NASL were over $1.6 million in debt - Page 7

chaos021

United States258 Posts

May 26 2014 05:14 GMT

#121

On May 25 2014 11:43 geokilla wrote:

Gretorp was streaming the other day and I asked him a couple questions about SC2 and NASL.

Basically, Gretorp was more than a caster as they often worked overtime with no pay, doing editing, PowerPoint, and all this other background stuff that they didn't sign up for. They worked 7 days a week and worked so much that it sounds like they were burnt out. He often went to work, dreading work and working at NASL. The place was run poorly if I remember what he said correctly.

I miss that guy. Great caster and a pretty damn good player in his own right. If he still wants it, someone needs to give that guy a job casting somewhere. Anywhere.

Lysenko

Iceland2128 Posts

May 26 2014 06:44 GMT

#122

On May 26 2014 13:42 Xiphos wrote:
"Esport" was a term created by Tastosis, Day[9], HuskyStarCraft in order to have the community rally together against one single purpose which worked out great back then. It served as propaganda. But this also created a sense of hostility toward people who attempt to criticize SC2, which then was synonymous with "killing/hurting esport" and how much of a demon you are for doing it.

Ridiculous. You do realize that the term (and the concept) far predated Starcraft 2, right?

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=e-sports&cmpt=q

TRaFFiC

Canada1448 Posts

May 26 2014 07:15 GMT

#123

On May 26 2014 14:14 chaos021 wrote:

Show nested quote +

I miss that guy. Great caster and a pretty damn good player in his own right. If he still wants it, someone needs to give that guy a job casting somewhere. Anywhere.

He said on Reddit he leaving sc2 for the foreseeable future a while back. I mean the guy been all around the block. GM with all races, top caster, coach, instruction videos, production etc etc. From what I remember he also had a business degree, so eventually he realized time to make some money. 1 year after he left NASL bankrupt so good call

Wuster

1974 Posts

May 26 2014 08:02 GMT

#124

On May 26 2014 09:30 WolfintheSheep wrote:
Articles like this are always a pain in the ass to syphon through. Basically all start-up companies have massive debt to begin with - even if you're backed by a billionaire, you still rely a lot on investors, loans, etc. to handle start-up costs. If you just front all the money to begin with, then it's just gone.

That's why most businesses care about being profitable in their day-to-day dealings. It isn't until you've had several years straight of profitability that you're out of the red.

So while $1.6mil in debt sounds big and scary...it's not so scary if they started $1.2mil in the hole, or something.

This is actually an excellent point and really why a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. We'll have to wait and see what the full story is (if it gets publicized that is). But consider that NASL had insolvency scares before, a flirtation with WoTs and some hints that they were over budget / asking main staff to work for free and I don't think NASL was a case of never recouping their start-up expenses.

On May 26 2014 12:54 sharky246 wrote:

Show nested quote +

nobody except most of the people in this community. Back then, sc2 was synonymous with the term esports. People would say something along the lines of "hurting esports" when something negative happened in the sc2 scene.

Ya, people though SC2 was going to be huge (other than die hard BW purists I guess). But NASL definitely had plenty of skeptics from day 1, especially with the production problems from Clash of the Titans through all of season 1 (why is NASL sound guy a joke? You guys must remember how awful the audio was right?).

Baarn

United States2702 Posts

May 27 2014 06:13 GMT

#125

On May 26 2014 10:49 uishax wrote:

Show nested quote +

On May 26 2014 09:17 Baarn wrote:

On May 25 2014 23:36 uishax wrote:

On May 25 2014 06:11 Baarn wrote:
I'm not really surprised if this is the reason or part of the reason they disappeared. I keep thinking the other part of it is that they had competition so they couldn't get good enough broadcast contracts with Blizzard to keep things going. i think another reason is they didn't really ever have any real backing in the first place outside of maybe an angel investor or two. But the money wasn't there to keep things going when times were bad.

I still think CGS proved that esports just isn't ready for huge prize pools yet versus the viewership you get when you want to sell ad space. You have to really rethink things when they were broadcasting to everywhere but antartica. I say going to channel 101 is much easier than having to download mobile app (hi gomtv) or watching low bitrate twitch streams. It's tough out there.

Dota 2 can run massive 700+million prizepools and still be quite profitable, its ultimately down to the very low player base that made tournaments unsustainable.

Sure with crowdfunding the prize pools go through the roof. TI4 is roughly around 6 million us dollars after 10 days of compendium sales. It takes a huge chunk of weight off of the main sponsors. The entire system is quite ingenious but how long will it last?

We can take a look at american football and it's massive playerbase.It's estimated that around 60% of americans have or had played the game and the viewership is just as high. That's why the league gets well over a billion dollars in tv rights each season from the networks. When it comes to video games you just don't have a strong enough conversion to turn more of those 27 million active daily or the 67 million monthly league of legends players into a viewer. Seems like most players rather just play the game then watch some streamed event. Then you have the viewer that really doesn't play the game at all. I tune into broodwar tournaments here and there. I don't actively play the game at all. So no I don't believe it is solely based on low playerbase that makes tournaments unsustainable.

What an ludicrous comparison, football as a sport has already established a massive chain of industries surrounding it. It is broadcasted on TV, athletes are celebrities, magazines, merchandise, news reports all serve as advertisements for the sport.
What does LoL and Dota have? No ads, nothing mentioned anywhere except esports websites and a passing mention in the game client itself.
This is the reason for the difference in engagement.

More importantly, you are clueless about why Valve and Riot are so enthusiastic about esports.
Esports in itself is an advertisement for the game. Research shows esports watchers spend more and are more loyal to the game, so the game publisher directly benefits from increased player numbers and engagement, that indirect revenue is far higher than any advertising revenue that one person could possibly bring.
Hence, the requirement for 'conversion' is significantly lower for 'micro-transaction games' esports than traditional sports. Its too bad Blizzard never found a way to monetize starcraft 2 to support this esports model.

Lastly, you have no clue how big MOBAs are do you? The money contributed isn't 6 million, its 24 million, only 25% of that money went to that prize pool. There isn't even a need for a 'main sponsor' or any form of advertisement to support it. And as long as the playerbase increases, the scale of tournaments only go up, no issue of sustainability here.
Wait till you see Tencent copy this strategy, LoL can easily go over this amount several times and exceed most sports in terms of prize money.

SC2's failure is due to insufficient player-base and an erroneous way of monetization that led to lack of publisher support. Look at heartstone, Blizzard is pumping money into the esports scene, because it knows how indirectly profitable that investment is.

Why am I clueless? Is it because I don't share the same thoughts you do towards video games played "professionally?" They can be as enthusiastic all they want but league doesn't make money off their tournaments. They said it themselves. I'm plenty aware of "how many people play arts games." Read my post above again. I said the prize pool was around $6 million. There are always issues of sustainability for video games. There are like a dozen reasons people will bail for another game that comes along. I'm sure you can think of a couple on your own? Sure let me know when LoL has a $600 million prize pool for one tournament. Dude blizzard has been selling sparkle ponies for years in wow. Even if sc2 sold them I don't think it would matter. The game is boring to watch and play imo. When or if you reply try to be less condescending.

cheekymonkey

France1387 Posts

May 27 2014 13:27 GMT

#126

What are the consequences of this debt though? What responsibility does the previous owners have now?

Lysenko

Iceland2128 Posts

May 27 2014 19:39 GMT

#127

On May 27 2014 22:27 cheekymonkey wrote:
What are the consequences of this debt though? What responsibility does the previous owners have now?

A corporation going through a Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the U.S. (which is the type that takes place when the business cannot continue operating) has its debts divided up into a number of priority categories. There are "administrative" claims, which are fees charged by the bankruptcy lawyers and always get paid first. There are "priority" claims, which are generally unpaid employee wages (up to a certain cap, which last I checked was $11,725 per claimant.) There are "secured" claims, which are debts that were incurred with a contract that allowed the debtor to reclaim some particular property in event of default, and finally there are "unsecured" claims, which are everything else.

Generally, in Chapter 7, the company's assets are liquidated, and the money is used to pay the claims. All claims in each class are fully paid before the next class of claim is paid. When there's not enough money to pay a particular class of claim, the remaining money is divided proportionally among claimants, so, for example, everyone in a given class might get 50% of their claim paid out. At that point, lower classes of claims do not get paid at all.

So, that $1.6 million number probably is made up of a number of claims in all those categories, and they'll get dealt with as described. Once that process is done and all assets have been distributed, the company is dissolved as a legal entity and remaining unpaid debts are erased by order of the bankruptcy court.

In this process, the shareholders of the corporation lose any value that might have been bound up in the company's equity. Shareholders with a sizeable ownership interest in the company may themselves have claims against the corporation that are dealt with in the process (such as for their own wages) but usually their claims are dealt with separately and differently in a way that tends to put them at a disadvantage to other claimants, to ensure that they are not manipulating the process to enrich themselves.

Generally, though, they are not then personally responsible for paying out of their own pockets for the debt of the corporation.

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