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There are no data here that definitely shows a problem for the NASL. It's typical for any new, publicized event to do better initially then settle down, and as many have said, we can discount last week.
If we don't see a significant rise as we get into the business end of the tournament, I'd be concerned, but I just don't see that happening. I think there will be many more viewers, just like with a bracket tournament the qualifiers are less watched, and each round is more watched than the previous. It's pointless to compare a league with a three day tournament.
The NASL has had several issues that it needs to address, and these are all well documented, but I don't think there's enough evidence to suggest that the format of the tournament is somehow fundamentally flawed. I think despite all the issues with the NASL, it's got the skeleton of a great tournament, and I've enjoyed it immensely.
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I really don't think NASL is doing that badly at all. It seems to pull in a consistent 10k+ viewers during both the original airing and the European rebroadcast. That's about 6 hours of 10k viewers, 5 times a week.
Taking into account how frequently it airs and how many games there are to get through I don't think anyone ever expected to see numbers close to short term weekend tournaments like MLG and TSL. Even during the group stages there is a consistently high audience, and I'm sure we will see that number shoot up once they get into the playoffs.
How many foreign viewers does GSL normally get? I can't see it being that much higher, at least not until near the finals.
What worries me more about the NASL is the seeming lack of any kind of sponsors. I still don't really understand how the whole thing is financed.
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United States97276 Posts
Week 8 took a big hit from MLG, though
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like quite a few in this thread, i started out watching NASL whenever I possibly could, almost every night, however, it feels too much like a time investment. Plus, the fact that the group stages take like two months is really hurting my interest. In theory a three month sc2 tournament with every match casted sounds wonderful, but it really is almost impossible to tune in to most of the matches and is really easy to lose interest in, for me at least
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On June 08 2011 04:40 Adsee wrote:
like quite a few in this thread, i started out watching NASL whenever I possibly could, almost every night, however, it feels too much like a time investment. Plus, the fact that the group stages take like two months is really hurting my interest. In theory a three month sc2 tournament with every match casted sounds wonderful, but it really is almost impossible to tune in to most of the matches and is really easy to lose interest in, for me at least
I actually watch NASL over all of the others because it is such a long league. You do have a great point that it's a major time investment... I think perhaps if NASL had a better and more accessible VOD setup things might be quite different. You could then watch the matches you want live, and catch up on others at a later point. The way it is right now on JTV... makes it hard to access the VODs you want and often I find myself combing manually through a list. It'd be nice to see a GSL-esque setup? Where you could click through a grand-scheme schedule to particular matchups, and then watch each individual match. Also VODs need to be made available in lower resolutions as they can kill someone's bandwidth really quickly at 1080p.
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I would love to watch it, but literally just running out of time watching other things, as well as actually playing :-/. But yeah, last week is a bit skewed because of MLG
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The format is very long and that's partially why the numbers aren't like they were for the first couple of weeks. The playoffs leading into and the finals will be the time to really see the numbers/interest spike. The other half are all the problems they had and worked out for the most part. A lot of people were let down from what was presented as a top notch tournament from the start. So numbers fell off for weeks. I know I wasn't paying too much attention to it outside seeing the viewer count before the stream froze. I don't believe the LR thread gets touched by the european viewers either so while this OP is interesting doesn't truly show the retention rate.
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United States1012 Posts
Another thing to take into consideration is the larger tournaments LR threads are usually filled with a lot of meaningless banter. With the NASL running regularly for so long, it's no surprise that said banter slows down after a while.
Kennigit really nailed it when he mentioned the first couple of days were filled with complaint posts, which make the graphs look worse than it actually is.
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Not surprising. The hype gradually died off and many other events have been going on. I expect high numbers for the Playoffs though.
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United States23455 Posts
They'll get viewers when the games go offline for the three day finals.
Online tournaments just don't get as much hype/viewers on here or in the community except if you're TSL. Especially when it's a regular season type deal where some players have quit, some matches don't matter toward the final result, etc. Long regular-type seasons only really work when it's offline or if it's a team league. Also when you have leagues like GSL going on and other stuff like MLG/Dreamhack, it'll just look not as good in comparison since they're offline and have a better overall production.
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You have to keep in mind MLG/GSL super tournament are definitly taking away from NASL, on top of the fact that NASL pool play is so long and drawn out its hard to get yourself to watch it all. I think the views will return when it gets closer to the playoffs and finals. Also as said before, people tend to post more to complain when things are not working, look at how flooded NASL/MLG threads are with extremely low post count users that are just logging in for the sake to whine.
NASL has definitely improved since week one despite what statistics show, but i really think a change in format would be the best thing possible to make it successful.
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One other thing, people are being a little myopic when they look at the format of the NASL.
Next season the quality of play in the NASL will be better because of the open tournament, new invites and the retention of all the best players. Essentially the the wheat will have been separated from the chaff in the tournament we are watching right now.
With an even higher number of quality players, there will be less skill disparity within each division, and each game will be more meaningful. I have a feeling there will be a lot more momentum felt for the NASL we get into the later stages of this tournament, and people start vying to be in for next year.
That said, regardless of a format choice, some people will only watch the later rounds of a tournament, and that's not a problem. I'm happy I've been watching all the games as I have a much better sense of each players playstyles as we go into the business end of the tournament and it makes it a lot more enjoyable.
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I posted this in another thread. I really think NASL would benefit from this format.
Round one you have 10 groups of 5 players doing round robin in their group. Takes 4 weeks. 1st and 2nd of each group advances to round 3.
Round two you have 6 groups of 5 players doing round robin in their group. Takes 4 weeks. 1st/2nd of each group advances to round 3.
Round 3 is a 32 person Bracket. Ro32 takes place online. Ro16/Ro8/Ro4/Ro2 is offline.
If you don't make the 32 person Bracket, you aren't guaranteed to be in next season.
That leaves 18 spots for new people. It does get rid of the $10 open tournament for a spot in the offline finals.
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Interesting analysis Primadog  We got over 5k viewers almost each night while MLG was running, we had about 20k on Thursday (when I casted... wooo!). Not too bad imo.
Anyways, I believe people just have trouble realizing/accepting that our format is NOT a "tournament" format. It is a league. We are the only real big league. GSL is a monthly/bimonthly tournament. MLG is a series of tournaments. NASL is an actual league. Die-hard fans watch the NBA every single day. A vast majority of people only watch major matches, or follow their favorite team. It's the exact same here.
Go figure ~~
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I don't think this is any indication NASL is doing poorly at all.
In fact, I would say by appearances they are doing quite well. However, this brings up 2 caveats to the success.
First, Playoff viewership should be much much higher than regular season. If playoff viewership isn't higher, then I think NASL is in some trouble.
Secondly, the Open Tournament, should have lots of entrants. Like considerably larger than MLG's open bracket. If they don't I think NASL might be in trouble.
I would also like to state that this brings up a question of the allocation of resources for the NASL. Every match in the NASL regular is important. It is really important as seen by the situation of the NASL coming into Week9. Think how different the divisions would be if White-ra, MC, Naniwa didn't have walkover losses. Think how different Division 5 would be if Painuser took a round off opponents instead of not showing up and going 0-2.
DESPITE, all this tho, from a spectator point of view, the regular season isn't all that exciting. There's too many to watch, and many just tune in for the week to see the one BIG matchup. NASL can try to emphasize the important of each game, but I don't think they can because professional sports league haven't found a solution either. NBA, MLB, NFL, etc have much higher viewership during playoffs than the regular season. This is also true of college level play.
With this in mind, it seems to me that NASL is using way too many resources devoted into broadcasting the regular season. During the playoffs, we want live games, live casters, a play by play, a thorough analysis, interviews, and all the good stuff. But during the regular season, that's not as important. I think fans are more concerned with the results more than the games during the regular season, unless there's a big name like Boxer, Idra, or MC. I think since there is less viewer emphasis during the regular season, it wouldn't hurt NASL at all to cast from non-live replays for the regular season in the future ala TSL #3. It's more convenient for the players and scheduling, the NASL staff, and gives more time for editing and production value. Of course, this raises the risk of results being leaked.
Now NASL can strive to live cast every regular season game like they have been doing, but getting that production value up is going to be harder, scheduling and accommodating the players is going to be harder. And one has to wonder, is it worth it?
All that being said, if future seasons of NASL has GSL level production value and editing and amazing casting for all their regular season games, including the more "boring" players, it would be extremely impressive and really raise the standard for NA esport tournaments.
Also, despite being hard for the viewers, I really like the season long format. I think whoever is crowned the champion of the NASL, we can safely say is the best champion for the set of players who joined. The format definitely weeds out luck, and its hard to make an argument that the winner of this tournament doesn't deserve to be where he is. You don't luck into the NASL championship, is what I'm saying. As better foreigners join the NASL, the NASL champion can be called the best foreigner. If all the Koreans join the NASL, the NASL title can definitely be just as prestigious as the GSL tournament. (Here's hoping blizzard gives us P2P one of these days)
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I'd have to agree wth the fact that people post complaints more than praise, and the stream still gets big views
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On June 07 2011 10:30 Kennigit wrote:
Wow, pretty powerful. Thats a very low attach rate and i'd have to imagine its due to the problems they suffered from in week 1. It would be interesting to see how other leagues like IPL or CSN events size up. Also the graphs may be a bit misleadings because people tend to post more when there are problems and dont say much if things are going ok. Day 1/2 was a constant stream of complains which probably affects those 2 peaks.
Without sounding defensive, I'd like a little more granularity of your statement of "That's a very low attach rate." because I disagree.
2.5k posts per week is hardly a small number, and considering that TL.net is only one of a few different centers people post NASL findings, opinions, etc on today, I'd say it's right in line with what I would have expected.
Primadog is a friggin genius with statistics and one of the Moderators on our stream that I enjoy working with very much, so I absolutely dig it when he makes these types of posts. It'd be great to see the statistics melding in Reddit.com and WP.org posts as well.
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EPT
