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Taking on even more VC money. = Not a good thing to hear.
It means MLG will be giving up more control to outside investors for short-term cash.
This isn't the first time. MLG is stuck in an endless circle of dependence on Venture Capitalist money. The layoffs and handling of the PPV is because of MLG's dependence on VC's. MLG will continue to liquidate community goodwill, because they aren't in control anymore.
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Updated post with link to a good perspective on the extent of the success of the PPV event and what the additional funding means.
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On March 14 2012 06:40 divito wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 06:29 Abrafred wrote: Can anyone explain why in most online tournaments the prize pools for LoL and SC2 are comparable. Shouldn't these reflect the viewership for the two games. Don't get me wrong, I haven't even played League of Legends and I love Starcraft. It makes me wonder, though, that why tournament organizers would invest comparable sums for two games whose average viewer counts are so different (most times I happen to check LoL streams of the same tournament average around 3 times more). Why isn't it rational for tournament organizers to focus all their attention on LoL right now? Lots of reasons; Riot is pretty much very involved in that community and supporting it. And the structure behind the community is vastly different. LoL doesn't have a lot of structure that an SC2/BW community has. The other reason is based on the flavour-of-the-month issue. Compared to SC2 (and BW if you'd like), what RTS choices are there? Now, what about MOBA choices? If I'm an investor, I want something that doesn't have competition and that isn't likely to disappear. The BW (and you could even include WC3 and older RTS games) and SC2 communities have longevity and structure where newer MOBA games have smaller amounts of both.
What does it matter if Riot is behind the LoL community, if it continues supporting it what difference does it make in practice? And why are the long term effects of focusing on a game as a tournament organizer so important? I don't understand how damaging it would be for MLG to raise the publicizing, prize pool and stream quality for LoL and once Dota 2 goes into full swing, drop it entirely.
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On March 14 2012 06:51 Abrafred wrote: What does it matter if Riot is behind the LoL community, if it continues supporting it what difference does it make in practice? Depends. Primarily, it's not necessarily a bad thing; I probably shouldn't have made it sound as such. It would take a lot to explain either way.
On March 14 2012 06:51 Abrafred wrote: And why are the long term effects of focusing on a game as a tournament organizer so important? Because my, or anyone's, company places value in the money used for sponsorship or investment and what we can get in return. As a brand, we want to form a long-term bond with the fans and our potential customers. When I was writing articles and news for eSports, I had the chance to speak with a lot of companies and their marketing, PR and a few other departments (depending on their size).
And every single one of them had a fundamental reason as to why they weren't in eSports; the turnover was too high. Now what does that mean? Essentially, "turnover being too high" meant that games supported by organizations changed too frequently, they thought the demographic was unstable (though recent trends and research show this being eliminated or at least being alleviated), and they had little faith in some of the organizations and people that were running the show.
Now, as an eSports supporter, I obviously thought there were some issues with a few pieces of their reasoning, but from a business perspective, I completely understood their rationale and can't fault them at all; it would not have been sound business decisions to get involved. It's something that a lot of companies do monitor, especially nowadays with the aspects of Youtube and "going viral."
But there are plenty of hurdles we still have if we want to attract bigger companies, money and bigger exposure. But there are also those that like the niche-like aspect that eSports or competitive gaming occupies.
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Great news
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Now if only they offered a free stream too I wouldn't feel bad about supporting them. I would be paying 50$ per event if they were offering a free option for people, no free stream is a giant pet peeve of mine, not everyone has the means to take part in PPV.
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On March 14 2012 07:34 funbooth wrote: Now if only they offered a free stream too I wouldn't feel bad about supporting them. I would be paying 50$ per event if they were offering a free option for people, no free stream is a giant pet peeve of mine, not everyone has the means to take part in PPV.
They offer a free stream for the winter championship.
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On March 14 2012 07:40 RageBot wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 07:34 funbooth wrote: Now if only they offered a free stream too I wouldn't feel bad about supporting them. I would be paying 50$ per event if they were offering a free option for people, no free stream is a giant pet peeve of mine, not everyone has the means to take part in PPV. They offer a free stream for the winter championship.
I was reffering to the arena that just happened, I haven't been following Sc2 much since then sadly.
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On March 14 2012 07:42 funbooth wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 07:40 RageBot wrote:On March 14 2012 07:34 funbooth wrote: Now if only they offered a free stream too I wouldn't feel bad about supporting them. I would be paying 50$ per event if they were offering a free option for people, no free stream is a giant pet peeve of mine, not everyone has the means to take part in PPV. They offer a free stream for the winter championship. I was reffering to the arena that just happened, I haven't been following Sc2 much since then sadly.
Well guess what? You can watch the VODs free and everybody who was at the arena is seeded at the winter championship.
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if you invest in something you want to see your that your investment pays off. First off it means that they believe MLG will increase their revenue and/or decrease some of their costlier business activities. Lets hope that it's the revenue because the it means that investors believe in the burgeoning market of pro gaming broadcasting.
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Reading some posts in here, it feel like MLG's marketing strategy seems kinda hypocrit...
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When I read this news, I jumped up and started doing a wild series of crotch-thrusts while shouting "ESPORTS" at the top of my lungs.
It's pretty good news, imo.
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On March 14 2012 06:25 Myles wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 06:21 ribboo wrote:On March 14 2012 06:14 Myles wrote: I think this pretty much settles the MLG Winter Arena profit question. I highly doubt anyone would invest in a company that just flopped it's first PPV tournament. Was there ever any uncertainty? Sundance even said before the event that they had sold more passes than they had expected. Hard to imagine it being anything but profitably with that statement. I'm pretty skeptical about any public statement regarding the event. There's every reason in the world for them to put out positive press. On the other hand, outside investment is about as concrete as it gets bar seeing the actual financial statement that I assume the investors saw.
venture capital is a very risky business though so the investors expect to take big hits and catch it up with a few golden companies that make up for everything. Add to that that there are little real economical experts in the e-sports world and they might just have gotten a totally skewed view of the amount of potential growth and how much MLG can profit from it.
It's good news that there are companies willing to invest sure but people have to be careful in seeing this as just a good thing.
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On March 14 2012 06:09 feanor1 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 04:42 teacash wrote: Awesome.
please nobody confuse "Total # of viewers = 240k for one event" with "240k viewers at a given time" though. Don't forget what the difference is, and immediately assume that MLG gets so many more viewers than stuff like HSC or Dreamhack because "the highest you ever see on viewer # for HSC is 60k" or some junk like that... A tournament held over multiple days could have 240k unique viewers for one event while never going over 60-80k at any given time. This is a reminder so nobody makes a fool of themselves and goes home thinking that MLG gets 4 times the viewers as every other tourney.. They don't, but they're doing great for themselves and we love to see that You are confused Um MLG had 241k concurrent. That means 241k watching simultaneously. I not sure how many uniques. Yes they get 4 times amount of Homestory cup across all their games with t he majority being SCII Still quite important to add that those numbers are for the event as a whole, and so include their other games, not just SC2. They even had LoL, which seems to bring quite a lot more online viewers for now, for some reason.
So I still would be hesitant to conclude that MLG gets significantly more SC2 viewers than any other major event.
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On March 14 2012 03:39 Kyir wrote: Any chance Sundance will stop doomsaying now?
Probably not because it makes him money
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On March 14 2012 08:31 figq wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 06:09 feanor1 wrote:On March 14 2012 04:42 teacash wrote: Awesome.
please nobody confuse "Total # of viewers = 240k for one event" with "240k viewers at a given time" though. Don't forget what the difference is, and immediately assume that MLG gets so many more viewers than stuff like HSC or Dreamhack because "the highest you ever see on viewer # for HSC is 60k" or some junk like that... A tournament held over multiple days could have 240k unique viewers for one event while never going over 60-80k at any given time. This is a reminder so nobody makes a fool of themselves and goes home thinking that MLG gets 4 times the viewers as every other tourney.. They don't, but they're doing great for themselves and we love to see that You are confused Um MLG had 241k concurrent. That means 241k watching simultaneously. I not sure how many uniques. Yes they get 4 times amount of Homestory cup across all their games with t he majority being SCII Still quite important to add that those numbers are for the event as a whole, and so include their other games, not just SC2. They even had LoL, which seems to bring quite a lot more online viewers for now, for some reason. So I still would be hesitant to conclude that MLG gets significantly more SC2 viewers than any other major event.
They didn't have LoL, technical problems mean the games were not streamed at all.
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On March 14 2012 05:40 Rimstalker wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 04:51 Sub40APM wrote:
VC's will shovel money at anything, as long as you call yourself "Web 2.0" They know that all it takes is one good initial public offering to make it all back and then some.
The real question is, as VC's continue to eat up portions of MLG how much operational control are they going to start to exert onto MLG, because even a dumb VC that primarily destroys its investors capital at it chases the next youtube/facebook/zynga eventually is going to want to see where its money is going.
So to answer your question, if MLG suddenly announces that they have a new Chief Operating Officer or some other VC watchdog who is directly on the staff, its bad news. This is from personal experience? Working for a IT Startup in the US that was looking into VC capital, I can only say that in our case, it was very, very difficult, and in the end, the VC company we got the furthest with turned us down because of one board member being not convinced. How much money did you need? Where were you located? How many Silicon Valley reporters did you get to write positive reviews of your future product, for which you secretly paid them in products/money? How similar is your product to something that IPOed and threw of wads of cash for the first VC in? How many white Americans did you have vs 'other' category? Is your CEO a pure technical expert or is he also a good salesman?
Working in a field that periodically serves the people who run VCs as far as I can tell its a blind crapshoot when VCs make investments but in general there are oceans of dollars desperate for a place to put them into.
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On March 14 2012 08:36 Soleron wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2012 08:31 figq wrote:On March 14 2012 06:09 feanor1 wrote:On March 14 2012 04:42 teacash wrote: Awesome.
please nobody confuse "Total # of viewers = 240k for one event" with "240k viewers at a given time" though. Don't forget what the difference is, and immediately assume that MLG gets so many more viewers than stuff like HSC or Dreamhack because "the highest you ever see on viewer # for HSC is 60k" or some junk like that... A tournament held over multiple days could have 240k unique viewers for one event while never going over 60-80k at any given time. This is a reminder so nobody makes a fool of themselves and goes home thinking that MLG gets 4 times the viewers as every other tourney.. They don't, but they're doing great for themselves and we love to see that You are confused Um MLG had 241k concurrent. That means 241k watching simultaneously. I not sure how many uniques. Yes they get 4 times amount of Homestory cup across all their games with t he majority being SCII Still quite important to add that those numbers are for the event as a whole, and so include their other games, not just SC2. They even had LoL, which seems to bring quite a lot more online viewers for now, for some reason. So I still would be hesitant to conclude that MLG gets significantly more SC2 viewers than any other major event. They didn't have LoL, technical problems mean the games were not streamed at all. Didn't know about that, but still probably the LoL fans were refreshing streams hoping it would be fixed or something. The shooters also bring non-negligible numbers.
And just as a side argument, suppose MLG was bringing significantly more SC2 viewers than any other SC2 event - why would that be? Are there really that many people who would watch MLG and not watch other SC2 events? Why would they do that? Hm.
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Hell yeah. That's what I'm talking about. I'm gonna keep supporting MLG by going to Columbus ^_^.
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Be good if someone was to put that kind of money into a governing body, or somehow allowed us as a community more freedom over the games themselves (ie not patching the day before an event....) Esports is still like the wild west, money being made and lost all over the place without a solid stable foundation to control it.
It's cool they have this investment, and I hope they use it wisely and look at a long term investment in something that can grow and provide year on year profits, rather than something to milk while it's fresh and then dump when something newer and shinier appears.
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