EPTMLG Winter Arena to be PPV - Page 123
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Criticism is allowed. Undue flaming is not. Take a second to think your post through before you submit. Bans will be handed out. Should go without saying, but don't link restreams here either. | ||
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vanhio
Niue1017 Posts
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mr_flux
23 Posts
On February 15 2012 00:21 Rabbet wrote: Scaling live stream viewers does not cost a ton more money, whether it be 10k viewers or 100k viewers the majority of the costs are in getting the rigging set up to do so. It would make much more sense to try to maximize sales and viewers by using a much lower price point and getting your product out there rather than starting high and limiting your exposure. 10k viewers at $20 = $200k of revenue plus the added bonus of pissing off your sponsors for low viewership. 100k viewers at $2 = $200k of revenue plus the added bonus of people seeing the product and attracting sponsors. 50k viewers at $5 = $250k of revenue Every market is a balancing act and finding that price point is critical to achieving your goals, but nobody in their right mind would believe that $20 for a marathon of SC2 is a deal or the proper starting price for an unestablished market. I agree with the general idea, but it's not as simple as that, the curve more like looks something like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Neo-Laffer_curve.svg | ||
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figq
12519 Posts
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ParkwayDrive
United States328 Posts
if anything, those of us not paying are supporting esports because maybe if enough of us bow out, sundance will either be forced to improve his product or mlg will fail and someone else will step in hopefully with better ideas (ipl any1?) econ 101 people | ||
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Vadrigar
Bulgaria2379 Posts
On February 15 2012 00:02 LoNeLyTrOoPeR wrote: Unlike probably 90% of the people posting in this thread, I have a job. $20 is not a lot people. It's $1 per hour of good entertainment. MLG has also stepped up from 2011, so it's probably going to be a lot better. I'll gladly be paying for this. Oh watch out we have a badass with a job over here. I'm pretty sure a lot more people in here have jobs. I do and I won't pay. $20 isn't a lot agreed, but you know 0 is less than 20. Assembly wins. gg | ||
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wollhandkrabbe
Germany97 Posts
I personally find the referral system they introduce quite alarming too. Everyone who is a public figure in SC2 can earn money off of the PPV bucks, and if he choses to do so will naturally not criticize the new business model. Their PR will call that 'Giving back to the community', but more sceptic people could call it bribing the press. Starting this in a situation where a quite controversial new aspect -PPV- is introduced, is definitely a calculated move. I do not like it. | ||
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Xcobidoo
Sweden1871 Posts
On February 15 2012 00:16 Crownlol wrote: Wow look at you people. I'd probably have paid up to $35 for upping the quality of the entertainment and legitimizing the industry. Until you're willing to part with a *tiny* sum of money, progaming will still be relegated to jokes and basements. The ONLY way to mainstream eSports is with money. Our money. This is the first step. Soon there's an eESPN, barcrafts everywhere, and gaming is actually cool in the mainstream community. Frankly, the negative reaction to this is only indicative to the internet community's desire to expect something for nothing at every turn. No. The only way to mainstream esport is to have as many people as possible watching it. Eating foie gras isn't very mainstream but it costs a large sum of money. Let's take swedish football (and I'm sure it applies to several other countries aswell) for instance. Not very expensive but with a gigantic fanbase and it's übermainstream. Having large sums of money does not equal something being mainstream; the amount of people watching and that are interested, however, does. The way to get more money into actual esports is through getting more people interested, tell your friends, tell your family etc. not by making everyone pay for it more. | ||
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Jojo131
Brazil1631 Posts
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monx
Canada1400 Posts
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zul
Germany5427 Posts
On February 15 2012 00:21 Rabbet wrote: Scaling live stream viewers does not cost a ton more money, whether it be 10k viewers or 100k viewers the majority of the costs are in getting the rigging set up to do so. It would make much more sense to try to maximize sales and viewers by using a much lower price point and getting your product out there rather than starting high and limiting your exposure. 10k viewers at $20 = $200k of revenue plus the added bonus of pissing off your sponsors for low viewership. 100k viewers at $2 = $200k of revenue plus the added bonus of people seeing the product and attracting sponsors. 50k viewers at $5 = $250k of revenue Every market is a balancing act and finding that price point is critical to achieving your goals, but nobody in their right mind would believe that $20 for a marathon of SC2 is a deal or the proper starting price for an unestablished market. If 10.000 people buy the ticket for 20$ I`m very surprised and I don`t see any of your other scenarios work. It`s been a while since I saw a SC2 tournament stream with 100k viewers on it and when it last happened it was on a free stream. But it is how it is and Sundance is testing the waters on this matter. Hopefully MLG will be very honest and open about the success of this experiment after it`s all done. Everyone who wants to pay should do it and the rest just should not - this will provide all the information MLG needs to know for the future of this model. | ||
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True_Spike
Poland3426 Posts
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Longshank
1648 Posts
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Niiza
United Kingdom60 Posts
Anyway Assembly, Gold memberships, price and timezone issues aside there are a couple of reasons I'm not ready to pay MLG money. Production? Watching live I kinda have more expectations than watching 20 minutes of a crowd displaying banners at me between matches. A lot of other tournaments handle this way better, you could learn from HSC for example and even the GSL method is good. I've actually tended to watch MLGs the day after compared with other events because it's a pretty bad experience staying up at night and waiting such a long time with little entertainment between matches. There should be more downtime content or at least add more booths so you can switch between games, a really awesome feature GSL do on their code A days, I mean popping into that epic squirtle game the other day was really nice while waiting for the next game. Budgeting, seriously I think MLG pay a hell of a lot of money to put everything they do into place, it looks ridiculously overly expensive, this is a market when so many things can be done for so little amounts of money that I just cannot buy the argument of "this is not sustainable". Maybe it's not because the income is so small but because you spend too much. I would certainly budget things far differently for MLG and I'm not saying they should do it on a shoestring, but hundreds of players playing on off-stream computers does not seem necessary to me, sure it may be swell for some of the players to play in that environment but I'm sure it's cheaper to have them doing that at local qualifiers at home. It doesn't benefit the live stream watching audience in the slightest with the current championship method. Sure I understand it's different for the arena but Sundance did say they are not making money on the championships, well as a business how about running your budget as a business. Also don't MLG have pretty poor prize pools in comparison with the other "big" tournaments? I guess providence would be an exception but they have had some pretty massive tournaments. TLDR VODs/Replay stream with skipping time is better than the live event because the live experience is not enjoyable. Also I think other events are run in a better way and deserve the support while MLG currently does not, but that does not mean if things get better I would not support them in the future. | ||
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Fleshcut
Germany592 Posts
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pusmoh
Germany75 Posts
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plogamer
Canada3132 Posts
So this leads me to ask, who is going to be casting for MLG? I tried looking around but unless I know the casting roster, I won't be making a purchase. | ||
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RajaF
Canada530 Posts
On February 15 2012 00:22 I_am_that_bad wrote: Taking the situation in a different angle, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in these business meetings to determine how to go forward with their offerings. I love reading business case studies and situations that lead to big decisions for companies and to hear about the circumstances that surrounded making this particular decision. Anyway, getting back to the response surrounding the decision, I have a bad feeling that this is going to leave MLG with a lot of harm done to the brand and reputation. I understand why Sundance is trying to do when he says he wants to create a league for gaming just like the other professional leagues out there (which I'm assuming would mean like football, baseball, basketball, etc.) The problem I feel is that if professional gaming were to ever get to a realm where it's on the same level as these other leagues, it's going to have to be in a different way than what the other leagues have done. I just don't think you can compare apples to apples here, gaming and those athletic leagues. Unfortunately, gaming requires people to think in order to truly understand what is happening and appreciate the action that is going on screen. The vast majority of people (at least in the U.S.) are unwilling to put forth that much thought in something that they are planning on enjoying in their free time. Not to self-bash the U.S., but we are a really lazy and out of shape people, no one wants to put forth effort into anything anymore. So, instead of <b>thinking</b> why this one guy made units that can fly and this other guy is using tanks, people are going to be much more willing to <b>just watch</b> a guy hit another guy in the face, or some other guy throw a ball because it's much easier to understand in a shorter amount of time. Not to mention you have to really look at the target audience and see what the current status of that group of people is. Just venturing some guesses here, but I would say that the main age group is within the 15-24 age range, possibly a larger population than what you would think in the older brackets. Trying to gauge the disposable income for that range, $20 could be considered a good amount of money especially for the older side when you're dealing with other much higher expenses related to schooling, cost of living, etc. And give up entirely on the older side of the age spectrum, they're not going to want to watch video games. Unfortunately, my thinking leads me to believe that the "asking for money for content I am producing" argument would only work in like another 5 or 7 years when the target population in this "growth of e-sports phase" has the ability to make an income and choose to support e-sports with it. TL;DR - MLG has become the "premium" brand in a market that has no desire for one, where other brands provide the same kind of content for free, and the majority of patrons are unwilling or unable to pay the new price of admission. I agree with everything except the part where MLG is a "premium" brand. They are not. At leas not based on last years productions. GSL is the only thing close to premium right now. MLG is just jumping the gun. Somehow, the marketing people they have woke up in the yeah 2017 and think that the scene is 1 million fans strong. Which, at this point, it most certainly is not and will never get to be if they try to force shit like PPV this early in its life. | ||
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Whole
United States6046 Posts
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SupLilSon
Malaysia4123 Posts
On February 15 2012 00:16 Crownlol wrote: Wow look at you people. I'd probably have paid up to $35 for upping the quality of the entertainment and legitimizing the industry. Until you're willing to part with a *tiny* sum of money, progaming will still be relegated to jokes and basements. The ONLY way to mainstream eSports is with money. Our money. This is the first step. Soon there's an eESPN, barcrafts everywhere, and gaming is actually cool in the mainstream community. Frankly, the negative reaction to this is only indicative to the internet community's desire to expect something for nothing at every turn. No one is stopping you from making a donation to MLG. But don't "look at you people" us as if you sit on some moral high ground above us. Many of us have cited that we pay for GSL because we believe the cost is appropriate for what's being offered. 20$ is hardly a "tiny" sum of money when you look at the fact that GSL offers roughly 10x (full month vs 3 days) the content for the SAME price. This has NOTHING to do with expecting free shit. People are fine with paying as long as they are convinced their money is well spent. I'd really like to hear from someone at MLG explaining how exactly they came up with this price. They didn't seem to have done any prior research. You think they would have come to TL earlier with a poll and found out that 20 dollars was way past acceptable for this product for the majority of their audience. But they didn't, that's not our fault they conduct sloppy business and don't research and test their products beforehand. And I hope you realize you can't just pump money into an industry and voila, make it mainstream. We could all pay 50$ per minute for MLG and SC2 will still be a niche market for gamers and nerds. Money does not equate to cool. And if PPV is going to become the standard for SC2 how do you expect to become mainstream. Try convincing anyone who is even remotely on the fence about SC2 and E-sports to shell out 20 dollars for a weekend of streams. Also people have good reason to believe that giving 20$ to MLG will be a waste, seeing as how they don't strike me as a particularly successful business. Honestly wtf were they thinking spending ~100,000$ to fly these players in for an online event. To me that just screams incompetence and poor budgeting and gives me every reason to believe that people supporting MLG are more than likely throwing money away. Offering a heavily overpriced product in an already oversaturated market... of course people are going to be skeptical. | ||
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Doodsmack
United States7224 Posts
On February 15 2012 00:40 True_Spike wrote: If the stream is free it doesn't mean the organisation doesn't earn anything; There's ad revenue etc. In this sense it's never *free*- even though you don't pay anything yourself, as a viewer you are the source of income. Nobody has ever been entertained for free in any SC2 event so far. When people say free for the consumer they are obviously referring to the consumer's point of the view. If the consumer doesn't pay anything, it's free. That's kind of the definition of the word. | ||
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