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Calgary25986 Posts
On February 09 2012 21:57 Stropheum wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2012 15:09 Chill wrote:
I think people have gotten used to this charity model where the majority is given away for free. I think there's this perception that companies are making money, but I doubt they are.
It's a tough spot. Monetize and people revolt and you die. Don't monetize and you slowly drown. I don't know how it's going to work. Maybe you have to completely level up the broadcast to a completely different place where people expect to pay for that quality? No idea.
Edit: No one seems to treat this as a business. There's a feeling things should be free because they want it to grow. Until we get past that and make it a business, it'll never be more than a niche market, which is fine, but it is what it is. I think it's totally realistic for viewers to continue to get what they're already getting for free, but have the monetized portion of the event something that, if people want additional content, they can pay for it, kind of like one of those silly blu ray discs. Like with MLG's lately. You get the main streams ezpz, but the quad view gold and w/e streams you have to pay for, so you can still see the main games that everyone gets hyped about, but the additional content is stuff like candid interviews and lower prestige open bracket rounds. If they had multiple streams, one devoted to interviews, several devoted to specific chunks of open brackets, etc, and whatever else you can think up, and charge viewers for THAT content, while just getting ad revenue from people that don't care as much, i think it works out fine.
They're not making money so you can't say it works out fine. Something's gotta give. Either more people need to pay (not happening) or fewer people need to pay more (unlikely) or the company just needs to die (terrible option).
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I think the only tourney I'd give money for currently is HSC, everything else pales in comparison to the entertainment value on offer from TakeTV.
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Calgary25986 Posts
I think the problem is these companies putting on the bigger events kept uncutting each other for whatever reason, giving more and more content away for free while improving their production values. The result is nobody except GOM (maybe) makes money. I think there's going to have to be a revolution where everyone moves to a more monetized model. Through this, the majority of the leagues are going to die. But maybe one will live and will finally be able to turn a profit.
Edit: The current system is amazing for viewers. But it isn't sustainable.
To people talking about "the end goal should be spreading ESPORTS"... You can't spread something if your company can only stay afloat for 3 years. The goal should be to create something sustainable at this level before looking to expand. We haven't gotten there yet.
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On February 09 2012 23:23 bmml wrote:
I think the only tourney I'd give money for currently is HSC, everything else pales in comparison to the entertainment value on offer from TakeTV.
And yet there was barely 1k people watching the HD stream at any time. Obviously not a completely reliable metric to gauge how many people bought premium but to be honest, its absolutely pathetic numbers, considering the money invested by TaKe in the whole endeavor.
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If you start charging me to watch a Starcraft 2 tournament, you stop competing with other Starcraft 2 tournaments and start competing with other Pay Per View events and premium channels. If your tournament can compete with Floyd Mayweather fights, HBO shows, and UFC cards I'll buy it. But if what you show me is anything like what you have now, I'll get nearly as much entertainment watching a free ladder stream.
And I won't listen to any tournament organizer's promises about providing a quality product. You'll have to prove it before I pay. With the sole exception being if KESPA organizes a SC2 league.
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On February 09 2012 23:31 -_- wrote:
If you start charging me to watch a Starcraft 2 tournament, you stop competing with other Starcraft 2 tournaments and start competing with other Pay Per View events and premium channels. If your tournament can compete with Floyd Mayweather fights, HBO shows, and UFC cards I'll buy it. But if what you show me is anything like what you have now, I'll get nearly as much entertainment watching a free ladder stream.
And I won't listen to any tournament organizer's promises about providing a quality product. You'll have to prove it before I pay. With the sole exception being if KESPA organizes a SC2 league.
....you would have paid for the WCG quals and WCG finals?
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I'd be alot more inclined to pay under a pay what you want model as opposed to a set price if MLG or IPL started charging 20-25 I'd just switch to a different tournament or streams but if they had a pay what you want model I could see myself giving them that much over the course of a year or a few months.
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I think this community is spoiled in the sense that they've been given free stuff so far so they now expect it. But it's kind of pointless to argue against a PPV model if in fact the businesses involved in Esports will need it to stay afloat. If those businesses need it, they will eventually do it regardless of the level of complaining that goes on in forums. Pretending that you know which business model is best when you have no experience in Esports industry is just silly. Only the tournament organizers know, and like I said, they will switch to PPV if they need to. As they should.
Personally I think it's very reasonable to all tournaments to start charging for the HD live streams and HD VODs. GSL already does it, after all. We should appreciate the difficulty involved in producing a smooth 1080p stream with world-class players and casters by paying for it.
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On February 09 2012 23:33 Klonere wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2012 23:31 -_- wrote:
If you start charging me to watch a Starcraft 2 tournament, you stop competing with other Starcraft 2 tournaments and start competing with other Pay Per View events and premium channels. If your tournament can compete with Floyd Mayweather fights, HBO shows, and UFC cards I'll buy it. But if what you show me is anything like what you have now, I'll get nearly as much entertainment watching a free ladder stream.
And I won't listen to any tournament organizer's promises about providing a quality product. You'll have to prove it before I pay. With the sole exception being if KESPA organizes a SC2 league. ....you would have paid for the WCG quals and WCG finals?
No, but if KESPA says: We are going to create a high quality SC2 league as an anlog to our SC ones, I would pay.
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I have no problem wiht 'monetizing esports'. I just think that the business model Jerith proposes is ancient and dead. Other posters have put up facebook and google as examples of the new way, and I think its great.
vVv gaming can do whatever they want with their business, I just dont see that course of action being profitable for them.
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On February 09 2012 22:50 RenSC2 wrote:
As I was saying in my last post, the problem isn't the model, e-sports actually monetizes more than traditional sports, the problem is the viewer numbers.
...which is why a PPV model might be necessary. If there aren't enough viewers, then the ad model won't be sufficient. Professional sports on national TV have amazing viewer numbers and that's why they're able to offer everything for "free."
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I went on a rant about this in a blog I did a few months back, but charging for streams would never work. It would decrease the audience dramatically because a huge percentage of the people that watch is teenagers who wouldn't pay several hours' work to watch other people play video games. On top of that, in the age of YouTube and torrenting, everyone expects this shit for free anyway. I'm not saying it's right, but that's the brutal truth of the situation, especially since we've been given so much for so little as a community already anyway. You can't just offer a premium service for no charge for several years then expect people to pay for it.
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On February 09 2012 23:36 -_- wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2012 23:33 Klonere wrote:On February 09 2012 23:31 -_- wrote:
If you start charging me to watch a Starcraft 2 tournament, you stop competing with other Starcraft 2 tournaments and start competing with other Pay Per View events and premium channels. If your tournament can compete with Floyd Mayweather fights, HBO shows, and UFC cards I'll buy it. But if what you show me is anything like what you have now, I'll get nearly as much entertainment watching a free ladder stream.
And I won't listen to any tournament organizer's promises about providing a quality product. You'll have to prove it before I pay. With the sole exception being if KESPA organizes a SC2 league. ....you would have paid for the WCG quals and WCG finals? No, but if KESPA says: We are going to create a high quality SC2 league as an anlog to our SC ones, I would pay.
Fair enough. I hope KESPA does say this and soon. But its more likely they'll say it for LoL T_T
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The only foreign tournament I would subscribe to would be IPL. Currently, no other league is putting out a quality product for me to want to pay for it. MLG, NASL, and IEM have a long ways to go before I would even consider buying a subscription based service from either of them.
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United States22883 Posts
On February 09 2012 23:36 Doodsmack wrote:
I think this community is spoiled in the sense that they've been given free stuff so far so they now expect it. But it's kind of pointless to argue against a PPV model if in fact the businesses involved in Esports will need it to stay afloat. If those businesses need it, they will eventually do it regardless of the level of complaining that goes on in forums. Pretending that you know which business model is best when you have no experience in Esports industry is just silly. Only the tournament organizers know, and like I said, they will switch to PPV if they need to. As they should.
Well, the argument against it is that it might fail horribly and then they're dead sooner rather than later. There might be some compromise or hybrid that turns out better without putting people off. I truly believe it's impossible to consistently get money out of this demographic. Sure, a thousand people might step up for some small reddit event but that's nothing compared to what they need and it's not consistent. This is not the demographic that's used to paying for content, including UFC/boxing/WWE PPV channels. Maybe it's about disposal income, maybe not, but I just don't see it happening.
I'm not sure what the solution is though, but I think Chill's thoughts about the problem are right on the money.
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On February 09 2012 22:24 Klonere wrote:
So what people are asking for is:
- Have 1080+ free stream (a la IPL)
- Nearly TV broadcast production levels
- Constant flow of high quality content (many people commenting on MLG only being on a few times a year)
- Perfectly run event (no delays, tech problems etc)
- The best casters (despite that being an enormously subjective thing)
- The very best players
And then they would maybe consider dropping $5/10 on the event? Just trying to do some market research here.
You sound like you think that's too much to ask. Chill wrote something about "Charity Model" earlier in this thread.
On February 09 2012 15:09 Chill wrote:
I think people have gotten used to this charity model where the majority is given away for free.
I, as a consumer of free esports content, feel offended by that term. It has happened more than once that I turned off one of these "Charity Broadcasts" just because I simply couldn't bear anymore the sometimes cringe-worthy, amateurish casting/production. Right now events that charge for streams are asking the viewers for "Charity Money" despite their sub par production.
Well I'm certainly not going to give "Charity Money" to companies that have:
- Bad quality streams
- Bad broadcast production levels
- Outrageous waiting times
- Casters who drop hundreds of "Uhs" per broadcast
- Sub par players
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On February 09 2012 23:36 Doodsmack wrote:
I think this community is spoiled in the sense that they've been given free stuff so far so they now expect it. But it's kind of pointless to argue against a PPV model if in fact the businesses involved in Esports will need it to stay afloat. If those businesses need it, they will eventually do it regardless of the level of complaining that goes on in forums. Pretending that you know which business model is best when you have no experience in Esports industry is just silly. Only the tournament organizers know, and like I said, they will switch to PPV if they need to. As they should.
Personally I think it's very reasonable to all tournaments to start charging for the HD live streams and HD VODs. GSL already does it, after all. We should appreciate the difficulty involved in producing a smooth 1080p stream with world-class players and casters by paying for it.
Right know every big league does exactly this. The only exception is Dreamhack which has a free HD Stream.
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Unfortunately I currently don't have a job so I couldn't even buy GSL this season, but I have paid for all previous seasons and once I get a job would gladly pay for every major tournament I watch. I also don't use adblocker cause I like to support the streams I watch, it's only fair and anyone who thinks it's not fair to watch a 30 second ad (even sometimes 3 in a row) which can be muted/minimized is just rude.
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On February 09 2012 23:41 Klonere wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2012 23:36 -_- wrote:On February 09 2012 23:33 Klonere wrote:On February 09 2012 23:31 -_- wrote:
If you start charging me to watch a Starcraft 2 tournament, you stop competing with other Starcraft 2 tournaments and start competing with other Pay Per View events and premium channels. If your tournament can compete with Floyd Mayweather fights, HBO shows, and UFC cards I'll buy it. But if what you show me is anything like what you have now, I'll get nearly as much entertainment watching a free ladder stream.
And I won't listen to any tournament organizer's promises about providing a quality product. You'll have to prove it before I pay. With the sole exception being if KESPA organizes a SC2 league. ....you would have paid for the WCG quals and WCG finals? No, but if KESPA says: We are going to create a high quality SC2 league as an anlog to our SC ones, I would pay. Fair enough. I hope KESPA does say this and soon. But its more likely they'll say it for LoL T_T
Apparently they already have (for LoL)
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United States22883 Posts
On February 09 2012 23:42 TBone- wrote:
The only foreign tournament I would subscribe to would be IPL. Currently, no other league is putting out a quality product for me to want to pay for it. MLG, NASL, and IEM have a long ways to go before I would even consider buying a subscription based service from either of them.
Quite frankly, your standards are too high. Even community theaters have to charge money for tickets.
I have a feeling a large portion of the "produce better content and I'll pay" argument are people who simply won't pay if they can avoid it, much like piracy.
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