To be honest, it's surprising that TSL lasted this long. During the PuMa controversy if you had told me that TSL would outlast ZeNEX, oGs, and SlayerS I would have laughed at you.
Sad to see them go, and it was a tough hit to lose both captain Polt and Revival, but still somewhat surprised that they disbanded. They've gone through (imo) rougher times, and they still had Hyun and Symbol as strong players, and Center as an up-and-commer until they recruited more players. I guess it's a lot harder now with Kespa teams playing SC2 as well.
Good luck to they players finding new teams. Shouldn't be hard for Hyun and Symbol at least.
Oh man, I knew TSL was having financial troubles, but not as severe as this... Seems that losing Polt and Revival was a huge blow to TSL, and they couldn't sustain the losses. Hope the remaining players find teams, especially HyuN and Symbol. Man, I thought TSL was okay, considering their GSTL wins and singles success, but I guess it wasn't enough...
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:
On January 03 2013 18:22 FXOBoSs wrote:
On January 03 2013 18:16 Goibon wrote:
On January 03 2013 18:06 FXOBoSs wrote: Hate to be a stick in the mud.. But there are two reasons why this is happening, and will continue to happen quickly this year.
1) People dont know what it takes to obtain sponsors 2) Players are not willing to do what it takes to obtain sponsors.
It takes alot more than just playing and winning to lure decent sponsorships. None of the korean teams, including KESPA teams, do this properly and that includes FXO.
Getting a Korean "star" player to stream is like trying to pull your fingernails out with a feather.
Is it arrogance or ignorance? Can this be changed? I'm genuinely concerned that we're 2 years in now and they still haven't made much progress. Can this be educated in or is it a culturally (for lack of a better word) driven desire / lack of desire?
I don't want to be too cynical, but it reminds me of all the times you hear young player wanting to leave Korean Team to 'join foreign team' as though it's some mythical golden goose. The more i see this kinda stuff going down, the more i feel that there's some truth to that in the sense that the Korean scene is either unwilling or unable to source funds effectively themselves. The players thus know this (or are complicit in it) and seek to escape to the promised land where money actually exists.
I'm really concerned right now edit: quoted wrong
It can only be changed by stars not getting offers they should get. The joining foreign team is purely money based. For some reason there is an illusion that "As long as I play, I should get paid".
The truth is, a long as you do you job to promote your sponsors, you should get paid.
EG for instance, is good at promoting the players on the players behalf, but they have a big staff budget compared to almost every other organisation. Sometimes, the players need to promote themselves, even if it is to get a bigger team with more money.
The whole MMA transaction comes to mind, where everyone in the industry knew how much he was asking. And at that moment in time, he would do almost nothing for sponsors that would be worth the asking price. Not to throw MMA under the bus or anything, I am just using it as an example, but its extremely common for Korean "Stars" to expect money for nothing.
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.
That's more like a Stephano thing, don't you think? There are many other ways of generating traffic and hype from what you guys have seen done is my point. At least you're thinking outside of the box compared to many.
I'm actually surprised it took this long. TSL has always had a high turnover rate amongst their high profile players. I expected they'd fold a lot sooner than this.
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.
Point taken. There are a lot of things the ESF teams did that rubbed me the wrong way when it came to generating traffic. I guess you could say they did join in pretty late but they did use social media and streaming; whereas, the KeSPA teams just don't stream. So I don't really get the social media stuff. If anything, they failed their sales pitch and marketing and yes it does suck that they didn't have TV like KeSPA but the reality is even when you're a specialty cable channel you still have to find a way to get them in. Goes back to what I said about Blizzard and their handling of the Korean market and the failure for many of the ESF teams to get deals done. Just look at the managerial failures with the association and other business dealings. Doesn't leave much to the imagination and they needed merge or have guys from outside step in to take over because they couldn't manage properly.
On January 03 2013 23:49 Arbee wrote: While I am saddened by this as I have always really liked TSL as one of those "smaller" teams, I can't say it is overly surprising. But it also is a bit upsetting on how poorly the Korean teams are being run. Let me tell you this:
A couple months ago or so, I contacted TSL about a possible sponsorship for their team. I initially spoke with Sephora as she was kind of the website/English person and she was very good at communicating with me and relaying a few messages with Coach Lee. Finally Coach Lee wanted to set up a meeting on Skype and asked me to add him, I did but he never accepted. Sephora then asked that I email him, and I did with some basic overviews of what I was willing to offer and what I was hoping to get out of a sponsorship. Once again, he never responded. When I followed up with Sephora the only answer I got was that he was really bad with Skype and emails, and that she would try again.
Its really a shame, but at the same time I can't feel bad for the Korean teams who say they have sponsorship problems that force them to lose players, or even an entire team but do not respond to serious sponsorship proposals. I can say that my proposal ranged from a couple thousand dollars for a small recognition (logo/patch) for my organization, to something in the 5-digit range for a little more formal sponsorship and possible partnership with the team I am building that could be used for expenses, stipends, or to help send players to foreign events if thats what they desired. So needless to say, while it may not have saved the team on its own, it would most certainly have been a pretty substantial private sponsorship amount, that could have helped a team continue to operate and help players out.
TSL is not the only team I have previously contacted either, however sadly enough they were actually the most responsive of the teams that were apparently having financial trouble. I have thought this for quite some time, but the Korean ESF teams (not including FXO, and maybe even ST) are extremely poorly run as a business. And for a team having trouble to not even respond to sponsorship inquires and then use lack of sponsors as a reason to disband, is not a true portrayal of the problem with teams in Korea.
I may consider looking into a "save TSL" effort though.....
Communication woes man. :/ I'm still waiting on a Sir Elton guy myself.
Wow I loved this team so much. Sad to see them go but not surprised. Hopefully a good korean team picks up these players so they keep up their skill level.
I guess this is just the kind of thing that has been happening outside of korea: the teams that can't make it work collapse to make room for more successful businesses.
Sad to see it happen first hand, but hopefully it leads to better opportunities for the players involved and gives the management a learning experience. I hope no sponsors were burned during this process.
EPT
