Results are certainly important and practice by the players is very important as well. Things in Korea are significantly different than in the US and most of the world. First there are cultural differences. Second they have had a legitimate eSports industry for years. Those guys and gals are literally rockstars over there and many of them are paid like it. This fact certainly gives organizations more leverage of dictating 10 hours of play a day. In the US we have not reached that level of notoriety yet and therefore the players dont get paid as much.

I can not speak to what the practice regimen in Korea is like for sure but I have heard it is insane more like 12-15 hours a day and many living together and practicing pretty much non-stop. If this is in fact true, I am not sure there are many Americans that would chose to live their life like that. That would be the cultural difference if in fact what I hear is the truth.

Either way an organization needs to have results to gain legitimacy but once they have those results and begin to get sponsors there is a lot more to the equation then winning. They want some players that are well spoken and can represent their brands well at tradeshows. They want some that can write well and put together valid content about why their products are the ones the average consumer should use. At the end of the day it is all about marketing and perception. That is what these companies are paying their money for. Results are important but are only half the battle and in some case maybe only 25% of the battle. I have had some partners over the years that simply don't care about the tournament results. They are much more interested in player personalities, photo shoots, trade show activations, content and number of eyeballs looking at their brand and their ads. Then there are other ones that seem to care a ton about the results and the rest does not matter too much. A lot of times that mentality boils down to your contact at the company you are dealing with. Is that person a huge fan of eSports? Did they come from eSports? Or are they just a pure marketer that have been shown value and ROI and trust you to do what is best for their brand? There are many other factors to this but those are a few.

Lysenko

Iceland2128 Posts

June 23 2011 19:53 GMT

#23

Great post. I think that many of the fans in the community oversimplify in their minds the challenges that the players and teams face, even at the very top level.

Wren

United States745 Posts

June 23 2011 20:04 GMT

#24

On June 24 2011 00:24 kollin wrote:
Coke made an excellent play, at one point Day9's stream had 100k viewers.

That depends on how much they paid for the placement, doesn't it?

k!llua

Australia895 Posts

June 23 2011 20:11 GMT

#25

A distinguishing factor about eSports isn't the number of viewers it has - because it's not that much, in comparison to sports or other niche hobbies - but the ability for companies to target to an audience that is much more attuned to their product.

Steelseries, for example, would get far more traction advertising during Dreamhack, sponsoring a LAN event or even paying players to use their products than traditional print/broadcast advertisements. The smaller audience is happy to spend substantial amounts of money on gaming gear ($20-60 on mouse pads, $50-150 on gaming mice, $50-200 on headphones/headsets) and therefore they get a lot more bang for their buck, as it were.

Because they're prepared to make that initial outlay, they're much more receptive to advertisements; which is why sponsorship can be worth it for businesses.

DensitY

New Zealand74 Posts

June 23 2011 20:26 GMT

#26

This is really on the money in my opinion. I think the ability to advertise directly to their core audience in reasonable numbers outweighs advertising to mass market (Tv, news paper, Billboard along the motorway). I see it that it has 2 big advantages, Firstly the viewer is highly likely to actually want the product, and secondary the potential buyer can see that the company is supporting one of their biggest interests (E-sports or in our case SC2/SC:BW).

I think I'm a fantastic example of that. I had some pretty sad headphones that were falling apart, I needed new ones of reasonable quality that wouldn't cost the earth. Watching GSL I saw the Razor Banshee and thought to myself "hmmm I need knew headphones, maybe I should give those a try". So I headed to my local computer store and picked them up. End result is I have a product which works very well and supports SC2 which is an added bonus. I'm pretty sure if I saw an Razor Banshee ad on Tv, I would of glossed over it like I do with everything else.

coljbass

United States42 Posts

June 23 2011 23:02 GMT

#27

On June 24 2011 05:11 k!llua wrote:
A distinguishing factor about eSports isn't the number of viewers it has - because it's not that much, in comparison to sports or other niche hobbies - but the ability for companies to target to an audience that is much more attuned to their product.

Steelseries, for example, would get far more traction advertising during Dreamhack, sponsoring a LAN event or even paying players to use their products than traditional print/broadcast advertisements. The smaller audience is happy to spend substantial amounts of money on gaming gear ($20-60 on mouse pads, $50-150 on gaming mice, $50-200 on headphones/headsets) and therefore they get a lot more bang for their buck, as it were.

Because they're prepared to make that initial outlay, they're much more receptive to advertisements; which is why sponsorship can be worth it for businesses.

This is a key selling point. A. we are considerably cheaper than the mass market advertising and B. They guarantee a big chunk of the demographic they are after.

coLtwixz

United States159 Posts

June 24 2011 00:00 GMT

#28

On June 24 2011 02:16 seoul_kiM wrote:

Show nested quote +

Much of what you said rings well with me but on the other side there are valid points as well. Korean teams mandate that their players practice a certain amount and do certain things to keep their play up to the top level. Does complexity not have that kind of demand or is it purely based on results and placings? I don't doubt the passion and will to win behind any professional SC2 player but why does it seem like the Koreans practice so much more? I'm sure you ladder for a couples hours every night but what keeps you from going hard (8-10 hours a day, not sure if you do this or not)? It might be too personal to ask but how long do you practice and how do you spend that time practicing? Do you think that's enough or do you just get bored or burnt out?
Pro-athletes have off seasons where most of their charity and external work gets done I believe but they do interviews and shows all the time. Do professional e-athletes have an off-season? Not really and especially in this booming game of SC2 where the tournaments/upcoming events tab is so long I have to actually scroll down.
I feel that getting good results will advance an organization's ability to obtain sponsors and other perks while socially active players that interact with the community might create a fanbase group (which could also help with sponsorships) but hinder a player's results.

Well my comparison is really not that fair (since i was pro at another game not sc2), but the way SC was built in Korea did not happen overnight, and it sure did not happen just from winning. So to compare the state of koeans and americans would not really even be fair. They have been at it and on the grind for so long (of course dating back to sc1), if you even watched some of the boxer documentaries on his team right now you can see the struggle he has had and pressure to obtain sponsors.

No sport or league or event was built just on winning, it was the players from the past that did outreaches to the community and interactions with fans that brought everyone to where they are today. Also as a season ticket holder to a major sport I can tell you that the team reaches out many times during the season too.

All I'm saying is even if you put 60 hours a week into SC2 practice you can still find another 30mins to an hour for outside SC2 work (a week). There's really no way around that to me.

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