. I think there wouldn't be much more viewers right now, if it the VODs were free. | ||
|
LanTAs
United States1091 Posts
| ||
|
tok
United States691 Posts
If I had a job I'd change my mind. | ||
|
dabom88
United States3483 Posts
On January 31 2011 08:10 supersoft wrote: well it's ok for us "hardcorefans" because we pay 10$ and get like 10hours entertainment in HQ. And since 2011 the HQ livestream and the HQ VODs are loading perfectly. The question is not, do you think it's good for you. The question is, is it good for GOMtv. Well I think it's not good for sc2. Right now they pull off a skimming strategy. What is pretty bad for SC2 as an esport. But right now, I think it's the proper strategy for GOM. I think there wouldn't be much more viewers right now, if it the VODs were free. Disagree. If they advertised the free VODs on Youtube or something (like post one free video on youtube of a match from the previous night), they'd probably be a lot more viewers of the GSL. And namely, it'd attract people who wouldn't normally watch the GSL. | ||
| ||
