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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. |
OHhh look Sundance is sending out some 0.01$ discounts and everything will be fine again.
Then they will lower the price to 10$ and people will love MLG.
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On February 15 2012 07:46 Femari wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2012 07:45 Timerly wrote:
This poll is the market research they (hopefully) did before. If they didn't then to hell with that kind of unprofessional business. They determined 20$ to be the correct price point (I disagree but hey, I don't have that much data either). Now the big question is how negative the publicity will be considering the whole Twitter/gold member/Assembly problematic. Well they do have to pay prize money as well as 48 flights. Flights are expensive.
That's the thing, they didn't have to pay for all the flights. Players have teams that can pay for the flights.
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On February 15 2012 07:22 Adreme wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2012 07:11 caradoc wrote:On February 14 2012 07:52 Dodgin wrote:Guess I am watching assembly. They are really shooting themselves in the foot trying to do this while another major event is going on at the same time. But I guess it is just a test. Poll: Will you pay for this?No (3762) 89% Yes (452) 11% 4214 total votes Your vote: Will you pay for this? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
After reading EGAlex's thread on the subject I am interested in the community response to a slightly different system, please vote in this poll if you did in the last one. Poll: Would you pay if it was 10$ and 5$ for MLG Gold Members?No (1520) 74% Yes (539) 26% 2059 total votes Your vote: Would you pay if it was 10$ and 5$ for MLG Gold Members? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
Interesting, if we assume that the results are correct and significant, it shows that MLG may not have done a thorough analysis of pricing and elasticity  If MLG got 12% of there viewers to pay for it then this would be an overwhelmingly successful program that would continue throughout the year.
BUT.. imagine if they got 25% of their viewers at $10..that's even more and a larger fan base obviously willing to pay.
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United States22883 Posts
On February 15 2012 07:36 Sway.746 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2012 07:33 Jibba wrote:On February 15 2012 07:29 Sway.746 wrote:On February 15 2012 07:23 Jibba wrote:On February 15 2012 07:19 Sway.746 wrote:On February 15 2012 07:14 Mithriel wrote:
Im really curious about difference in revenue between a free stream with quite a lot of ads and the 20$ no free stream variant. See what the best business decision would be. Though we could get the perfect numbers only in a perfect world to calculate which would be best ( or what price would draw most people) If they only get 3% of the viewership, but are making $20 per person instead of purely the ad revenue, then they're making substantially more money. However, now their customer base has shrunk thirty-fold, and they're almost certainly still not profitable. If they ever want to be profitable, they will have to lower their cost structure or have more viewers (and charging for, and thereby alienating a large percentage of your potential and current audience hinders that a LOT). Poor long-term decision, I think. Remember viewers also cost them money too, so less viewers reduces their bandwidth cost. It's not simply the difference in ad revenue like it would be for TV. Perhaps it's different with the Twitch.tv package they're demoing now. Bandwidth cost is close to zero compared to their other costs. There is absolutely no way that it was a factor in this decision. I don't know what their deal with Akamai was, but I think you're underestimating bandwidth. It's not an unsubstantial amount. If they're paying too much for bandwidth then it's another problem altogether. If they're losing money on bandwidth by streaming content with ads then they were really, really doing it wrong.
Well Akamai was charging $.07 per GBps last year, Amazon was $.05, but MLG had an agreement with Akamai. Assuming medium quality (750Kbps) and with 3.6 million hours of video watched for Providence, that's over $80,000 for that. For the entire circuit, it's over $300,000.
I'm sure they had some other deal besides that, that's just the standard rate Akamai would charge.
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On February 15 2012 07:46 Femari wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2012 07:45 Timerly wrote:
This poll is the market research they (hopefully) did before. If they didn't then to hell with that kind of unprofessional business. They determined 20$ to be the correct price point (I disagree but hey, I don't have that much data either). Now the big question is how negative the publicity will be considering the whole Twitter/gold member/Assembly problematic. Well they do have to pay prize money as well as 48 flights. Flights are expensive.
Maybe they should have scaled back on how many flights were being paid for. The planning seems terrible if this 20 dollar price point is to offset their player and prize pool expenses.
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On February 15 2012 07:43 Cel.erity wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2012 07:29 Jibba wrote:On February 15 2012 07:26 TechSc2 wrote:On February 15 2012 07:19 Sway.746 wrote:On February 15 2012 07:14 Mithriel wrote:
Im really curious about difference in revenue between a free stream with quite a lot of ads and the 20$ no free stream variant. See what the best business decision would be. Though we could get the perfect numbers only in a perfect world to calculate which would be best ( or what price would draw most people) If they only get 3% of the viewership, but are making $20 per person instead of purely the ad revenue, then they're making substantially more money. However, now their customer base has shrunk thirty-fold, and they're almost certainly still not profitable. If they ever want to be profitable, they will have to lower their cost structure or have more viewers (and charging for, and thereby alienating a large percentage of your potential and current audience hinders that a LOT). Poor long-term decision, I think. Yes the 3% would make money, but they loose on 97% off ad revenue, which you didn't take into consideration. It's always been a tug off war between high viewers to get ad revenue and getting paid viewers to bump the income Ad revenue. However, MLG does not operate on the same type of ad revenue that Twitch partners do. They receive private sponsorships with big dollar signs attached to them, and those sponsorships come with the caveat that the sponsors want tons of people to watch their event. Pepsi is not going to sponsor you if you keep increasing the costs for people to see Pepsi ads. There's no doubt in my mind that the $20 model will be more profitable than usual for MLG, for this one event. However, they're only going to lose customers over time, not gain any, since the only people willing to pay for it are the diehards who follow the scene regularly. They also lose a lot of good faith money on Gold accounts by assuming a "we're the big business, pay for our tournaments" approach instead of a "we're just having fun, give us money if you like us" approach.
This man gets it.
MLG doesn't have enough viewers to be a sustainable business now. What they need is to grow their brand and get more viewers. PPV does the exact opposite. It doesn't matter that they'll make more money this time, because right now they should be in viewer-building mode.
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On February 15 2012 07:35 SevenShots wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2012 07:31 Soap wrote:On February 15 2012 07:23 nachtkap wrote:
Those prices would suggest to me that a weekend of MLG is worth more than a season of GSL. That's simply not the case. Especially since the GSL now had tiered pricing.
When it was announced it sounded like winter area would be a normal MLG without spectators. I'm starting to think this was done for hype purposes. To me it is - it's at an appropriate time, with better image quality, doesn't require download of proprietary software and I don't care about SC2 korean competition (once you follow BW it's like MLS vs La Liga) Besides, GSL ad-free season pass is $35, $15 more expensive. yes. it is 15$ more, but it is not for 3 days but for over a month. 
A month at a time slot where Europe is at work or school and the Americas sleeping. It's up to each one to judge the value to them, but to me it's $0 (I'm not waking up at 7h10 for anyone not named EffOrt or Jaedong), MLG is > $0. It might be the same to many people who are not into the korean scene.
On February 15 2012 07:49 Sway.746 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2012 07:43 Cel.erity wrote:On February 15 2012 07:29 Jibba wrote:On February 15 2012 07:26 TechSc2 wrote:On February 15 2012 07:19 Sway.746 wrote:On February 15 2012 07:14 Mithriel wrote:
Im really curious about difference in revenue between a free stream with quite a lot of ads and the 20$ no free stream variant. See what the best business decision would be. Though we could get the perfect numbers only in a perfect world to calculate which would be best ( or what price would draw most people) If they only get 3% of the viewership, but are making $20 per person instead of purely the ad revenue, then they're making substantially more money. However, now their customer base has shrunk thirty-fold, and they're almost certainly still not profitable. If they ever want to be profitable, they will have to lower their cost structure or have more viewers (and charging for, and thereby alienating a large percentage of your potential and current audience hinders that a LOT). Poor long-term decision, I think. Yes the 3% would make money, but they loose on 97% off ad revenue, which you didn't take into consideration. It's always been a tug off war between high viewers to get ad revenue and getting paid viewers to bump the income Ad revenue. However, MLG does not operate on the same type of ad revenue that Twitch partners do. They receive private sponsorships with big dollar signs attached to them, and those sponsorships come with the caveat that the sponsors want tons of people to watch their event. Pepsi is not going to sponsor you if you keep increasing the costs for people to see Pepsi ads. There's no doubt in my mind that the $20 model will be more profitable than usual for MLG, for this one event. However, they're only going to lose customers over time, not gain any, since the only people willing to pay for it are the diehards who follow the scene regularly. They also lose a lot of good faith money on Gold accounts by assuming a "we're the big business, pay for our tournaments" approach instead of a "we're just having fun, give us money if you like us" approach. This man gets it. MLG doesn't have enough viewers to be a sustainable business now. What they need is to grow their brand and get more viewers. PPV does the exact opposite. It doesn't matter that they'll make more money this time, because right now they should be in viewer-building mode.
How do you suggest they do that? They aren't doing anything less, the Arena is on top of the big events.
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On February 15 2012 07:48 Dodgin wrote:
That's the thing, they didn't have to pay for all the flights. Players have teams that can pay for the flights.
Indeed, if the tournament is attractive for the teams and players the tournament shouldn't have to ship players out.
This is a simple case of MLG trying to grow more quickly than time will permit.
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On February 15 2012 07:48 Dodgin wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2012 07:46 Femari wrote:On February 15 2012 07:45 Timerly wrote:
This poll is the market research they (hopefully) did before. If they didn't then to hell with that kind of unprofessional business. They determined 20$ to be the correct price point (I disagree but hey, I don't have that much data either). Now the big question is how negative the publicity will be considering the whole Twitter/gold member/Assembly problematic. Well they do have to pay prize money as well as 48 flights. Flights are expensive. That's the thing, they didn't have to pay for all the flights. Players have teams that can pay for the flights.
Not all teams can afford flights. And since you can't give benefits to just one party, you have to give it to them all.
So they have to pay for the 48 flights.
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On February 15 2012 06:56 TheToast wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2012 06:52 Necro)Phagist( wrote:On February 15 2012 06:49 GGessence wrote:
i didnt pay a cent to watch "the Superbowl" at my house why would a Sc2 competition be any different? You don't pay for cable? Cool shit bro! Drawing a comparison the super bowl is the silliest thing I've ever herd. When MLG can sell 30 sec ads for millions of dollars then yea you can make that comparison.... Super Bowl is on network TV, anyone can watch it. I wonder how many people would be willing to pay to watch football, or baseball, soccer(also known as football) or whatever other sports. Almost all of them have some type or premium service, and they do have quite a few subscribers. But what would happen to, say baseball, if it went to a PPV format for the world series. How many people would still watch it? (I honestly don't know, I think it's just something interesting to consider)
How many people subscribe to nfl network and do so just for thursday night football? NFL network is basically ppv for Thursday night football.
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Well, I would have purchased this if they reduced the price to $10. It's not an issue of the money for me, I just hate feeling ripped off. God knows I waste so much money on designer shirts that I only wear once, Steam games that I never play, donations to streamers that are completely voluntary, but I never feel bad about it. If I pay $15 for a product that should be $5-10, that a lot of my friends won't be watching at all because it has no free option, I'll just feel dirty. There's no way to enjoy the games at that point, no matter how good they are.
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On February 15 2012 07:46 Femari wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2012 07:45 Timerly wrote:
This poll is the market research they (hopefully) did before. If they didn't then to hell with that kind of unprofessional business. They determined 20$ to be the correct price point (I disagree but hey, I don't have that much data either). Now the big question is how negative the publicity will be considering the whole Twitter/gold member/Assembly problematic. Well they do have to pay prize money as well as 48 flights. Flights are expensive.
As every business minor will tell you, your costs do not determine your price. There's an optimal price point to sell at but that's only oriented at the demand at each price point. You can charge 2000000$ per viewer but you won't make more money than when you charge 1$, I guarantee that
Ultimately your costs have to be lower than your income and that's it but they don't somehow justify wrong prices.
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United States22883 Posts
On February 15 2012 07:49 Sway.746 wrote:
It doesn't matter that they'll make more money this time, because right now they should be in viewer-building mode.
What if they believe SC2 has reached its limit?
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On February 15 2012 07:50 Soap wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2012 07:35 SevenShots wrote:On February 15 2012 07:31 Soap wrote:On February 15 2012 07:23 nachtkap wrote:
Those prices would suggest to me that a weekend of MLG is worth more than a season of GSL. That's simply not the case. Especially since the GSL now had tiered pricing.
When it was announced it sounded like winter area would be a normal MLG without spectators. I'm starting to think this was done for hype purposes. To me it is - it's at an appropriate time, with better image quality, doesn't require download of proprietary software and I don't care about SC2 korean competition (once you follow BW it's like MLS vs La Liga) Besides, GSL ad-free season pass is $35, $15 more expensive. yes. it is 15$ more, but it is not for 3 days but for over a month. A month at a time slot where Europe is at work or school and the Americas sleeping. It's up to each one to judge the value to them, but to me it's $0 (I'm not waking up at 7h10 for anyone not named EffOrt or Jaedong), MLG is > $0. It might be the same to many people who are not into the korean scene.
that's why you can watch all the vods with the pass, too.
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5 dollar discount for Gold Members is not that bad.
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On February 15 2012 07:49 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2012 07:36 Sway.746 wrote:On February 15 2012 07:33 Jibba wrote:On February 15 2012 07:29 Sway.746 wrote:On February 15 2012 07:23 Jibba wrote:On February 15 2012 07:19 Sway.746 wrote:On February 15 2012 07:14 Mithriel wrote:
Im really curious about difference in revenue between a free stream with quite a lot of ads and the 20$ no free stream variant. See what the best business decision would be. Though we could get the perfect numbers only in a perfect world to calculate which would be best ( or what price would draw most people) If they only get 3% of the viewership, but are making $20 per person instead of purely the ad revenue, then they're making substantially more money. However, now their customer base has shrunk thirty-fold, and they're almost certainly still not profitable. If they ever want to be profitable, they will have to lower their cost structure or have more viewers (and charging for, and thereby alienating a large percentage of your potential and current audience hinders that a LOT). Poor long-term decision, I think. Remember viewers also cost them money too, so less viewers reduces their bandwidth cost. It's not simply the difference in ad revenue like it would be for TV. Perhaps it's different with the Twitch.tv package they're demoing now. Bandwidth cost is close to zero compared to their other costs. There is absolutely no way that it was a factor in this decision. I don't know what their deal with Akamai was, but I think you're underestimating bandwidth. It's not an unsubstantial amount. If they're paying too much for bandwidth then it's another problem altogether. If they're losing money on bandwidth by streaming content with ads then they were really, really doing it wrong. Well Akamai was charging $.07 per GBps last year, Amazon was $.05, but MLG had an agreement with Akamai. Assuming medium quality (750Kbps) and with 3.6 million hours of video watched for Providence, that's over $80,000 for that. For the entire circuit, it's over $300,000. I'm sure they had some other deal besides that, that's just the standard rate Akamai would charge.
If you're a content company that is losing money on every viewer, you're doing it wrong. Having your main product have a negative margin is terrible business practice. I have no idea why they've gotten investments time and time again.
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On February 15 2012 07:52 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2012 07:49 Sway.746 wrote:
It doesn't matter that they'll make more money this time, because right now they should be in viewer-building mode. What if they believe SC2 has reached its limit?
If that's what they believe, then they're cashing out and we shouldn't support them at all, right?
I don't think that's their belief, though.
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On February 15 2012 07:52 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2012 07:49 Sway.746 wrote:
It doesn't matter that they'll make more money this time, because right now they should be in viewer-building mode. What if they believe SC2 has reached its limit?
If they believe that, then do us all a favor and remove sc2 from the circuit and let the other organizations carry us further.
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MLG will still get hardcore fans to pay for this. In the end, MLG will make a lot of money by charging for this and they'll consider it a success. The part that's the most worrisome is concerning the casual fans or potential fans. I cannot imagine many casual fans, or people that wanted to check out what MLG was all about, paying for this. This doesn't promote growth imo.
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On February 15 2012 07:52 Spaceneil8 wrote:
5 dollar discount for Gold Members is not that bad.
i think its terrible but im not a gold member so...
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EPT
