I am so surprised to see this happen , I wonder where Symbol , Hyun , Polt will go maybe Kespa team? So sad to see another team disbanding. All the best to the EX TSL players!
On January 03 2013 18:50 mikkmagro wrote: I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of the year, the only Korean teams outside of KeSPA would be StarTale, MVP, IM and Azubu. NS HoSeo have been lackluster for a long time now, and Prime will continue operating for a while since they're putting so much effort into remaining afloat, but at the end of the day, there's just no place for so many teams who want to compete at the highest level in Korea. It's not necessarily a bad thing either. Unfortunately, most of the SC2 teams in Korea did not have the professional infrastructure required to remain in business for the long term. They were driven by passion, which is great, but passion alone won't house, feed and pay the players and coaches and send them to events.
I wouldn't mind seeing a 'smaller' scene in 2013, than in 2011 and in 2012, if its more structured. By smaller, I mean a smaller number of teams, but of a higher caliber, Less tournaments, but with more of a league structure to create storylines, rather than three-day marathons 3 times a month, with a random assortment of players.
I agree with the last part. However, due to geography, I am not sure it is possible outside of Korea(and China and Taiwan have their own local leagues). Sure, we have online events which span several months with an offline playoff/finals (NASL, Iron Squid, IPL TAC, etc). But in NA/EU, the players are all spread out making lengthy offline tournaments pretty much impossible.
Sounds sort of familiar, no? Going back to the good old days yahoo where everyone follows the same tournaments and Pro League.
On January 03 2013 19:00 Gevna wrote:
On January 03 2013 18:46 CajunMan wrote:
On January 03 2013 18:38 bgx wrote:
On January 03 2013 18:35 NEEDZMOAR wrote:
On January 03 2013 18:31 bgx wrote: [quote] But its hard to judge, they are the remnants of BW culture, where some sort of athlete-mindset was created. As Nazgul said it was ok because marketing was not as crucial as it is nowadays. In ideal space, stars or anyone should be only occupied by the game, however Esport is not an ideal space, and this should be properly layed out to those players. Teams have to properly teach players the importance of their own brand because now its part of they play as well
thats what the team should be there for, promoting sponsors through players, the players shouldnt have to be creative themselves and do it themselves, if they have to do it,w hats the point of even having a team? they might as well get individual sponsorship's if they have to take care of everything anyway.
Thats the problem of Esport =/ sport. And to be honest even in real sports, players are occupied by this stuff aswell, just on a different scale.
Well in Pro Football entire teams go to Hospitals and Churches and clean up playground during events. And when they are in conferences they are all about the team and they are present exactly what needs to be put out to sell. Starcraft teams don't do enough to put themselves out there enough as it is as a whole. If you look at ESF teams it is almost nothing TSL, ST, you name it. They do next to nothing I can't buy a jersey for 75% of the teams, no signed keyboards, no internet youtube commercials, no hype videos why does IM not have videos like the UFC of MVP before a GSL match talking about how hungry he is for this or what his plans are? Why? They could be doing so much instead they have coaches that do nothing all day hope the players win then expect money when they don't know the first thing about marketing. They can't even monetize there own brand with something as simple as more merchandise or a 5 min video.
BTW----- Nazgul I see JD and eg doing videos where is my Taeja video talking about how KT is afraid to send Flash out against him. Start some hype tell him to say if this was all kill format the matches wouldn't be a contest. Where is this?
Hype video for reference
Yeah I agree, with the development of media on internet it's unbelievable that teams struggles promoting their players, themselves and the sponsors. Especially in Korea where internet is so big. Make blog, videos, interviews, stream etc...
I guess Navi (Dota 2), EG and Millenium (I mean in France, not internationally) are definitely good models of this.
There is way more to it than making blogs, videos, interviews and streaming. You have to get people's attention first or else you're only going to get a trickle.
Well for sure you can make IM players run around the world naked with LG's logo on tits. But to start I think they can expose their players a bit more with some kind of "behind the scene" stuffs.
LG-IM does a decent job at promoting itself to the international audience. They post updates on both Reddit and TL, have a facebook page which is regularly updated, and their star players do stream sometimes, although It's quite rare.
They could be doing more, but It's way more than TSL ever did.
All LG-IM players list their sponsors at the end of their interviews in tournaments, always.
Stuff like this goes a long way, although they still could be doing better. Getting your players to post in their TL fan clubs, having them learn enough English to communicate over text. Getting Mvp to stream more than once every 6 months, and having them Tweet in English more often.
Behind the scenes videos would be cool, I would also like to see their new trophy case.
IM also has a LoL team in the ogn-leagues which is huge. This is why IM (and MVP) are not going anywhere, not sure about the other esf-teams though.
Having your team in The Champion's is soooo huge, Korea is obsessed with LoL and the numbers for that tournament on TV are insane. IM and MVP get way more exposure for their teams through OGN than they do GOM, which is kind of funny since they are ESF teams.
I hope they are turning that exposure into more sponsors/increased $$ from there existing ones.
On January 03 2013 17:50 WhiteSatin wrote: Companies don't wanna sponsor a game with a limited viewership number like SC2, and if the trend continues, unfortunately I see this happening for other teams soon.
2011 was probably one of the best years for SC2, so unfortunate that stagnation of map pool, terrible balance decisions that brought the game to a shitty metagame that is super boring to watch, are slowly killing viewership number and by consequences, teams 2012 was super terrible. I hope 2013 will be a great year for SC2 and can go back to its 2011 numbers and even better, but I am pretty negative because I think Blizzard will manage to fuck it up, yet again T_T
This is absolutely not the case, people really need to stop saying this. Any sport from top to bottom can find sponsorships based on viewership numbers. Just because there is something bigger out there does not mean there is no worth. If that were the case no sport below the largest would be able to find sponsors. There is plenty of opportunity for sponsorship dollars in StarCraft2.
The issue is too many people want to be a part of it. It is only natural to lose some along the way when that happens. This goes for tournaments, teams, and players. There are simply too many teams in Korea and only the ones with the best business structure will survive in the long run. Korean teams never evolved with the scene. They took a laid back BroodWar approach of no streaming, no social media, no websites. In BroodWar the teams were carried by being on TV. In StarCraft2 they did not have such a pitch and never got their act together.
That's pretty generic and it can apply to anything. Victor you should know they do a pretty decent job of getting the players out there from the BW scene with the magazines, television programs, fan meetings and all that jazz. The KeSPA players are clear and know how to deal with the media. Heck they had seminars on it. Yes, the tykes throw around the stream numbers way too much, but livestreaming isn't the b all end all of fan fair. You know damn well they use their internet cafe's to communicate with their fans as well.
Not like Lee doesn't know this and he's always had a hard time pitching the team to sponsors. Just isn't his thing. You should be able to find sponsors for practically anything as long as you're a good salesman. Here comes the conversation about oversaturation again. I say, it has more to do with inexperience and inability more than anything else.
As for not getting with the times. They were late to the SC2 dance regardless and part of that had to do with the snafu with Blizzard. There are other methods than livestreaming to get your message across to your fans and interact as well. -_-
I hope it was clear that I'm not talking about the KeSPA teams. I'm talking about the eSF teams who didn't understand that not being on TV changes the game. They have had a long time to adapt and didn't. KeSPA is different they only very recently made the switch and now still have Proleague on TV. They have plenty of their old things going for them still with media trained big name players and such.
I don't think the number of viewers of Sc2 compared to another game(s) is a problem for sponsors. Ok a little f2p has more viewers, but sc2-interessed gamers are often young actives or student with high earnings compared to the younger audience of LoL. It's a basic law of marketing, you must target them who has the money.
TSL/NSH/Prime... (choose the good one) problems are a consequence of a little "war" between Kespa and ESF first : Proleague is BIG, and teams like KT Rolster or SKT are big. ESF is since the beginning in a logic of conflict (as the Kespa), but they forget the big often eats the little at the end. Moreover, if ESF "korean" market is small, teams like TSL didn't do anything to win the international market. No streams, only two teams active on twitter/faccebook, players ho don't talk English ... The difficulties of some of the ESF teams are consequences of their incredibly bad decisions, not of a global SC2 problem. But it's only my little opinion.
On January 03 2013 19:33 Taipoka wrote: I think the problem is the ESF way of doing things. Well, in my opinion they focus too much on players in detriment of teams. For example, you hear more about prime because of MKP instead of hear about MKP because of prime. What´s my point? Try to make the teams stronger so they can support the players. Sorry for the parallel, but i think like NBA, you have the stars of course, but you have strong teams to support and promote the stars, so they can shine and get the $$. But never ever in detriment of the team.
You hear to much about koreans dreaming of foreign teams because of weak teams and small salaries. Make stronger teams and bigger salaries and itll be fine.
A stronger focus on team leagues would create more fan interest in teams vs one or two star players. However most team leagues have incredibly small prize pools and also use the all kill format which means teams can rely on a couple of players to carry them to victory which does nothing to help the lesser known players. Of course all kill can be helpful in that the IM coach often threw out dreamertt or true or horror first to get booth experience knowing he could rely on Losira, Happy, Yonghwa etc to multi kill and makes things even or win the whole thing for the team.
Getting fans to follow teams vs a handful of players also requires the ESF managers to promote their teams and make them standout in some way. Give them an identity for people to empathize wise and rally around.
That said, I'm not sure the lack of focus on team vs player is the biggest issue. It's likely a contributing problem but not the worst offender.
Wow, I think losing Revival for them wasn't a big deal. But Polt is one of their mainstays. Though the loss of 2 veteran players in their team was just the tip of the iceberg.
I hope all the players who are now teamless find teams and prosper in them. It's so heartbreaking to see a team like that die off. At least nowhere near as dramatic as SlayerS disbanding.
Wow, this is really sad news, and definitely not how I wanted the year to start off. TSL, despite all their troubles where a great team, they produced some of the best players in the scene, players that went on to have some fantastic results, as a team they also had some remarkable runs in the team leagues.
I wish Coach Lee and his players all the best, Lee in particular, despite the talk of shady deals, has turned out to be a fantastic coach, he would be a great asset to any team, and the remaining players are all very strong and deserve a chance.
I hope this is the only piece of bad news to hit us, though I really fear for NSH and to a lesser extent Prime, hopefully they find a balance.
I agree with what Nazgul is saying. If you think about it, someone like Destiny enjoys lots of viewers just because his stream is entertaining. HerO for example gets a ton of viewers because a) he's ridiculously good and b) he interacts with his stream. And even when he streamed like every day he was still doing very well in tournaments. By now, with the amount of games these players go through in tournaments, it's really not difficult to do research on them. If they're preparing for something like GSL/PL it's only natural that they wouldn't want to stream but in the meantime? There's really no reason not to and it would greatly benefit these teams. I actually think that streaming a lot greatly benfitted HerO. He had to play tons of different builds so it wasn't as easy to just figure him out. And now? If you look at his games, he's one of the most diverse players in the world. He's capable of doing just about everything protoss can do.
as expected one ESF team after another disbands because of money problems, in the end we have the big kespa teams live and gom gets problems because for every ESF team disbaning, kespa gets more power
On January 03 2013 19:32 Cattlecruiser wrote: How far is NSHS going to go on? Is Fnatic pulling out of Sc2? How is GOM suppose to hold a GSTL w/ 3-4 of their teams leaving?
1. As long as their school funds the team. 2. No, they're announcing new members soon. Source 3. Easy, they use their remaining teams and let EG, TL, or both participate. Either alone or as EG-TL.
It is an illusion to think that players can "live on air" and without proper salaries the teams are bound to disband due to players seeking greener pastures. Failure to learn and adapt to this situation is what killed the teams ... failure of the korean management of the teams.
I think this is just one of those natural consequences of an oversaturated ( and i mean really oversaturated, especially with the kespa teams joining) rather than business. Are all those teams really bad with business as nazgul said, or maybe business just doesn't work the same in korea as it does in the west.
Remember sc2 failed in korea and pretty much other asian countries because blizzard charged the same price (roughly) throughout all the countries. Sales were nice in america and europe, where both places share a different but homogenous culture but elsewhere, where culture is different on a fundamental level, it flunked.
Having lived in korea, i can say that marketing schemes aren't as effective as they are in america. There is a good reason why samsung phones are more popular than iphone (by a significant margin) as opposed to america and it is not because of nationalism.
EPT
All the best to the EX TSL players! 
