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also listened to live on three today where they talked about this year would change and people will have to put out money to watch SPONSORED tournaments and SPONSORED teams watching a stream full of ADVERTISEMENT.
Why is this seen as so foreign? You pay for Cable Television, yet it also still shows advertisements. You are paying to watch the NFL on TV, even if its not a direct transaction, but through your cable subscription (your cable company pays to carry each channel). The NFL has tons of sponsors, and also shows tons of advertisements during games.
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On February 12 2012 04:08 how2TL wrote:
Well when SC2 dies, you can point to this thread of people who would never dream of spending a cent on it as one reason why.
Well most people who dont want to pay actually play the game themselfs. This whole esports-bubble-burst-drama only affects the "I-Only-View" guys. Esports in the west existed before SC2 and it will exist after SC2. Maybe progamer cant make a living out of it and retire. So what? There will allways be someone better than me, whichs replay i can watch. The only esports organisation i spend money on is the ESL because i play in their leagues and it makes playing in their leagues a bit more comfortable. They HD-Quality on ESL.tv is just a sideeffect of it :/
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On February 12 2012 05:05 Dante_A_ wrote:Show nested quote +also listened to live on three today where they talked about this year would change and people will have to put out money to watch SPONSORED tournaments and SPONSORED teams watching a stream full of ADVERTISEMENT. Why is this seen as so foreign? You pay for Cable Television, yet it also still shows advertisements. You are paying to watch the NFL on TV, even if its not a direct transaction, but through your cable subscription (your cable company pays to carry each channel). The NFL has tons of sponsors, and also shows tons of advertisements during games.
Wrong! In the US with an antenna you can watch all your Local teams games for FREE in HD on FOX/ABC/CBS/NBC except for Monday Night Football when it's on ESPN and a handful of games on the NFL Network on Thursdays towards the end of the season. The reason that is the case is because the NFL has a HUGE audience where it's worth it to air it on the FREE networks since it brings them a lot more advertising revenue. So the networks fight each other to pay ungodly amounts of money to purchase the rights since football is king in America. Football has always been free to watch and that's why it's gotten to the point it has.
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Ads are the way forward. If I have to pay, I don't watch. So I've seen all the first GSL VOD games :D! but never seen NASL in high quality or the rest of the GSL XD
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On February 12 2012 05:48 c0se wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2012 04:08 how2TL wrote:
Well when SC2 dies, you can point to this thread of people who would never dream of spending a cent on it as one reason why. Well most people who dont want to pay actually play the game themselfs. This whole esports-bubble-burst-drama only affects the "I-Only-View" guys. Esports in the west existed before SC2 and it will exist after SC2. Maybe progamer cant make a living out of it and retire. So what? There will allways be someone better than me, whichs replay i can watch. The only esports organisation i spend money on is the ESL because i play in their leagues and it makes playing in their leagues a bit more comfortable. They HD-Quality on ESL.tv is just a sideeffect of it :/
Well that has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
If SC2 is to survive it needs to be able to generate more cash flow for the organizations involved.
If you don't care about SC2 surviving that's not really a valid argument against the thesis.
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Here's the reality - monetizing Western e-sports is going to be very hard.
1. A lot of people are willing to do this for free.
They'll do it for free because they are high-school and college kids who are just happy with their gaming hobbies, and don't care much about making a professional-level salary. A couple hundred bucks here or there is just gravy. You might not get Korean Code-S to play for $1k prizes, but you can get low-level Code A. And low-level Code A is still very, very good, and better than virtually all Western-team members. As to casters, please. Legions of aspiring wannabes are thirsting for their chance. Most will be bad, some won't. They'll probably do it for free, just to get exposure. There is a massive oversupply of people who want to be involved in e-sports.
2. Online Tournaments don't cost much to run
You need players, some organizing, casters, and a streaming service. I've never hosted an online tournament before, so I have no idea what the relative costs are. But they are many orders-of-magnitude lower than any pro sporting event. You just can't justify the price. Having a prize fight at Madison Square Garden, between two boxers who play 3 matches a year, at most, is worth $30~50 PPV to some people. Watching a couple SC2 pros duke it out at the Anaheim convention center, when they play dozens of tournaments a year, and stream hundreds of games for free is worth a lot less, and costs a lot less to run.
3. The audience is price- and convenience-sensitive, not quality-sensitive
To indulge in stereotypes, these are people who sleep on futons, eat pizza and instant ramen, and are happy doing it. Watching ForGG stream for an an hour is almost as good as watching an IPL TAC, which is almost as good as watching a NASL tournament, which is almost as good as watching an MLG tournament. Make one of these more expensive, they'll just drop down to the next level, and be almost as happy.
4. The price ceiling is set by Korea
The GSL season ticket is the only relevant price in SC2. You have top level players, competing for high-stakes, with good production values. That is the benchmark for value. The only thing in the foreign scene that comes close to ticket-worthy, IMO, is Homestory Cup, because of the unique format and its "you have to be there to understand" quality. Everything else, so far, is the amateur version of the GSL.
5. Western e-sports teams are not important in SC2 (Edit: Players are more important)
Slayers and oGs have distinct styles, because they have coaches, and training philosophies. "Slayers Terran" means something. It has a personality. Not a bullshit "hey, we're all douchebags" personality, but an authentic playing style. It's like SKT or KT Rolster. The team makes players better. Players without teams fall behind quickly. The same is just not true about foreign teams. I don't understand what the value proposition is for a foreign team. Sponsorships, twitter, cool mousepads, t-shirts - that's all great. But the guy who is on the team is no better than he was when he was just a kid streaming ladder from his bedroom. Why am I supposed to care about e-sports teams?
The OP sounds to me like a lot of QQ-ing about cheapskates hurting e-sports. I'm sorry you can't make more money doing e-sports, but there a lot of people trying to give it a go, and they're all willing to do it for whatever money is out there right now, and your competition is the GSL. So yeah, it's going to be hard to make money. And people like me who watch e-sports are going to get a lot of free content.
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On February 12 2012 06:07 Hrrrrm wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2012 05:05 Dante_A_ wrote:also listened to live on three today where they talked about this year would change and people will have to put out money to watch SPONSORED tournaments and SPONSORED teams watching a stream full of ADVERTISEMENT. Why is this seen as so foreign? You pay for Cable Television, yet it also still shows advertisements. You are paying to watch the NFL on TV, even if its not a direct transaction, but through your cable subscription (your cable company pays to carry each channel). The NFL has tons of sponsors, and also shows tons of advertisements during games. Wrong! In the US with an antenna you can watch all your Local teams games for FREE in HD on FOX/ABC/CBS/NBC except for Monday Night Football when it's on ESPN and a handful of games on the NFL Network on Thursdays towards the end of the season. The reason that is the case is because the NFL has a HUGE audience where it's worth it to air it on the FREE networks since it brings them a lot more advertising revenue. So the networks fight each other to pay ungodly amounts of money to purchase the rights since football is king in America. Football has always been free to watch and that's why it's gotten to the point it has.
Lol dude you are defeating your own arguments. You said it yourself "The reason that is the case is because the NFL has a HUGE audience where it's worth it to air it on the FREE networks". Sc2 has a very small audience in comparison. Maybe about 200k viewers total, and most Large tournaments only get 50-60k for a finals. That is such a small exposure group. I'm pretty sure you spend money on your other hobby's that you care about, why can't you spend money on SC2?
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On February 12 2012 05:05 Dante_A_ wrote:Show nested quote +also listened to live on three today where they talked about this year would change and people will have to put out money to watch SPONSORED tournaments and SPONSORED teams watching a stream full of ADVERTISEMENT. Why is this seen as so foreign? You pay for Cable Television, yet it also still shows advertisements. You are paying to watch the NFL on TV, even if its not a direct transaction, but through your cable subscription (your cable company pays to carry each channel). The NFL has tons of sponsors, and also shows tons of advertisements during games.
I pay one price to watch cable television (maybe 40$/month), but I get like 150 channels.
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You say that the personal streams from manny players undermine the market and make it impossible for tournaments to
ask lots of monney for their streams.
Also is claimed that tournaments are making a loss and that some sort of extra revenu has to be found to prevent collapse of them.
Personal streams however is how lots of players make a nice side income and you can not expect them to give that up so that tournaments can bring in more.
Although i find it a bad idea to make people pay for (tournament) streams, what you could do is the following
You could make a channel with all current popular streams and tournament streams.
Players can stream personal there and thoose who join wont stream elsewhere.
You can then let people subscribe to that channel, 1 subscribtion for all content to make it simple.
giving them acces to all popular streams we have now plus all tournament streams, for maybe say 2-5$ a month.
5$ might seem cheap since it would include all tournament hd streams but i think its better to go for a low price so that the vast majority of the people will buy it, rather then ask alot and go for the verry small niche of rich fans.
i can imagine selling up to 100k subscribtions? if enough popular streamers participate.
you then have 500k a month and can give say 300k to tournaments and 200k to maybe 200 players participating?
well it maybe bit optimistic and not sure if it would be sufficient lol but its just an idea.
Players and tournaments are also still able to personally sell the adds on their streams.
This could maybe work if the vast majority of popular streamers would participate and stop streaming for free.
even though strongly against the idea to make people pay, and dont think its needed either (dont think tournaments making such big losses) this is maybe something that could work.
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On February 12 2012 09:06 mrRoflpwn wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2012 06:07 Hrrrrm wrote:On February 12 2012 05:05 Dante_A_ wrote:also listened to live on three today where they talked about this year would change and people will have to put out money to watch SPONSORED tournaments and SPONSORED teams watching a stream full of ADVERTISEMENT. Why is this seen as so foreign? You pay for Cable Television, yet it also still shows advertisements. You are paying to watch the NFL on TV, even if its not a direct transaction, but through your cable subscription (your cable company pays to carry each channel). The NFL has tons of sponsors, and also shows tons of advertisements during games. Wrong! In the US with an antenna you can watch all your Local teams games for FREE in HD on FOX/ABC/CBS/NBC except for Monday Night Football when it's on ESPN and a handful of games on the NFL Network on Thursdays towards the end of the season. The reason that is the case is because the NFL has a HUGE audience where it's worth it to air it on the FREE networks since it brings them a lot more advertising revenue. So the networks fight each other to pay ungodly amounts of money to purchase the rights since football is king in America. Football has always been free to watch and that's why it's gotten to the point it has. Lol dude you are defeating your own arguments. You said it yourself "The reason that is the case is because the NFL has a HUGE audience where it's worth it to air it on the FREE networks". Sc2 has a very small audience in comparison. Maybe about 200k viewers total, and most Large tournaments only get 50-60k for a finals. That is such a small exposure group. I'm pretty sure you spend money on your other hobby's that you care about, why can't you spend money on SC2?
how does this argument make any sense at all?!
lets just pretend the following number are right:
NFL has 20 million viewers so an ad that runs 30 seconds costs 1 million dollars.
MLG has 20 thousand viewers so a 30sec spot costs 1 thousand dollars-
now whats the reason i should pay again? i cant remember?! because it does not make any sense what you said.
you all buy gaming products so let those people pay for what they make money on labeling their overpriced shit with "pro gaming highend overcrossed technology warp ultrafuckme trademark".
how does this not make any sense to some people?! you are all already paying by playing on your icore7 with your 3000dpi mouse and your wannabee 7.1 headset and the insanly expensive cheap plastiv mousepad that wears off after 2 months of playing.
you would never buy all this shit if you do not care about esports, right?
seriously how much money do you think razor and steelseries make? i bet they laugh their asses off thinking of how little money they have to put into marketing.
but still alot of people here thinks they have to invest into esports as somehow they would invest into something they could make a return of investment. and even if this return would be a better quality of everything GREAT.. BUT in general it will mostly end up in some pockets of a handful people.
this is how it always was and it always will be if you do it like it always have been done. so go buy a real good piece of meat. or buy your lady a really nice ring. but dont pay for what others should pay. its just stupid.
and i am very sorry but if major companies dont invest into esports then its just not meant to be and thats how it is and we all can still play the game and watch proplayers just without all the fancy content. big deal....
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On February 12 2012 13:39 leecH wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2012 09:06 mrRoflpwn wrote:On February 12 2012 06:07 Hrrrrm wrote:On February 12 2012 05:05 Dante_A_ wrote:also listened to live on three today where they talked about this year would change and people will have to put out money to watch SPONSORED tournaments and SPONSORED teams watching a stream full of ADVERTISEMENT. Why is this seen as so foreign? You pay for Cable Television, yet it also still shows advertisements. You are paying to watch the NFL on TV, even if its not a direct transaction, but through your cable subscription (your cable company pays to carry each channel). The NFL has tons of sponsors, and also shows tons of advertisements during games. Wrong! In the US with an antenna you can watch all your Local teams games for FREE in HD on FOX/ABC/CBS/NBC except for Monday Night Football when it's on ESPN and a handful of games on the NFL Network on Thursdays towards the end of the season. The reason that is the case is because the NFL has a HUGE audience where it's worth it to air it on the FREE networks since it brings them a lot more advertising revenue. So the networks fight each other to pay ungodly amounts of money to purchase the rights since football is king in America. Football has always been free to watch and that's why it's gotten to the point it has. Lol dude you are defeating your own arguments. You said it yourself "The reason that is the case is because the NFL has a HUGE audience where it's worth it to air it on the FREE networks". Sc2 has a very small audience in comparison. Maybe about 200k viewers total, and most Large tournaments only get 50-60k for a finals. That is such a small exposure group. I'm pretty sure you spend money on your other hobby's that you care about, why can't you spend money on SC2? how does this argument make any sense at all?! lets just pretend the following number are right: NFL has 20 million viewers so an ad that runs 30 seconds costs 1 million dollars. MLG has 20 thousand viewers so a 30sec spot costs 1 thousand dollars- now whats the reason i should pay again? i cant remember?! because it does not make any sense what you said. you all buy gaming products so let those people pay for what they make money on labeling their overpriced shit with "pro gaming highend overcrossed technology warp ultrafuckme trademark". how does this not make any sense to some people?! you are all already paying by playing on your icore7 with your 3000dpi mouse and your wannabee 7.1 headset and the insanly expensive cheap plastiv mousepad that wears off after 2 months of playing. you would never buy all this shit if you do not care about esports, right? seriously how much money do you think razor and steelseries make? i bet they laugh their asses off thinking of how little money they have to put into marketing. but still alot of people here thinks they have to invest into esports as somehow they would invest into something they could make a return of investment. and even if this return would be a better quality of everything GREAT.. BUT in general it will mostly end up in some pockets of a handful people. this is how it always was and it always will be if you do it like it always have been done. so go buy a real good piece of meat. or buy your lady a really nice ring. but dont pay for what others should pay. its just stupid. and i am very sorry but if major companies dont invest into esports then its just not meant to be and thats how it is and we all can still play the game and watch proplayers just without all the fancy content. big deal....
This.
You guys realise that when you pay 100$ for that Razer "I'm So l33t my mouse is named MAMBA" mouse you are coughing up about an 80% markup right?
And without games like SC2, razer (and all the other companies involved in this dance) would practically have no reason to exist since no one but fools like us buys their crap.
So yeah, lots of companies have already found a way to monetize esports. They also hold all the power. So instead of bitching, maybe this guy could spend his time finding ways to take a bigger cut from companies like razer. And if he thinks that people will be willing to pay even 10$ to watch crap teams like vVv, he is seriously delusional.
Just because a bunch of meatheads are willing to fork over for PPV to watch a 30 second UFC match, that does not mean that everyone else likes getting scammed.
And also, does he even know what the demographic for SC2 is? A bunch of high-school and university students... I mean, that's the definition of disposable income right?
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I'm sorry, I have no idea how to do it but these businesses will need to learn of some way to make money without charging to watch or I'm out of here. But that's just me. It's the same way to me with Boxing PPV's, I never pay for those.
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Charging is tricky
Charge too much for not enough, and youll go down
Dont charge enough for too much, and you might go down, it depends on how you play the game
I dont know how you can balance cost with benefit when talking about streams, but the one who does, youre gonna get rich, man!
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On February 10 2012 23:12 Zax19 wrote:
The rant itself is not a good way to convey the message but I get the general idea and agree that in order to make things happen you need money you can spend. FXO Boss already said this but he sort of went against himself when he gave out full HD stream for the FIS5. The gist of it is that many sponsors offer goods rather than money and promote things the viewers already know/own while the teams need to “spend money to make money”.
Right now I think it’s ok to offer a 360p stream and VODs for free because outside of America I don’t think it’s that common to pay for things via Paypal and so on, you’d lose many eyeballs. The point of charging right now should be to limit the quality/quantity of the product and then use the money to transfer from a community (based on voluntary work) to an industry (where people get paid for the work they do). For example Totalbiscuit having a short QnA with the subscriber chat. Good journalists should be paid, same as good chat/forum moderators and so on…
I’m still concerned if it’s a good idea to build up an industry around entertainment when countries suffer because there major industries don’t have the confidence to spend money to make money because of the financial recession. I’d rather see someone study and strive to fix American health care rather than make esports bigger because some things are just more important for the society. Personally I’d like to see a transition from the madness of constant supply and demand chase, yet there still are areas vital to the function of our society which would benefit from educated or simply hardworking people.
HD stream is free in FIS ... Sub is optional..
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If you look around the world of sports, its quite rare that a team owner turns a huge profit; for the most part they are passionate fans that want to own a team as a hobby and have already made their livings well before becoming an owner, being an owner of a team and expecting to turn profits is like digging for fools gold. Sponsors and revenues with tournament prize is another story, if your a team owner, dont expect to be making a huge profit out of owning a team because for the most part unless u have a top end brand u wont be making money and to have a top end brand for the most part is because they put more money into their product so they get as much as they give in return~ What do team owners get from owning said team? well they are making a financial investment in a product they are fond of, they see people that share the same passion as them prosper, they use it as a tool of competition and finally they do it for city country, in this situation online its fan base and community, the dollars at the end is more like the hardwork and good fortunes for working hard and being called the best at what they do!
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On February 12 2012 15:13 nt-rAven wrote:
If you look around the world of sports, its quite rare that a team owner turns a huge profit; for the most part they are passionate fans that want to own a team as a hobby and have already made their livings well before becoming an owner, being an owner of a team and expecting to turn profits is like digging for fools gold. Sponsors and revenues with tournament prize is another story, if your a team owner, dont expect to be making a huge profit out of owning a team because for the most part unless u have a top end brand u wont be making money and to have a top end brand for the most part is because they put more money into their product so they get as much as they give in return~ What do team owners get from owning said team? well they are making a financial investment in a product they are fond of, they see people that share the same passion as them prosper, they use it as a tool of competition and finally they do it for city country, in this situation online its fan base and community, the dollars at the end is more like the hardwork and good fortunes for working hard and being called the best at what they do!
In some cases this is true. But some owners do turn enormous profits from ownership of pro sports teams. But for most you are correct most of the profit when owning a team comes from increasing the value of the team and the league so when the team is sold the owner profits. So in the long run the owners do make a profit if they invest just most don't on a year to year basis.
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Ok guys.. So here it is, me being an asshole once again.
First of all, the idea of this thread is good. I like it.
But the thread is filled with so much misinformation and delusional comparisons and requests that it kind of turns into a fairytale rather than reality.
Firstly, if people think someone can live off stream revenue given that the CPM rates for e-sports streams is like 1/10th off of normal content streams, they are wrong. Doesn't matter who you are. To make decent income from streaming you need about 40k viewers concurrent.
Secondly, players don't get paid anywhere near the delusional amounts that are quoted various times in this thread.
No WAY did a team owner make millions per yr from e-sports. If they did they are most probably involved with the mafia??? Or something is up...
Subscriptions are the ONLY way to make quick revenue from e-sports and forcing them is going to eventually be the norm. It will come to the point where GSL will not let people watch if they haven't subscribed. And rightly so. Why the hell should someone who spends a solid 500k on equipment, let you watch for free? This doesn't apply to small start ups such as my own events. But something like GSL which is BETTER quality than TV (if you have HQ) does not belong on free to air. And you do not DESERVE to watch it for free. Alot of time, effort money and skill has gone into their production. That being said, most people do subscribe to their content.. Rightly so.
If you want to look at the future and monetizing e-sports. First the excess of low quality content has to disappear.. The standards have to be alot higher for new starts, and its starting to happen. The problem is the cost of starting something like GSL is almost at 1 million dollars. (equipment from scratch, staffing, tech experts, studio, maintainence, decoration). With that as the budget, there is maybe 1 organisation who can keep up with GSL.. That is IPL. But IPL is taking it easy and slowly which is the right thing to do. Eventually they will kick things up to a higher level, and you will be charged for it. Again if the quality is high enough, i say go for it.
The next step in monetization is having something that can actually be sold as high quality merchandise.. Not stupid little gimmicky things. But real products. This will happen eventually , but again first the people who take advantage of a 'boom bust' market have to be shaken out. Once this happens a few solid startups with good quality merch will move forward and the industry will have another means of making money.. Endorsements. For instance, "you can sell a shirt on my name on it for 20% royalties"..
Finally, as I have stated before, until money is pumped into the RIGHT hands, e-sports will always remain oddly out of place. Personalities belong in the personality section, players in the player section, and there shouldn't be anything in between. The person who gets paid the most money in e-sports should be the person who wins the most titles. Not some guy who says FUCK alot on his stream (no i dont talk about destiny, so flame someone else).
If the e-sports community wants to be taken seriously, they need to become fans of those who take it seriously. When that happens the sponsors will come, the merch will come and the royalties will come. The circle will begin. Until then, its just a bit of a mess with some easy money for some people, and financial ruin for others.
(Before you accuse me of being salty, remember I make my money from elsewhere... I just like e-sports and the exposure it gives my company).
Have fun..
FXOBoss
P.S I hope GSL makes it pay per view only in the next 3 months....
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I don't know why people strive to make it like the UFC or WWE or what the fuck not, it's a backwards striving business model. We should take after things like Google or Facebook or Youtube. Embrace the internet way of doing shit, not go back to old school PPV models.
Take Iphone/Android games for example, do you know what brings in more cash, the free version of WordFEUD or AngryBirds or the pay version? Pretty easy to guess, it's the free one with some minor advertisments. Altho I do think things like the GSL(actually ONLY GSL atm) is worth the couple of dollars/month I don't think much else holds up to the standards of "I want to pay for this", to be quite honest I'd rather pay for HSC than IPL or NASL or such and MAYBE Dreamhack because they have good productions and I have some national pride =).
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I'd actually think of paying for GSL of Gomplayer wasn't such a complete pain in my ass. Every time I have the gall to try and watch some GSL apparently it's got other ideas.
I think if Jerith said what FXOBoss just said, the way he said it, people probably wouldn't be losing their minds so much here. He's right though. The bad tourneys need to disappear and whoever is going to step up to the table needs to put their big-boy pants on.
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On February 12 2012 18:41 Rylaji wrote:
I don't know why people strive to make it like the UFC or WWE or what the fuck not, it's a backwards striving business model. We should take after things like Google or Facebook or Youtube. Embrace the internet way of doing shit, not go back to old school PPV models.
Take Iphone/Android games for example, do you know what brings in more cash, the free version of WordFEUD or AngryBirds or the pay version? Pretty easy to guess, it's the free one with some minor advertisments. Altho I do think things like the GSL(actually ONLY GSL atm) is worth the couple of dollars/month I don't think much else holds up to the standards of "I want to pay for this", to be quite honest I'd rather pay for HSC than IPL or NASL or such and MAYBE Dreamhack because they have good productions and I have some national pride =).
Do you seriously think 300 million people are going to tune into a Sc2 stream.. or any e-sports stream for that matter... Facebook youtube, google. They all get BILLIONS of hits per minute....
Teamliquid is the biggest e-sports sites on the net as far as I can see. And its been around as long as facebook. And its traffic is as big as it will ever be without the business model becoming a huge cluster f...
Youtube facebook and google is also user generated content.. And is not the same as e-sports or television.
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EPT
