EPT(and there's not enough time to catch up on all of the vods anyway)
MLG Winter Arena to be PPV - Page 193
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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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shizna
United Kingdom803 Posts
(and there's not enough time to catch up on all of the vods anyway) | ||
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Nuzoybot
Netherlands52 Posts
On February 17 2012 07:47 Soap wrote: GSL season is $35 in high definition (worse than MLG though) and without ads, which is what MLG is offering. Of course it's a matter of how much one values those features, but on a generalized comparison let's have the same products. thanks  I didn't really remember to update the GSL price to the new format :p now my example looks sweeter | ||
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FT.aCt)Sony
United States1047 Posts
If so that is kinda sketchy knowing that some bought their memberships just to watch streams online at the highest quality and wouldn't surprised if they ask for a refund. | ||
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Soap
Brazil1546 Posts
On February 17 2012 07:45 crux0724 wrote: I don't need any credentials because I'm not advising MLG. The reason MLG is charging 20 dollars is because they are bleeding. They are in the red and can't continue their current model so they have to make money or die. More than likely, they need to make a lot of money (based on the 20 dollar initial pricing). Anybody who doesn't question that business isn't thinking properly. Sundance himself last night said MULTIPLE times how many poor business decisions they have made. Companies that make good and wise business decisions aren't in the red. They had to lay off multiple people before Christmas because they are losing money. They only had 10% of their projected gold memberships for the year. Sundance said he's invested more money than he has made in the business. I'm not sure why you wouldn't be questioning the business decisions..... If $20 is too much then I question the viability of any and all leagues. That is, we are to be graced with a tournament whenever there's a trade fair or LAN that could spare the space. If you have a way for MLG to further trim costs, I and probably them would love to see it. | ||
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crms
United States11933 Posts
On February 17 2012 08:00 FT.aCt)Sony wrote: So does this mean that if you purchased your gold membership last season, you have to pay another $15 (with the $5 discount) to watch the streams now? If so that is kinda sketchy knowing that some bought their memberships just to watch streams online at the highest quality and wouldn't surprised if they ask for a refund. nothing changes for you for the 'pro circuit, championships' you will still get those 4 live event tournaments in HQ. You will have to pay for at least this arena $15, future arena's are still up in the air. Yes as a gold member, it blows. The justification for charging us is even worse.. 'the wording was bad, I fired that guy, bad math, etc.' it's cringeworthy. Ive never seen a company, esports or not, promise a bunch of stuff have people buy it then go back on the agreement because of the excuses sundance gave. Well, a legitimate company I should say. Oh well, everything has already been said on this topic 100 times over. | ||
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P0ckets
United States430 Posts
On February 17 2012 08:03 crms wrote: nothing changes for you for the 'pro circuit, championships' you will still get those 4 live event tournaments in HQ. You will have to pay for at least this arena $15, future arena's are still up in the air. Yes as a gold member, it blows. The justification for charging us is even worse.. 'the wording was bad, I fired that guy, bad math, etc.' it's cringeworthy. Ive never seen a company, esports or not, promise a bunch of stuff have people buy it then go back on the agreement because of the excuses sundance gave. Well, a legitimate company I should say. Oh well, everything has already been said on this topic 100 times over. 4 events down from 6 last year and even though they say the Winter Arena is not part of the Pro Circuit it technically is since the results of the Winter Arena are factored into Pro Circuit placement/brackets. So as far as expectations from the customer goes you can only use the previous years as indication of what you are going to receive in the future, which currently is lacking. Also Sundance goes on about his money problems and issues, but if it were serious his company would go into Cost Containment. The first thing you do in Cost Containment is cut travel expenses, free food, and things like that. So my question is why are they then paying for the player's flight, food, and board? I mean for the most part the majority of the Winter Arena participants will be top level players from established teams with the finances to pay for the flight, food, and board so why not let them do their job and pay for it? Instead Sundance would rather gouge his viewers for more money than do the right the thing. I mean it is poor business strategy to piss off your loyal customer base for the sake of a one time influx of money. A steady smaller amount of income is far more beneficial than one big influx since once that money is spent it is done, while the steady smaller income would be something you could predict easily and depend on in the future. So yeah, I am also a displeased Gold Member and he has truly shafted us and now I feel if I ever were to give MLG money or support again what would stop them from just stabbing me in the back again? In my belief he should of done the right thing and give it to the Gold Members like Scoots pointed out. It would be the right thing to do ethically, PR wise,and honestly economically. For him asking me to pay 20 bucks now for the Winter Arena he has screwed himself out of the 50 dollar reoccurring fee I would of let him bleed from my debit card until SC2 becomes unpopular. Also as far as how it was planned and released was poor as well as the interview in which he acted rather unprofessionally for a CEO of a company. It seemed that they just went to roll this out and didn't discuss this with the community or his PR department. I can't see how a company would go into host an event with out any research and such little planning. And if this is what expected from the Gold members then why didn't he not do anything to stop it? I mean if I could predict negative things that were going to happen in my future I would sure as hell stop it. | ||
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Blasterion
China10272 Posts
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bovineblitz
United States314 Posts
On February 17 2012 05:54 Slardar wrote: Everyone is forgetting, the $20 is not for just the event. Indirectly you are paying for all your favorite players to be flown out there, given food, and a free hotel. You're supporting the teams, sponsors, everything. MLG did the least dick move, they spent all their money helping out the players and teams. No. My money would go to me watching the stream. That's it. That'd all I get | ||
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Ksquared
United States1748 Posts
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Jono7272
United Kingdom6330 Posts
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P0ckets
United States430 Posts
On February 17 2012 08:37 Blasterion wrote: So I don't get it, what good is my Gold membership if I still have to pay to watch this? We get access to 4 other events apparent and 5 dollars of Winter Arena, which in comparison to what I got last year sucks. I mean I bought it back I November and got two event for last year in two months. Now for this up coming year there will only be 4? I mean it really seems like they are fucking us on the content, and they could make it better by including the Winter Arena but they don't want to. | ||
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DueSs
United States765 Posts
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P0ckets
United States430 Posts
On February 17 2012 08:46 bovineblitz wrote: No. My money would go to me watching the stream. That's it. That'd all I get Exactly I mean to tell you the truth most of our Favorite players as sponsored by teams and sponsors who can easily have paid for the flight, food, and board if MLG did cover it. I mean we aren't supposed to pay for their expenses it is the sponsors and teams that do that so we will then respect/see their products/see their ads and then buy their stuff indirectly supporting the scene. If I am going to fork over money to basically sponsor a player's flight, food, and board I want my name on their jersey, a shout out or something just like those that do this for the player at any other events. | ||
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crux0724
United States16 Posts
On February 17 2012 08:03 Soap wrote: If $20 is too much then I question the viability of any and all leagues. That is, we are to be graced with a tournament whenever there's a trade fair or LAN that could spare the space. If you have a way for MLG to further trim costs, I and probably them would love to see it. We don't know if $20 dollars is too much. Personally, I think it is. What I do know is $20 dollars is signicantly more likely to be too high as opposed to $10 dollars. I think you made a reference to UFC being $55 dollars and my response to that is that they have developed a product and increased pricing based on demand. You start pricing low and you increase it because of demand you don't start off with the maximum you think you can get because if you lower your price you show that you are a failure (which MLG has already proven to be mistake prone) and if you up your price you lose most of your customers because you are already charging what you feel the maximum is. Sundance said he wouldn't raise prices so he thinks that's the maximum at this time. There are plenty of ways to trim costs. First off you don't spend 100,000 dollars to fly people to an event that you aren't sure if you can afford. Inform the population about the PPV and offer them early sales at a discounted price so you can get an estimate on how much you can afford on travel and players. Do not move up an event and inform the community of PPV a few weeks before because it screams panic move that you planned for poorly. Do not pick an expensive city to have your HQ in. Do not give away 60,000 silver memberships if you are trying to sale gold memberships. Do not raise prize money UNTIL you can afford it. It doesn't matter if the players complain, if you can't afford it, you can't do it. Don't piss all over your gold members and then make a quick reaction to give them a discount after you pissed on them. Edit: Their current business model is charge X amount of dollars and hope it works out. That's about the equivalent of buying a lottery ticket in terms of planning. They honestly have no idea how many people they are going to get and probably have an overly optimistic goal of viewers. I sure as heck wouldn't invest money into a business that is ran like that and seeing how unprofessional Sundance was on Lo3, he is not who I would have running my company. If you want to be treated like a respectable business, you need to act the part. | ||
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Eufouria
United Kingdom4425 Posts
They should offer a low quality stream for free and charge $10 for the HD stream and immediate VODs. Then they can release the VODs for free like a week or 2 later when nobody else is going to buy them. I feel like they would sell at least twice as many passes for $10 then they are for $20, its just so much more of an attractive price. And for the record I can afford to drop $20 on a pass, but I can also afford to buy Call of Duty MW3 and I didn't think that was good value wither. What they're doing to gold members is really shitty too, I don't have one and now I'm glad I don't, but the idea that they were encouraged to buy one so much by Sundance, only to have to pay full price for the first event seems really shitty. They'd have probably sold more too if they'd offered Gold members a discount on this event because then more people would have brought them for the extra value it would have given the Gold membership. Oh well Assembly is looking good, maybe we'll even get to see a foreigner in the top 4 at that event too. | ||
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rezoacken
Canada2719 Posts
And what about the long run ? Are they not also slowing down the number of viewers in the process. Curious, 20$ seems really bold to me. 5 or 10$ would have felt better. | ||
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P0ckets
United States430 Posts
On February 17 2012 09:00 rezoacken wrote: I really wonder if MLG studied their market to come out with this 20$ figure... will the loss in views will really be offset by this fee ? And what about the long run ? Are they not also slowing down the number of viewers in the process. Curious, 20$ seems really bold to me. 5 or 10$ would have felt better. They will most likely lose more money with this strategy. I mean during a normal MLG even that takes place over 4 days they would get 50,000-250,000 viewers when it was running and the ad revenue from that is probably pretty good. I mean we saw how the NASL worked with their pay2view... | ||
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Sikly
United States413 Posts
On February 17 2012 08:49 P0ckets wrote: We get access to 4 other events apparent and 5 dollars of Winter Arena, which in comparison to what I got last year sucks. I mean I bought it back I November and got two event for last year in two months. Now for this up coming year there will only be 4? I mean it really seems like they are fucking us on the content, and they could make it better by including the Winter Arena but they don't want to. Saying 4 events compared to 6 isn't as bad as it seems. Just like the GSL massively changed their format, MLG did as well. They are actually going to have more content per event, as each event is a season, with qualifiers for each event, or so I believe. Could be wrong on the exact format, but I know it is different. People honestly need to take a step back and forget everything they have thought about e-sports up to this point. It has spoiled us. If you like e-sports being a little tiny thing with some people that play the game a lot being able to play it, than don't support this decision. If you want it to be sucessful, like BW in Korea was, than you need to accept the fact that we have to have a different order of business. We have to think of different ways. GSL changing how they do business shows that it isn't working well for them, we know companies like dreamhack and IEM aren't making money. PPV is one of the options we have to increase sells. A tiered content list is another one, which MLG is doing with this being a PPV and other content(the circuit) being free. It isn't as simple as MLG running ads during downtime. Dr.pepper will NOT give them more money to run more ads. They are already getting plenty of saturation on the ad front; any more is pointless. I remember someone at twitch writing an article about how ads can only be played so many times per session. It is a good read if you don't know how ads work very well, and although it is a different system we can assume that they work in a very similar way across the board. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=300563 For those interested. You can argue the price point, but I would advise against using online polls and "feels like too much". As Sundance and others have pointed out, online polls are fucking garbage. I would say a majority of people will go with the cheapest option the majority of the time in polls, even if they will end up paying more for a final product. Some people have been trying to think of it mathematically, and although that is difficult for us because we have very few of the numbers needed to properly do it, that is the line of thought people should continue down, if they so desire to keep discussing it. I don't have much to say about the gold membership; MLG fucked up on some front. Whether it was communication, thought process, changing their minds, whatever, they fucked up. Sundance admitted they fucked up, and said it was unfortunate, but it had to be done. We can bitch and moan all we want, but it is obvious at this point that it isn't changing a damn thing. I would HIGHLY suggest if you were a gold member to write a legitimate email to every employee at MLG letting them know how you feel; not one that is written out of pure anger. Personally I will be paying the 20 dollars for this event. I feel it will be worth it for multiple reasons. I generally pay for UFC events, which is far less hours of entertainment for almost triple the price. If i watch even 5-6 hours of games I will be happy. Most games I buy nowadays I beat in 20-40 hours depending on the game, and generally pay 50-60 bucks for, so as long as I go by that 10-20 hours of entertainment for 25 bucks is how I look at it as far as game money goes, and this falls within that standard, even though this falls in the entertainment bracket of finances more than game bracket for me. I like what MLG is doing with flying the players, and I like the referral program. I don't know if I will pay for every Arena event if they are all 20 bucks, depending on how many their are, but at the same time I might if they show to be amazing events. This is an experiment for Sundance, and I am willing to pay to test the waters and see if it is successful or not. My hope is that people can sit and think about what MLG is asking, and decide if it is worth the 20 bucks to them. If it isn't, think about how much you are willing to pay and divide that among friends. If you have a local barcraft go to that. If you aren't willing to pay anything, and aren't hurt with timing issues like EU or work, than sadly you probably aren't willing to help buy the products of sponsors, or help generate revenue for anyone, and probably aren't as relevant for tournaments and sponsors anyways. I'm sorry to say it, but this isn't a charity anymore, I hope those of you who don't want to pay understand! Be glad, as Sundance said, that you have other free content for the weekend. Just as a thought, even if the other tournies end up getting FAR more viewers, rest assured MLG makes more money, and the teams spend far less(obviously). I would almost be willing to bet even if the event has horrible viewership, below what many expect even, they still make at least on par with what they would have. This was the worse possible way to introduce it, or at least up their with how horrible it could have been as far as PR goes, and I still have a feeling it will show Sundance that the future is PPV. | ||
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Soap
Brazil1546 Posts
On February 17 2012 08:54 crux0724 wrote: We don't know if $20 dollars is too much. Personally, I think it is. What I do know is $20 dollars is signicantly more likely to be too high as opposed to $10 dollars. I think you made a reference to UFC being $55 dollars and my response to that is that they have developed a product and increased pricing based on demand. You start pricing low and you increase it because of demand you don't start off with the maximum you think you can get because if you lower your price you show that you are a failure (which MLG has already proven to be mistake prone) and if you up your price you lose most of your customers because you are already charging what you feel the maximum is. Sundance said he wouldn't raise prices so he thinks that's the maximum at this time. There are plenty of ways to trim costs. First off you don't spend 100,000 dollars to fly people to an event that you aren't sure if you can afford. Inform the population about the PPV and offer them early sales at a discounted price so you can get an estimate on how much you can afford on travel and players. Do not move up an event and inform the community of PPV a few weeks before because it screams panic move that you planned for poorly. Do not pick an expensive city to have your HQ in. Do not give away 60,000 silver memberships if you are trying to sale gold memberships. Do not raise prize money UNTIL you can afford it. It doesn't matter if the players complain, if you can't afford it, you can't do it. Don't piss all over your gold members and then make a quick reaction to give them a discount after you pissed on them. Edit: Their current business model is charge X amount of dollars and hope it works out. That's about the equivalent of buying a lottery ticket in terms of planning. They honestly have no idea how many people they are going to get and probably have an overly optimistic goal of viewers. I sure as heck wouldn't invest money into a business that is ran like that and seeing how unprofessional Sundance was on Lo3, he is not who I would have running my company. If you want to be treated like a respectable business, you need to act the part. There's is no guarantee $10 would sell more than twice. Even then, you have a problem with how it feels to investors and potential partners (especially cable providers) - if you value your product at $10, then it must be really shit as far as PPV goes. And all expansion would be at that $10 price point. There's no point on increasing because of demand because it doesn't cost more to provide (actually costs less because of the extra leverage over content delivery networks) If you don't fly players you don't have a proper tournament, see the events last year with one of four assorted koreans taking it all with a couple foreigners even standing a chance, while a lot of the worldwide talent simply can't afford the trip. I doubt office costs are that relevant to an operation the size of MLG. The Arena is being held there because they had to scrap the plans for a brand new place, according to Sundance on LO3. I'd expect MLG received some sort of compensation for those memberships gave away through the HotPocket promo. If it wasn't enough then yeah, they screwed up badly. Especially if they didn't expect it to propagate through the internet. The future of MLG does not hang in the Arena success, after all it's just a side event. I'd say the success of the whole SC2 scene hangs in the audience actually being worth enough. | ||
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P0ckets
United States430 Posts
On February 17 2012 07:45 crux0724 wrote: I don't need any credentials because I'm not advising MLG. The reason MLG is charging 20 dollars is because they are bleeding. They are in the red and can't continue their current model so they have to make money or die. More than likely, they need to make a lot of money (based on the 20 dollar initial pricing). Anybody who doesn't question that business isn't thinking properly. Sundance himself last night said MULTIPLE times how many poor business decisions they have made. Companies that make good and wise business decisions aren't in the red. They had to lay off multiple people before Christmas because they are losing money. They only had 10% of their projected gold memberships for the year. Sundance said he's invested more money than he has made in the business. I'm not sure why you wouldn't be questioning the business decisions..... If the MLG is bleeding then why are they paying for the player's flights, board, and meals when they majority of them if not all will have teams or sponsors that are able to cover those expenses? On top of that if they need the money so much how can they even afford to give Gold members like me a discount? If it was so screwed they wouldn't be able to give us a discount. IMO his whole we need money spiel is a charade to get more people to buy his product out of sympathy because he knows we are sucks for the "if you don't support us e-sports will die" line. | ||
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