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The Armchair Athleticism critical series is an opinion-base article series regarding the issues and sociocultural deficiencies of the E-Sports and StarCraft scene. All articles are perceptive-base and revolving around my own experiences and understanding of the subculture.
+ Show Spoiler [summary introduction] +The Solo Trail – Unbeaten - Posted on October 20th, 2012Short version of credentials: - Manager of 5 progaming teams (50+ professional players)
- Writer for 11 E-sports websites (5 team sites + 4 organizations: 150+ docs/articles)
- Organizer or Contributor of 11 community events (74,000 viewers/attendants)
- Some video-editing for one or two organizations, nothing big, just twitch.tv highlight-editing, presentational writing, etc.
Why are you starting your own space? I was listening to the suggestions of several friends and I finally started this space after I hit a dead-end in my endeavours in E-Sports. I’m at a point where I am not really affiliated with anyone and now’s a better time than ever to do some opinion topics. Doing my own content meant I would be alone and would work around my own initiative, drive and interest. However, it also meant that I may do something that requires more work than I thought and I would be on my own. It meant that the community reception can be more direct and harsh towards me personally and my views as I would not be backed by some credible organization as when I was writer for some. In the end, this series that took me about a month of writing, editing, verification and re-writing will really be everything I’ve learned, observed and felt throughout my time. I started out with three pieces and ended up going to ten. All of them delve into inspecting the five perspectives of the scene: teams, tournaments, players, spectators and contributors. Ultimately, it aims to really take a strong look into the many issues that inhibit the StarCraft community and E-Sports culture.
Teams of E-Sports - Portals for New Fans - Posted on January 25th, 2013
The middle men of E-Sports, Team Organizations, are the looking glass for the general public’s acceptance of a video-gaming profession (through proper representation) and the entrance to the scene for new enthusiasts. Team organizations are unique in that they connect both new interested parties and major team fans to new genres, games and competitions/events. These teams and their players are the link of E-Sports and arguably the core brand representatives of the scene(s) to many. To provide a professional front while also financially sustaining themselves is a large task for a limited budgeted company.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/cmorH.png) This diagram shows how an introduced general public (gray circle) viewing an E-Sport event (major tournament) can become new fans/spectators of specific teams and organizations (represented by the blue portal/oval). By following these team organizations, fans are demonstrated and introduced to a variety of people, popular events of E-Sports to which can also help solidify the idea of professionalism and legitimacy of E-Sports as a popular subculture and market.
As stated before, I call them the ‘middle men‘ because of their role for players, fans, major investors (company or person) and coordinating tournaments. Teams are the center point of these exterior ends of what people want, what tournaments need, how sponsors display their products (via player streams for example) and how investors can see growth and return. They must achieve this, appease their sponsors as well as support a number of staple players of the scene. Sadly though, the concept of “teams” in StarCraft II differ than in other E-Sports genres. With ARTS games (DotA/Dota 2, League of Legends) or even FPS games such as Counter-Strike: crews of players and brand-names are generally one of the same. Team Dynamic’s brand is its players (whether in LoL [now defunct] or Counter-Strike). When a team wins, it’s titled as Team X wins. For StarCraft II and even fighting games, we recognize more the player as winning and his individual achievements rather than listing it under an achievement the team he’s under. There’s a certain detachment when you think players and their teams within the StarCraft II scene. This dynamic relationship is perceived more of a sponsored organization supporting a player, rather than a player belonging to a set of members within that organization. Because of this, teams need to find new ways to better merge a player’s name to a brand’s prominent reputation.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/COYkQ.jpg) Although some players on the ex-Complexity roster are more popular than others, they are all needed equally to accredit and promote the Complexity Gaming’s brand and name through competitions (which, in turn, also bolsters their own reputation and fan-following)
Since StarCraft II is more of an individual game than team-based, a team’s organization is viewed differently than being one whole entity with the players they support. They act more as a garage, a parking lot, for all these players to which they are sent out for specific events, competitions or marketing ideas (depending on cost, ability to succeed or reach of their iconic community status). Perhaps that’s a cynical perception, but what we see when we look at the major teams are roles for their players. Some are for marketing, for their image or noteworthiness and some are for their ability to achieve and stay on top of the competition’s skill-level. When you compare these foreigner and E-Sports Federation teams, to that of other E-Sports teams, you notice a different dynamic in terms of rosters. For cooperative games, the relationships amongst players must be positive. In Dota or Counter-Strike, if the team atmosphere is not positive, the team suffers. In addition, these teams cannot be separated for specific events or competitions, they must all be accounted for and depend on one another for success. StarCraft II differs in that their rosters can have neutral stances for one another. Because StarCraft II is much more secluded for players on a team (their independent success bolsters a team’s brand name collectively while cooperative team-games collectively succeed), this leads to a lack of unification of a StarCraft II player’s fan-following with a team’s brand.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/yR7jD.png) A roster can be more diverse to fill multiple areas a team organization needs to take advantage of to popularize and create reputation (marketing, expos, competitions, prestigious tournaments, etc.). This diversification can mean more rapid roster changes and less connection between player name and team’s brand.
Teams such as Team Liquid & EG have maintained dedication towards their players despite bouts of underachievement. This consistency helps build associations between the player and the sentiment that the team supports the player through thick and thin. Contrariwise, the more changes of players on a sponsored team, the more detached a player’s reputation is to the team). This can mean the coming and going of fans as well as the difficulty in identifying a team’s face. ‘Face‘ is defined as the collective image from iconic people we identify with the team or brand. Let’s use Team Millenium as an example of not actively marketing players to team brands (currently Millenium has a very strong fanbase and focus on the French country and scene:
- Millenium is among the most financially comfortable teams in the scene. They’ve housed some of the best and veteran players of StarCraft II including ToD, HuK, Adelscott and Stephano. This French team has a lot of games, a lot of outlets to produce content and a very strong national hold in their country. Millenium has come and gone with small media hits towards their StarCraft fans during the year 2011: Team house, Feast personally mentored by Grubby, players ForGG and Dragon pick-ups, Stephano’s achievements, but they never went far enough with it. All these announcements are great introductions of the interesting stuff Millenium can do, but why haven’t they followed through with it? Why haven’t they done more with showcasing Dragon’s entertaining qualities, ForGG’s remarkable skill and ability, etc. Athough their focus is mainly for the French fans, their players are reaching beyond that of France and even Europe (especially with pick-ups such as ex-Complexity Academy progamer: Goswer). The player name far outreaches that of Millenium’s within StarCraft II.
- The opposite can be seen for Team Evil Geniuses in terms of production. Team EG has reinvented themselves time and time again with blogs (even before this, EG used to feature blogs written by Cassandra, Grubby’s wife during the WC3 era), Big Foot Networks Pro Tip videos, branding BarCrafts (BarCraft Montreal, ONOG), commercials, tournaments & showmatches (EG Master’s Cup Series), OneMoreGame.tv, SteelSeries promotions, Trivia videos (Fanmail & Unburrowed), etc.
Millenium needs consistency and continued reinvention of their brand. They tried a few back in 2010 with blogs when they had HuK, they showed off their team-house, some Millenium tournament invitationals and more. But there was no connection to the community and it wasn’t nearly as polished or aggressively pushed as Evil Geniuses. Millenium had one of the best foreigners around for months, but did so little to present him as a Millenium player and thus no fan-to-team dedication, only fan-to-player [Stephano] loyalty. Nonetheless, I would situate Millenium as a lot more active (considering they’re doing more non-E-Sport titles) than some other teams, especially those who are underachieving.
Quantic Gaming (now defunct) was amongst those underachieving, but presented with both their downfall and greatest opportunity. Originally, Quantic had a North-American squad that was shaded due to the performance of their Swedish duo: SaSe & NaNiwa. Since NaNiwa departure, Quantic Gaming’s perception from the community transitioned to being a premier North-American team with their pick-up of Vile Gaming and two new investors. Quantic kept their original roster without little to no cuts, a rare dedication that some teams don’t possess. However they did little to take advantage of their longstanding relationship with these players and furthermore, doubling their roster only increased expenses with little to no future achievements or advertising for these players.
To reiterate my original point(s): A team and the players they sponsor are not perceived as one of the same in StarCraft II. That hurts and that’s definitely something that could be better approached by the majority of the teams. This, in turn, should also help bolster team fan-following numbers as well as player numbers when presenting to current or new sponsors. Differencing your players in new and unique ways helps remove the stigma of an overabundant roster and creates variety in a large squad of talented players.
The reality of all this is that traditional systems that create roles for players are only there to help create a working form of a team within a limited budget. So while piggy-backing off sponsors and relying on major tournament organizations to send their players around the world is working so far (more or less), it isn’t an ideal long-term way to live. This is going to sound redundant, but teams need to find a way to survive on their own two feet. Though as we mentioned earlier, the form of media they can produce content on with such a limited budget isn’t really going to be enough. If it somehow manages to pay out, it won’t work for everyone equally. This is just another long laundry list that more money and a bigger audience could potentially help cross off. But at the same time, a lot of teams are not taking advantage of their players to better create an association of names between both the player and the teams’ brand.
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Torte de Lini:
This informed series of written pieces could not have been achieved without the help and opinions of my peers and friends. Below are the people I wish to thank for their insight, accuracy/consistency check or expert opinion on the numerous topics: thank you
- Alex Shieferdecker (Team Liquid Progaming Team Content Manager - tree.hugger)
- Brad Carney (Lefty - Previously Gaming Director for Quantic Gaming)
- Chris Chan (Founder of ChanManV Production)
- Eric Grady (Cyber-Sports Network's Director of Events - Usurp)
- Flo Yao (Quantic Gaming’s Progamer - Flo)
- Jacqueline Geller (eSports Network Coordinator of Blizzard)
- John Clark (Cyber-Sports Network Executive Director of Operations)
- Josh Dentrinos (FXOpen’s Director - Boss)
- Kevin Chang (Professional E-Sports Photographer - Silverfire)
- Marc McEntegart (Team Liquid Writer - SirJolt)
- Matt Weber (Team Liquid Director of Operations - Heyoka)
- Payam Toghyan (ROOT Gaming Progamer - TT1)
- Shawn Simon (Team Liquid Progamer - Sheth)
- Steven Bonnell II (Progamer/Entertainer - Destiny)
- Thomas Shifrer (ESFI World Senior Journalist - Laxx)
- Tom McCarthy (Partner Marketing for Complexity Gaming)
If you'd like more information about the series (more pieces about different aspects of the scene will be released periodically), to contact me privately or to generously give me some siteviews on my website, you can follow the following link:
You can also follow me on Twitter where I tweet public news and information about the scene including roster changes, controversy and/or overall E-Sports news: @TorteDeLini
Thank you very much and I appreciate all feedback or corrections.
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Oh yeah, I forgot to do that...
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+ Show Spoiler +On January 26 2013 02:31 Torte de Lini wrote:
Oh yeah, I forgot to do that... I can lend you my first reply and then move it here ?!
Well written article again! Thanks!
My favorite sentence:
They act more as a garage, a parking lot, for all these players to which they are sent out for specific events, competitions or marketing ideas
Sorry for taking the spot you usually use for thanks.
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Thanks again ^^ I shouldn't have done this during a game haha, I had this article set up for a few weeks with editing and such :B
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Millenium's case is especially interesting. We (french members of both TL and the [M] community) have longed for a more international expansion. But the main motor of Millenium as a team was (and still is) its manager Llewellys. He isn't very fluent in english, nor does he believe that Millenium's market is international. I tend not to agree with him before but he proved with several great events (along with the OGaming organisation) that there is a very very strong and dedicated fanbase in France for both SC2 and LoL.
That being said, they lack - like many other teams - someone capable of truly promoting a brand. Most of their employees are fairly young, with little to no professional experience bar streaming. A new english-translated website should be out in the next months or so - one could have seen one of their translator/editor posting some of her work here. And if [M] qualify for the S3 in LoL, then the influx of traffic on that website could be enough to attack the market on an international level (but they'll need someone qualify to do that)
Edit : The comparison you drew was unfair to both party, on one hand, EG cannot rivalize with the marketshare [M] has in France, their penetration is big and well developped, on the other hand, [M] does produce content for its viewer with the 2 webtvs that are among the most popular webstreaming 24/7 channel on gaming (and possibly in the western world), they also hold tournaments both for the french community and the rest of the world.
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
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On January 26 2013 02:41 Otolia wrote:
Millenium's case is especially interesting. We (french members of both TL and the [M] community) have longed for a more international expansion. But the main motor of Millenium as a team was (and still is) its manager Llewellys. He isn't very fluent in english, nor does he believe that Millenium's market is international. I tend not to agree with him before but he proved with several great events (along with the OGaming organisation) that there is a very very strong and dedicated fanbase in France for both SC2 and LoL.
That being said, they lack - like many other teams - someone capable of truly promoting a brand. Most of their employees are fairly young, with little to no professional experience bar streaming. A new english-translated website should be out in the next months or so - one could have seen one of their translator/editor posting some of her work here. And if [M] qualify for the S3 in LoL, then the influx of traffic on that website could be enough to attack the market on an international level (but they'll need someone qualify to do that)
Edit : The comparison you drew was unfair to both party, on one hand, EG cannot rivalize with the marketshare [M] has in France, their penetration is big and well developped, on the other hand, [M] does produce content for its viewer with the 2 webtvs that are among the most popular webstreaming 24/7 channel on gaming (and possibly in the western world), they also hold tournaments both for the french community and the rest of the world.
I agree that the comparison is not exactly a fair comparison. It is more a showcase of how both parties have their strengths, but only one takes advantage of it to an extent we feel is the standard of "marketing".
I'm not familiar with their WebTVs, I didn't find anything on the subject? Interesting :D
edit: if you mean Mill. TV, I don't know if what you're claiming is that true.
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Canada1169 Posts
On January 26 2013 02:45 Targe wrote:Excellent post as usual Torte + Show Spoiler +
Who knows? :o
Agreed though have read every single one of these, always a great read 
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Thanks. I'm definitely hoping for some more feedback on this one.
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On January 26 2013 04:41 Torte de Lini wrote:Show nested quote +On January 26 2013 02:41 Otolia wrote:
Millenium's case is especially interesting. We (french members of both TL and the [M] community) have longed for a more international expansion. But the main motor of Millenium as a team was (and still is) its manager Llewellys. He isn't very fluent in english, nor does he believe that Millenium's market is international. I tend not to agree with him before but he proved with several great events (along with the OGaming organisation) that there is a very very strong and dedicated fanbase in France for both SC2 and LoL.
That being said, they lack - like many other teams - someone capable of truly promoting a brand. Most of their employees are fairly young, with little to no professional experience bar streaming. A new english-translated website should be out in the next months or so - one could have seen one of their translator/editor posting some of her work here. And if [M] qualify for the S3 in LoL, then the influx of traffic on that website could be enough to attack the market on an international level (but they'll need someone qualify to do that)
Edit : The comparison you drew was unfair to both party, on one hand, EG cannot rivalize with the marketshare [M] has in France, their penetration is big and well developped, on the other hand, [M] does produce content for its viewer with the 2 webtvs that are among the most popular webstreaming 24/7 channel on gaming (and possibly in the western world), they also hold tournaments both for the french community and the rest of the world. I agree that the comparison is not exactly a fair comparison. It is more a showcase of how both parties have their strengths, but only one takes advantage of it to an extent we feel is the standard of "marketing". I'm not familiar with their WebTVs, I didn't find anything on the subject? Interesting :D edit: if you mean Mill. TV, I don't know if what you're claiming is that true.
Yes I mean Millenium TV (1 & 2)
It's quite hard nowadays to evaluate metrics without accessing the API and I won't bother ^^ But I'm fairly confident they are among the most popular that I know in term of raw (non-cheated) numbers as far as webTV that produces content 24/7. I'm not talking about regular broadcast company who also have a streaming service but of pure webTV that streams continuously. The last figures I heard last year was that it amount for 15% to 20% of their global income. Still that wasn't my main point.
You choose Millenium to describe a team that fails to promote its team as a team more than a rag tag of players which impacts their marketing. That is entirely true. And it's also true that EG does a better job than almost anyone else but the exemples you used aren't all well chosen. For example commercials, pro tip & trivia videos are good example of what EG does better than most team. But branding a BarCraft isn't that impressive - Millenium's former community manager co-owns the Meltdown and several of its staff members are organizing local events, nor is OneMoreGame.TV who has less following for EG MCSL than Millenium had for the MSI Pro Cup - possibly due to the format.
Furthermore you overlooked a important factor here : Their main market is France. This sole factor make them look bad on an international scale especially compared to the mastodon that is EG. It puts your article in a rather awkward spot where your ideas and your point are correct but the way you choose to explain falls (in my eyes) to easily to simple counter-arguments - like the one I just mentioned. Perhaps if you didn't draw the comparison and evaluated the two entities separately, it would be much clearer for the less informed reader.
PS : Though it should be pretty obvious to you right now, I really like your post and your articles in general.
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On January 26 2013 07:10 Otolia wrote:Show nested quote +On January 26 2013 04:41 Torte de Lini wrote:On January 26 2013 02:41 Otolia wrote:
Millenium's case is especially interesting. We (french members of both TL and the [M] community) have longed for a more international expansion. But the main motor of Millenium as a team was (and still is) its manager Llewellys. He isn't very fluent in english, nor does he believe that Millenium's market is international. I tend not to agree with him before but he proved with several great events (along with the OGaming organisation) that there is a very very strong and dedicated fanbase in France for both SC2 and LoL.
That being said, they lack - like many other teams - someone capable of truly promoting a brand. Most of their employees are fairly young, with little to no professional experience bar streaming. A new english-translated website should be out in the next months or so - one could have seen one of their translator/editor posting some of her work here. And if [M] qualify for the S3 in LoL, then the influx of traffic on that website could be enough to attack the market on an international level (but they'll need someone qualify to do that)
Edit : The comparison you drew was unfair to both party, on one hand, EG cannot rivalize with the marketshare [M] has in France, their penetration is big and well developped, on the other hand, [M] does produce content for its viewer with the 2 webtvs that are among the most popular webstreaming 24/7 channel on gaming (and possibly in the western world), they also hold tournaments both for the french community and the rest of the world. I agree that the comparison is not exactly a fair comparison. It is more a showcase of how both parties have their strengths, but only one takes advantage of it to an extent we feel is the standard of "marketing". I'm not familiar with their WebTVs, I didn't find anything on the subject? Interesting :D edit: if you mean Mill. TV, I don't know if what you're claiming is that true. Yes I mean Millenium TV ( 1 & 2) It's quite hard nowadays to evaluate metrics without accessing the API and I won't bother ^^ But I'm fairly confident they are among the most popular that I know in term of raw (non-cheated) numbers as far as webTV that produces content 24/7. I'm not talking about regular broadcast company who also have a streaming service but of pure webTV that streams continuously. The last figures I heard last year was that it amount for 15% to 20% of their global income. Still that wasn't my main point. You choose Millenium to describe a team that fails to promote its team as a team more than a rag tag of players which impacts their marketing. That is entirely true. And it's also true that EG does a better job than almost anyone else but the exemples you used aren't all well chosen. For example commercials, pro tip & trivia videos are good example of what EG does better than most team. But branding a BarCraft isn't that impressive - Millenium's former community manager co-owns the Meltdown and several of its staff members are organizing local events, nor is OneMoreGame.TV who has less following for EG MCSL than Millenium had for the MSI Pro Cup - possibly due to the format. Furthermore you overlooked a important factor here : Their main market is France. This sole factor make them look bad on an international scale especially compared to the mastodon that is EG. It puts your article in a rather awkward spot where your ideas and your point are correct but the way you choose to explain falls (in my eyes) to easily to simple counter-arguments - like the one I just mentioned. Perhaps if you didn't draw the comparison and evaluated the two entities separately, it would be much clearer for the less informed reader. PS : Though it should be pretty obvious to you right now, I really like your post and your articles in general.
Is it fully 24-hours non-stop? If so, that's pretty impressive and I'm sure with the amount of time they're streaming + consistent stream viewer numbers (about 1,000?), it could be amongst the most popular.
I mainly chose Millenium because of their stature nationally as well as their previously held players that weren't utilized to better bolster the name. Even though both teams have barcrafts, one is branding for cheaper and on a larger national scale (North American: Canada & USA and I don't think they're offering financial incentives to ONOG, it's mainly gear and such from their sponsors. This, in turn, is a much larger reach than France, no? What do you think?).
I think I added a disclaimer that Millenium's main interest was perhaps not to be internationally recognized given their stronghold within France is pretty great! If I had chosen a clearly smaller team and compared it to EG, the contrast would have been too obvious and less of a discussable point. But to be fair, you are making sense of a lot of flaws within my piece.
If I had chosen Empire, Complexity or any other team; it wouldn't have been "fair" in the regard that their market, finances and ability to produce are uncomparable to that of EG. I chose Millenium mainly because of their team not shining whatsoever (but as you've stated, they're doing great elsewhere).
Thanks ^^ Reply to this post, let's talk this one out!
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Your diagram highlights something. Players promote team brands by association. Then teams promote sponsor brands by association. The two steps make the link very weak. But we haven't seen many teams become completely name-branded with the sponsor. Acer is the only foreign one.
Is it teams refusing to name brand themselves when asked, or is it sponsors not realising the value of doing so?
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On January 26 2013 07:18 Solarsail wrote:
Your diagram highlights something. Players promote team brands by association. Then teams promote sponsor brands by association. The two steps make the link very weak. But we haven't seen many teams become completely name-branded with the sponsor. Acer is the only foreign one.
Is it teams refusing to name brand themselves when asked, or is it sponsors not realising the value of doing so?
Team names are brands in of themselves. If you have EG completely change its name to just Raidcall, then you're losing a lot of reputation or following of your name and organization. It also limits your relationships with others in terms of sponsorship.
EG RC is the closest you'll get, and Fnatic does the same. The reason for this is that if Raidcall bails, then they will still have EG and still have the marketing potential they have built over the years. By changing your team's name entirely, you put a lot of risk.
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Quick question.. as it relates to this article..
Do those in the community that have been following the SC2 teams.. .feel that the team model is a viable model for SC2 or does a player with a player manager fit the space better?
This article is well written and brings up a lot of interesting angles to the team situation in SC2 right now.
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Thanks!
I stand by teams more so than just players + managers, however for some teams, the managers aren't doing all I would hope and on that note; some teams can't offer everything I wish they could.
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To not add-on an article to yours, the real problem with eSports is the mix between individual/multiplayer games. Rather than a franchise perspective and a roster of players for one "team," or the individual player model, eSports is basically stuck in the middle. To me, it's rather inefficient and harder to truly leverage as you pointed out.
A solution to the problem will take some more brainstorming.
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On January 26 2013 07:17 Torte de Lini wrote:Show nested quote +On January 26 2013 07:10 Otolia wrote:On January 26 2013 04:41 Torte de Lini wrote:On January 26 2013 02:41 Otolia wrote:
Millenium's case is especially interesting. We (french members of both TL and the [M] community) have longed for a more international expansion. But the main motor of Millenium as a team was (and still is) its manager Llewellys. He isn't very fluent in english, nor does he believe that Millenium's market is international. I tend not to agree with him before but he proved with several great events (along with the OGaming organisation) that there is a very very strong and dedicated fanbase in France for both SC2 and LoL.
That being said, they lack - like many other teams - someone capable of truly promoting a brand. Most of their employees are fairly young, with little to no professional experience bar streaming. A new english-translated website should be out in the next months or so - one could have seen one of their translator/editor posting some of her work here. And if [M] qualify for the S3 in LoL, then the influx of traffic on that website could be enough to attack the market on an international level (but they'll need someone qualify to do that)
Edit : The comparison you drew was unfair to both party, on one hand, EG cannot rivalize with the marketshare [M] has in France, their penetration is big and well developped, on the other hand, [M] does produce content for its viewer with the 2 webtvs that are among the most popular webstreaming 24/7 channel on gaming (and possibly in the western world), they also hold tournaments both for the french community and the rest of the world. I agree that the comparison is not exactly a fair comparison. It is more a showcase of how both parties have their strengths, but only one takes advantage of it to an extent we feel is the standard of "marketing". I'm not familiar with their WebTVs, I didn't find anything on the subject? Interesting :D edit: if you mean Mill. TV, I don't know if what you're claiming is that true. Yes I mean Millenium TV ( 1 & 2) It's quite hard nowadays to evaluate metrics without accessing the API and I won't bother ^^ But I'm fairly confident they are among the most popular that I know in term of raw (non-cheated) numbers as far as webTV that produces content 24/7. I'm not talking about regular broadcast company who also have a streaming service but of pure webTV that streams continuously. The last figures I heard last year was that it amount for 15% to 20% of their global income. Still that wasn't my main point. You choose Millenium to describe a team that fails to promote its team as a team more than a rag tag of players which impacts their marketing. That is entirely true. And it's also true that EG does a better job than almost anyone else but the exemples you used aren't all well chosen. For example commercials, pro tip & trivia videos are good example of what EG does better than most team. But branding a BarCraft isn't that impressive - Millenium's former community manager co-owns the Meltdown and several of its staff members are organizing local events, nor is OneMoreGame.TV who has less following for EG MCSL than Millenium had for the MSI Pro Cup - possibly due to the format. Furthermore you overlooked a important factor here : Their main market is France. This sole factor make them look bad on an international scale especially compared to the mastodon that is EG. It puts your article in a rather awkward spot where your ideas and your point are correct but the way you choose to explain falls (in my eyes) to easily to simple counter-arguments - like the one I just mentioned. Perhaps if you didn't draw the comparison and evaluated the two entities separately, it would be much clearer for the less informed reader. PS : Though it should be pretty obvious to you right now, I really like your post and your articles in general. Is it fully 24-hours non-stop? If so, that's pretty impressive and I'm sure with the amount of time they're streaming + consistent stream viewer numbers (about 1,000?), it could be amongst the most popular. I mainly chose Millenium because of their stature nationally as well as their previously held players that weren't utilized to better bolster the name. Even though both teams have barcrafts, one is branding for cheaper and on a larger national scale (North American: Canada & USA and I don't think they're offering financial incentives to ONOG, it's mainly gear and such from their sponsors. This, in turn, is a much larger reach than France, no? What do you think?). I think I added a disclaimer that Millenium's main interest was perhaps not to be internationally recognized given their stronghold within France is pretty great! If I had chosen a clearly smaller team and compared it to EG, the contrast would have been too obvious and less of a discussable point. But to be fair, you are making sense of a lot of flaws within my piece. If I had chosen Empire, Complexity or any other team; it wouldn't have been "fair" in the regard that their market, finances and ability to produce are uncomparable to that of EG. I chose Millenium mainly because of their team not shining whatsoever (but as you've stated, they're doing great elsewhere). Thanks ^^ Reply to this post, let's talk this one out!
I think the knowledge of Millenium by non french users is very lackluster.
They have much more than 1k average viewers. They have about 90 million views on their webtv (you can check it through the links posted by Otolia). And they are opening another webtv now.
The other main interest is their website. Once again it is only targeted to the french community and it is doing a fairly good job. They are ranked ~8000ish worldwide ( http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/millenium.org ) which is not as much as TL (~4000ish) but not that far away compared to other team/esport sites (EG is ranked 800 000ish and majorleaguegaming.com has less traffic than Millenium.org for example).
90% of their focus is in France. They make showmatches, shows about their players. Their manager is streaming alot. They created leagues for the french scene and so on.
You are right on the part where they don't connect the players to the team as much as they could. Even if it is getting better with blogs on their website, more players at the gaming house at the same time. They also make very few advertisement.
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If they started some hardcore English content (translation/subtitling VODs and other videos), they'd be primed to gain more notoriety. They do an awesome job but are strictly focused on France.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/kwkQa.png)
