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PS: Wasn't a Korean team in the headlines recently for getting a 180,000 sponsorship (I think OGS)? Someone can correct me. But with sponsorships like that and 2000 from NASL, it absolutely doesn't make sense why they would demand more.
There must be more to the story...whether they wanted something else, or that it actually IS sabotage by MLG/GSL. NASL got some pretty big numbers in their first season, which is bound to draw attention.
oh well still waiting for a sc2con contact and an official response from them.
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This really sucks.... I mean I am still going to buy a ticket but watching foreigners play is just not as fun..... Oh well.......
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Rather unbelievable that the Korean teams would do this, $2000 being offered and a chance to compete for 100K in prizes and they refuse to participate? I feel the initial offer from the NASL was defiantly underwhelming but with the subsequent increases through negotiation seemed very reasonable. From the information at hand I feel we will only continue to see further decisions and actions from SC2CON that will continue to be greedy and self serving in nature. Rather disappointing to say the least.
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God. This is so depressing.
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How much would it cost to make NASL the premier tournament to win, instead of the GSL? Get the koreans out of korea and make them join foreign teams instead of running/catering to them like they were the holy grail.
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What a shame, hope the korean teams economy will be better, I'd love to see them around here. Tho they do cause an imbalance in the tournament results :D
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699 Posts
On August 12 2011 09:25 Govou wrote: as much as it doesn't sound fair, maybe NASL should think about paying up more for every player who's going to be in final.
I can see how it's going to hurt NASL if they dont but I dont see how it's going to hurt NASL much if they do.
We would love to guarantee a 100% covered cost to every single player. We have a fixed budget, we're a company that is less than 1 year old and we're trying to do great things. We don't have the VC backing and years of events hosted such as companies like MLG (nor do we have the backing of a major corporation like GOMTV).
The offer we made is literally the most we can do with the current budget we have.
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On August 12 2011 09:17 Pudge_172 wrote: You have to spend money to make money and obviously the Koreans don't believe in spending money to make money.
You have to practice harder to be better and win money. Obviously foreigners don't believe in that since they get destroy by koreans at every tournament.
User was warned for this post
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I think it really goes to show that these Korean SC2 players aren't living the dream. I wonder how much salary they really do get if their teams can't afford air travel (with $2000 stipend) to one of the biggest events around.
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The things about Asian culture is they remember the past history. The NASL wasn't accommodating enough in season 1, and will not gain their (SC2CON) trust again even if NASL quadruple the money for accommodation. People take relationship building and pride seriously more so than money in Asian culture. I learn this from International business and Japanese business relationship.
The root cause of the problem is culture differences, miscommunication and misinformation between two parties about accommodations and signs contracts. And also partly due to tournament final format of losing a set and you out instead of double elimination in the Final 16. SlayerSBoxeR travel thousands of miles just to in first set lose and go home.
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This is an unfortunate loss for the korean teams, and does not impact my desire to watch NASL season 2.
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It's hilarious that they have huge demands to leagues outside of America where they can make almost as much as in GSL. While Foreigners go to Korea with the same intent and still make it and practice there. Why in Korea they don't have better sponsors than Foreign Teams.
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On August 12 2011 08:54 Kraznaya wrote:Show nested quote +On August 12 2011 08:54 Alexl wrote: Am I the only one thinking the "reove the security deposit" part was because koreans decided they would screw teh viewers and pretty much stop playing their matchs when they wanted to? (when they were sure to qualify for example) The Koreans played every single match in Season 1, something that foreigner can't even come close to saying. They did not.
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I just can't see how Korean players will be ok with this. They know whats out there. They know where the money is. And its not Korea. We will be seeing more FnaticRain's, EG.Puma's and Liquid'Hero's.
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On August 12 2011 09:12 jmbthirteen wrote:Show nested quote +On August 12 2011 09:08 Z3kk wrote: I would say that the Korean teams were in the wrong for pulling out with such late notice, but really think that NASL should consider changing the format, because it punishes just one bad series with a trip back home on a plane. Yet they still get $1,000 for the one bad series. This has nothing to do with format and everything to do with money. Do you think that they would still be in NASL if players played a minimum of two series instead of one? I certainly dont.
It`s more like they lose close to $1,000 for a bad series, considering total travel costs.
The korean factored the risk of losing money, risk of losing the deposit, plus the difficult schedule hours and extension of tournament (this is the reason why Naniwa, HuK, NaDa and Jinro - players that can afford the ticket - stayed away from NASL) versus the prize pool and decided it was not worth it. Also, the live event from season looked awful and was run poorly, which doesn`t make NASL look professional or appealing for sponsors.
In my math, it still should be worth to play in it, so hopefully there is still time for a deal to be made.
Idk, I think NASL will lose more than the koreans for this, maybe it would be wiser to axe 10k from the prize pool and raise the stipends from 1k to 2k, plus prizes. I can`t imagine many people paying for season tickets to watch americans semi-pros, specially with IGL and IPL going already.
If season 2 is a viewer disaster, NASL will have to raise their offer. If it is a great success, koreans will still be able qualify whenever they want.
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This whole story is really interesting – it has so many thought-provoking aspects to it. My initial thoughts:
1. Do Korean teams have the right approach towards marketing? It's no news to me that the Korean teams aren't superior to Western ones in terms of business and marketing. However, this whole event says more about their future potential than about their current stance. It should seem natural to everyone that, with SC2's huge global audience, you should aim to present and market your players globally instead of relying only on Korean exposure. Of course, this isn't an easy task for the SC:BW-like Korean teams, but if they haven't yet realized that they need to take on this challenge if they want to stay competitive – then there's something seriously going wrong.
Now, please don't get me wrong: I'm aware that the NASL is only one event of many and it has some issues that make it less attractive to Koreans – I wouldn't even argue if one of the Korean team managers claimed that the audience numbers don't justify backing the NASL. However, Koreans are also pretty rarely seen at other non-Korean events – basically, it's mostly only invited players who show up, with few exceptions. Therefore, I must assume that this observation is true regardless of what exactly happened here.
2. Are the Korean teams good enough at earning money? Sure, SC2 is having a hard time in South Korea, but nonetheless it simply seems that there is a huge gap between the audience numbers/popularity/success the Korean teams generate and their team budgets. Guess what's going to happen if they fail at securing "appropriate" sponsorships (especially if they negate the importance of the global audience, as mentioned in point 1)? Well, I can assure you none of the top players are going to wear tags like oGs, IM or TSL if that happens (doesn't matter how great their team house practise conditions are).
3. How much influence does the GSL have over the Korean teams? This being said: We can agree that this whole story sounds kind of weird when being told from NASL's perspective. It makes quite a lot of sense that GOM TV is opposed to the NASL – not only as a direct competitor, but also due to the partnership with MLG. It's also neededless to say that GOM TV has quite a good involvement in the SC2Con and is in a position to influence the teams' decisions strongly. It's not just interesting to see what this means for NASL, but also what it means for other event organizers or the global SC2 structure in general.
4. Is SlayerS going to surpass all other Korean teams soon? SlayerS is the only Korean team that pays a lot of attention to the global scene and has people working for it who particularly focus on the stuff outside of Korea. It's neither part of the SC2Con and thereby isn't bound to its decisions. This means two things: 1. SlayerS has a lot of potential. 2. There might be a lot of tension between SC2Con and SlayerS, and who knows what consequences that might have.
5. Is this what happens if you're not one of the big players? The NASL (deservedly) got quite some flack for focusing on the prize money so much instead of building up structures first. Is this already the proof that NASL was too careless? Maybe, I don't know. Let's just point out that neither MLG, nor IEM or DreamHack seem to face similar problems. Could this have been avoided through better correspondance and Korea-targeted business development endeavors? I don't know either. I just know that if I now want to create some huge event which I need to work with Korean teams for, I'd be more than careful. Anyway, it will be really interesting to see what the future holds for NASL. I won't make any predictions at this point, but this could turn out to be really interesting.
6. What role do teams play in SC2 anyway? In esports' past, teams used to be financially strong market participants which contributed to the esports environment in various ways – and it was pretty much mandatory to be part of a professional team if you wanted to be a successful pro-gamer. Lately, the teams' importance seems to dwindle: There are almost only 1on1 events, the teams usually don't play a huge role, and often the travel expenses are paid for by the organizers anyway. We might be at a crossroads: Either, the teams gather speed and grow to a point at which they are mainly responsible for a player's well-being (and get more attention) – or the events will be forced to work with the players more closely if they want to make sure that the level of competition stays high. This might result in bad things such as league-exclusive contracts though, and in general I'm much more of a fan of the strong-teams model because the more diversified the market is, the better.
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Milkis to the rescue? I would love to hear Korean netizen reactions! =D
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On August 12 2011 09:17 Silver777 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 12 2011 09:16 Fubi wrote:On August 12 2011 08:31 sevia wrote: $1000 for travel and a minimum of $1000 prize, and the Korean teams still decline? I have a feeling that either there's another side to this story, or the teams are declining for reasons other than expense.
I was hoping that NASL would improve each season, but even though this specific factor is out of their control, it's not worth watching for me anymore. You people realize, $2000 barely covers airplane tickets right? Add in food, hotel, etc, they are definitely paying out of their own pockets. Now add in the opportunity cost: travel and preparation for this = less time to practice and focus on other tournaments (GSL/GSTL for example) Try to understand it from the Korean's pov. Please browse the thread before posting, NASL posted the exact costs already and its under by around $300. So its a 1/16 chance for a ton of money.
Sorry, the thread has 30+ pages, and the thread goes faster than I can read lol
So if this is the case, then the bigger question is, why is NASL not just go ahead and cover that remaining $300 if it is so little? And I don't see the security deposit as that big of a deal to be honest, most of the Koreans are really dedicated and will show up even at ungodly hours anyways.
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SC2con are srsly spoiled. Don't they realize that SC2 is nothing in S.Korea? They should take every chance to play in foreign tournaments imo.
They dissed 50k for travel costs (which the stipend covered). Sounds very stupid.
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Not a huge loss imo, just get top Europeans who are not qualified for the league into it (though I sympathise with NASL for the loss.)
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