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Almisael
Austria235 Posts
On November 01 2011 22:48 MasterKush wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2011 18:54 pms wrote:On November 01 2011 01:35 zeru wrote:I'm surprised that this many people dont know it is like this. But yeah it totally sucks. I remember there being talk on TL about this months ago and rakaka.se made some charts ![[image loading]](http://www.rakaka.se/images/7774-rakaka_prize_money.jpg) Wow, MLG is earning its respect. Now I see what is the reason why IEM lag behind in terms of good players coming to its tournaments and the tournaments quality, the organization is just much poorer. MLG FTW. That's very interesting. Now we know why MLG has a smaller prize pool too, because they actually have the money in an acccount ready to send out to the players when the event finishes. That's how everyone should be doing it. Also, props to Cloud and co. for speaking out against the organisations that are failing to pay them. The responses from ESWC are just ridiculous, it should be your responsibility to have the players account info before the event even begins, then once its done, boom... you can go through and select the players that were eligible to receive money and there would be no excuses. This is just my opinion, but when I hear a company say "well you didn't send us your payment info!" to me that just sounds like you want to stall as much as possible before making the payments. Insinuating that you won't invite players that expose how poorly run your tournament is just adds a further "WTF" to how you handle your PR as a business.
there's a german progamer podcast at sc2pro.de where they said a couple of weeks ago that they didn't receive the prizemoney from dreamhack winter 2010 and this is already a year ago now and not 90 days like the chart said!
not getting prizes from esports companies is the most common thing since 1599!
+ Show Spoiler +esports is still a shady business...
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The problem i see is that there are almost zero contracts signed between Organisers/Sponsors/Players, without contracts you can wait forever to get any money out of anywhere. How do you want legally charge someone to pay you without any form of written contract. Yeah, it isnt impossible but very unlikely. And how should ONE person be able to force a whole organisation getting their shit done. Without a governing body (taking legal actions etc etc) for SCII and eSports generally the whole scene is doomed.
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Organizers of big events should act like real businesses. And no serious business would treat the suppliers of their main commodity like this. You never pay your suppliers late, unless there is a disagreement. Late payments show poor economic management and bad organizing, and you piss off your suppliers. There aren’t many businesses where you get more than thirty days credit period. I see no reason why this shouldn’t apply to the organizers of these events. The players have delivered their services at the end of the tournament and unless there are reasons for disqualification the organizers can’t claim that the players have delivered a flawed service and withhold money.
Any event that doesn’t pay up within a month is in my opinion poorly organized. It is not the players’ liability that the sponsors don’t pay up or pay up at a later stage (that is between the event and the sponsor). Events need to make sure that they have the liquidity to minimum cover the prizemoney or GTFO. If you can’t do it right, don’t do it at all!
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I could be wrong but from what i recall from school is that if you offer a reward you are entering into a contract.
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The organization should really have the money before the tourney even starts. If you cant do that lower your prize pool, and use money made for a bigger prize pool for the next tourney. IMO at lan events players should be walking out of the building with a check for whatever they made. For online events payment should be made within 1 week. There is really not a single excuse for it to take that long to pay players. I understand sponsors may take awhile to pay organizers which is bad ethics on the sponsors part, but that is why the organization should have enough liquid assets to cover the prize pool before the tourney starts.
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I'm suprised pro players on teams are also experiencing this but being too shy to bring it up. I would expect the team to work with the player and help him with any legal issues related to his career.
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Though I agree that this is terrible and is hurting esports, tada... Please also remember that as an organizer you're faced with the same problems as the players are, they are promised a certain sum and so forth.
Sponsoring company board/CEO approves > Marketing/Sponsor department promises sum of money to organizer. > Organizer promises to the player.. Though I agree no payment should ever take more then 3 months, but at this stage i'm pretty sure organizers take whatever sponsors they can, regardless of their payoutschedule..
It's a pity its hurting some of the "pro's" but, they are the last in the food chain :/
As in almost every 'legal' buisiness putting the cards on the table with an open diaglogue helps.. official salaries (would also increase playersecurity, tournament payout-time, disclosed sponsorshipdeals, need to set the standard somewhere..
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I agree with plenty of people before me, that transparancy is the best way to go.
But, the same as with the player contract issue, no team is willing to make the first step. :-/
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This is one of the many reasons why eSports will not rise above it's current standing.
Until the "professionals" within eSports start acting like actual professionals, eSports will not grow to the size it can.
Some of the stuff i have to deal with when doing my duties for SK with regards to other organisations/players/attitudes would result in an instant dismissal from my real life job.
The prize money situation is a prime example.
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Hate reading about this, but we all know its an issue.
Come on TO's, don't betray us.
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On November 01 2011 18:26 Kreb wrote:
Pro1: "I didnt get money from IPL yet."
Pro2: "I didnt get money from ESWC yet."
IPL: "We're looking into it and trying our best, but sadly theres a lot of paperwork that needs to be done. But you can rest assured we're doing our best to get the payments done in time."
ESWC: "What the fuck, stop putting us in bad light!! You have no reason to do that and if you continue we might not invite you to any more of our events".
One organisation seems to need a lesson in crisis management....
Exactly. And any letter that says "This isn't a threat [but it will be hard to invite you to future events]" is just thuggery; ESWC definitely has lost all respect in my eyes.
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Reading all this makes me so sad  . I thought esports had gotten farther than this, the last few years . But I guess not.
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On November 02 2011 01:49 MadNeSs wrote:Reading all this makes me so sad . I thought esports had gotten farther than this, the last few years . But I guess not.
Madness.. it has gotten further then this. Most people in here were not around when eSports was at a pinnacle and most are strictly SC2 based..which is very new to eSports. If people would take the time to read through the thread..they would see that most of the 'non-payment' issues were prior to 2009. This does not make things right by any means... but compared to where we were just 5 years ago, eSports has come a long ways.
Instead of constantly bashing on organizations that have been around for 10 years and DO pay.. even if slow (not acceptable over 60-90 days).. we should start looking at the organizations that do not pay at all or that have very poor communication regarding payment.
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That ESWC response is beyond retarded. He just completely changes the roles. Having a poker background myself: It is 100000% the company's task/job to contact the player.
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Well i could say same thing for ESL EPS, finals were played 7+ months ago and I'm still waiting for payout . It takes so much time to get the prize money it's unbelievable
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Tried to skim through all the pages as best I could, so sorry if this has been brought up, but..
It would be interesting to know what the team's sponsors stance on any proposed boycotts would be?
Like, lets say a MAJOR tournament would be known for not paying out their prize money.
Would the team's sponsors still want the player to participate because of the exposure or would they stand by the player's decision not to participate?
Also it kinda feels like any boycott should come from the spectators and not the players.
Spectators bring in the sponsors, right? So by not watching we could help the players alot more than a few players chosing not to participate could, I guess.
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Wow, this is really eye opening. Thanks for this information. Goes to show how young the scene really is.
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Outside of the universal global sanctioning body being proposed, there are some individual steps people can take to try and have better results getting compensated for tournaments. I'm an attorney here in the states and have dealt with some of these issues before, although I have to say that because a lot of these tournaments are held across state and international lines, I honestly know nothing about the law involved in a lot of them. The problems you are facing are similar to those any small-business operator has -- it's one thing to get a promise of payment, another thing entirely to get the payment. What follows are really just a series of practical tips.
1) Be proactive, always followup right after an event thanking the organizer, confirming your payment details, and asking for a date by which you can expect your check. Try to stay positive, polite, and professional in these communications. It will make them want you back for other tournaments, and make them respect you as a business person rather than thinking of you as some pimply teenager they can screw with.
2) If the delay in payment starts to get undue, you may need to politely but firmly articulate some of the things you will do to secure payments. To put pressure on a tournament organizer to make payment, here are some things you can do:
a. Let the tournament organizer know you will contact their sponsors directly to report their failure to fulfill their obligations. This threatens the tournament organizer's ability to host future events.
b. Let the tournament organizer know you will make their refusal to pay public, generating public backlash against them (like in this thread) threatens their profitability as a tournament organizer.
c. Threaten legal action. Particularly for American-based businesses, filing a suit even in small-claims court can be an effective way to encourage them to pay.
I hope this helps... if you treat your Starcraft like a business hopefully you will have better luck getting these tournament organizers to help.
** Needless to say these are meant as common-sense ideas, not as legal advice. In all your business management endeavors you should do what you think is right and most likely to succeed, not follow the advice of some dude who posts on the internet. Unsurprisingly, this forum post on the internet does not create an attorney client relationship. Good luck!!!
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dear teamliquid,
please stop advertising these shitty company's streams on your website.
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On November 01 2011 23:58 Almisael wrote:Show nested quote +On November 01 2011 22:48 MasterKush wrote:On November 01 2011 18:54 pms wrote:On November 01 2011 01:35 zeru wrote:I'm surprised that this many people dont know it is like this. But yeah it totally sucks. I remember there being talk on TL about this months ago and rakaka.se made some charts Wow, MLG is earning its respect. Now I see what is the reason why IEM lag behind in terms of good players coming to its tournaments and the tournaments quality, the organization is just much poorer. MLG FTW. That's very interesting. Now we know why MLG has a smaller prize pool too, because they actually have the money in an acccount ready to send out to the players when the event finishes. That's how everyone should be doing it. Also, props to Cloud and co. for speaking out against the organisations that are failing to pay them. The responses from ESWC are just ridiculous, it should be your responsibility to have the players account info before the event even begins, then once its done, boom... you can go through and select the players that were eligible to receive money and there would be no excuses. This is just my opinion, but when I hear a company say "well you didn't send us your payment info!" to me that just sounds like you want to stall as much as possible before making the payments. Insinuating that you won't invite players that expose how poorly run your tournament is just adds a further "WTF" to how you handle your PR as a business. there's a german progamer podcast at sc2pro.de where they said a couple of weeks ago that they didn't receive the prizemoney from dreamhack winter 2010 and this is already a year ago now and not 90 days like the chart said! not getting prizes from esports companies is the most common thing since 1599! + Show Spoiler +esports is still a shady business...
I feel like I have to play the devils advocate here regarding Dreamhack.
Dreamhack have very clear (and strict) rules regarding their prize money.
- You need to either personally or have your team invoice Dreamhack about your prize money, at latest 30 days after the event, or else you won't get any money.
- You need to attend the prize ceremony in order to get your money (standard for almost any tournament out there)
- It'll take up to 90 days from when the invoice was sent to the point where you get your money*
Now, I've attended several Dreamhack tournaments and I've won some prizes in them. Most recently was the Dreamhack Winter 2010 BYOC, which awarded a spot in the big tournament + 300 Euro. I saw it being mentioned earlier in the thread that it's not been paid out yet. Well, I did what the rules said, I invoiced them right after the tournament and I waited 90 days, and then I had my money. Simple as that. I've also talked to quite a lot of other progamers who have all gotten their money from Dreamhack after 90 days.
So.. chances are, the ones who fucked up were either the teams or the players i.e. they didn't read the information regarding the prize money and didn't follow the steps required. So don't be so quick to judge Dreamhack as an event that doesn't pay out.
IMO the rules & info regarding prize money is very easy to find on Dreamhacks webpage as well, so I see no excuse for missing that either.
EDIT: *90 days after the event ends, not when the invoice was sent, sorry about that.
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EPT
