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WCS AM will continue to include LatAm, Oceania/SEA, CN, and TW/HK/Macau, you can all stop freaking out about it. |
On September 08 2014 04:53 Hider wrote:
Question: Would you rather wanna watch a group consisting of Ret, Livezerg, Bunny and TLO or a group consisting of MMA, Bunny, TLO and JJaki
Eh, all I need is HotshotGG to venture into SC2 and put the CLG tag before the ID of any player that's now considered mediocre and I'll follow him through the entire season. I'm okay with watching lower skilled players if they play for a team I like and there's always GSL to watch top notch play anyways.
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On September 08 2014 05:03 AWalker9 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2014 05:00 Plansix wrote:On September 08 2014 04:54 AWalker9 wrote:On September 08 2014 04:41 Plansix wrote:On September 08 2014 04:22 y0su wrote:On September 08 2014 04:09 Plansix wrote:On September 08 2014 04:06 Hider wrote:On September 07 2014 22:45 sixfour wrote:On September 07 2014 22:37 Necro)Phagist( wrote:
Well WCS AM is going to be dead to me after this, GSL is on too late for me to watch live. So I guess I'm gonna have to rely on WCS EU to watch.
I never understood why so many people wanted region lock like this? Sure it will promote maybe a bit of growth in the foreign scenes for a season or two, but after that the novelty of foreign players playing will wear off and viewership is going to plummet. carmac said it best: Instead of comparing apples to oranges, it would fit Carmac to try and explain why no region-locked tournament has been created by the market forces (invisible hand). If fans really prefered to watch the 50th best foreigner in action over the 50th, then tournaments would never have invited the Koreans in the first place. The reason why local leagues has higher viewership numbers (in that region) than Premier league is that the domestic club/team league has been branded strongly throughout your entire childhood. Creating such a strong brand for (medicore) domestic Starcraft players is extremely time-consuming, and Starcraft isn't in its grow-phase anymore. You cannot go around making investments into the infastructure of Starcraft and hope it will improve the scene 5 years from now on. Rather, focus needs to be on how viewer numbersc an be maximized over the next 1-2 years. Another issue with the argument is that domestic leagues still have critical viewer numbers from domestic viewers. In Denmark, there are still 50k-300K who regularly watch the Danish league, however Starcraft is way way too small to rely on only Danish viewers for a Danish tournament. Thus, any type of foreign events needs on foreign fans all around the world watching the event. However, while I would care about how a Danish starcrat player performs, I care much less about how some russians plays, thus this makes the attraction rates of foreign starcraft players much less than the attractivity of wathcing domestic football players. That doens't mean that there isn't some extra value to watching foreigners playing it out, however, we only wanna watch the very very best foriengers. In football, I can watch my local team playing, even if its bad, but in no way am I gonna watch a medicore Russian playing. Thus, Carmac's comparison cannot be applied for WCS. Thank god they are not running an only Danish tournament. And if they were, the prize pool would likely be smaller and it would be easier to keep it competitive and sustainable. But the cherry picking of facts continues while armature sports leagues still get viewership. Japanese baseball does just fine even though it isn't the MLB. And how many Japanese currently compete in the MLB? Is the goal to try to grow the player/fan base OR try to increase the skill level of the top players within the regions? The point is that the fanbase and viewership is independent of the skill in the region. People can be fans of something without it being the highest level of play and enjoy watching it. Region locking and tiers of play has always been part of every competitive everything. The argument that "SC2 fans want to see the highest level of play" is people projecting their point of view onto the entire community and assuming that their opinion is the majority, even though the polls at the beginning of the thread say otherwise. If you want to make the sport anaology then look at the football Premier League in the UK it lacks any region locking whatsoever but it's the most viewed football league in the world. This means the skill of all involved is higher and there are a lack of English players in the top teams as the best teams prefer to have the more established and skillful players. But is that the only football people watch is all of the world? Or do people watch regional leagues regardless of skill level? Umm no but it's by far and away the most watched league in the world, others aren't even close.
Well I think the point is that you can have regional league being watched a lot by people in that region (e.g. Danish football leauge is more popular than premier league in Denmark). This means that mediocre players can use the regional league to get a decent income while improving their skill and then move on to a bigger league if they are good enough.
However, that model won't work for Sc2 (as I tried to argue previously).
The issue is that you cannot get Danish people interested in following Russians for anything else than their skill level, and no country can really produce a critical level of numbers to be self-sustaining on their own. Therefore, the global scene needs to be united and cannot be divided into self-sustaining regional or local leagues that people can make a living off. Instead the league needs to be based (mainly) on skill if it wants to maximize viewer numbers.
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On September 08 2014 05:03 AWalker9 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2014 05:00 Plansix wrote:On September 08 2014 04:54 AWalker9 wrote:On September 08 2014 04:41 Plansix wrote:On September 08 2014 04:22 y0su wrote:On September 08 2014 04:09 Plansix wrote:On September 08 2014 04:06 Hider wrote:On September 07 2014 22:45 sixfour wrote:On September 07 2014 22:37 Necro)Phagist( wrote:
Well WCS AM is going to be dead to me after this, GSL is on too late for me to watch live. So I guess I'm gonna have to rely on WCS EU to watch.
I never understood why so many people wanted region lock like this? Sure it will promote maybe a bit of growth in the foreign scenes for a season or two, but after that the novelty of foreign players playing will wear off and viewership is going to plummet. carmac said it best: https://twitter.com/mbCARMAC/status/507931765831266304 Instead of comparing apples to oranges, it would fit Carmac to try and explain why no region-locked tournament has been created by the market forces (invisible hand). If fans really prefered to watch the 50th best foreigner in action over the 50th, then tournaments would never have invited the Koreans in the first place. The reason why local leagues has higher viewership numbers (in that region) than Premier league is that the domestic club/team league has been branded strongly throughout your entire childhood. Creating such a strong brand for (medicore) domestic Starcraft players is extremely time-consuming, and Starcraft isn't in its grow-phase anymore. You cannot go around making investments into the infastructure of Starcraft and hope it will improve the scene 5 years from now on. Rather, focus needs to be on how viewer numbersc an be maximized over the next 1-2 years. Another issue with the argument is that domestic leagues still have critical viewer numbers from domestic viewers. In Denmark, there are still 50k-300K who regularly watch the Danish league, however Starcraft is way way too small to rely on only Danish viewers for a Danish tournament. Thus, any type of foreign events needs on foreign fans all around the world watching the event. However, while I would care about how a Danish starcrat player performs, I care much less about how some russians plays, thus this makes the attraction rates of foreign starcraft players much less than the attractivity of wathcing domestic football players. That doens't mean that there isn't some extra value to watching foreigners playing it out, however, we only wanna watch the very very best foriengers. In football, I can watch my local team playing, even if its bad, but in no way am I gonna watch a medicore Russian playing. Thus, Carmac's comparison cannot be applied for WCS. Thank god they are not running an only Danish tournament. And if they were, the prize pool would likely be smaller and it would be easier to keep it competitive and sustainable. But the cherry picking of facts continues while armature sports leagues still get viewership. Japanese baseball does just fine even though it isn't the MLB. And how many Japanese currently compete in the MLB? Is the goal to try to grow the player/fan base OR try to increase the skill level of the top players within the regions? The point is that the fanbase and viewership is independent of the skill in the region. People can be fans of something without it being the highest level of play and enjoy watching it. Region locking and tiers of play has always been part of every competitive everything. The argument that "SC2 fans want to see the highest level of play" is people projecting their point of view onto the entire community and assuming that their opinion is the majority, even though the polls at the beginning of the thread say otherwise. If you want to make the sport anaology then look at the football Premier League in the UK it lacks any region locking whatsoever but it's the most viewed football league in the world. This means the skill of all involved is higher and there are a lack of English players in the top teams as the best teams prefer to have the more established and skillful players. But is that the only football people watch is all of the world? Or do people watch regional leagues regardless of skill level? Umm no but it's by far and away the most watched league in the world, others aren't even close.
Same with the Super Bowl, but that doesn't prevent college football from being broadcast on TV. As long as GSL is the top tier event is has always been(and treated as such by WCS), there is room for more region focus on local players in the other two WCS regions.
And its not like GSL doesn't have rules that protect their local players. They have offline qualifiers really limit the top tier foreigners from attempting to qualify. So even if a non-korean player wanted to try out, they would need to spend several thousand dollars and take a 10-18 hour flight just to try out. Meanwhile the Korean players can just play 200 games on the NA server and try out from the comfort of their home.
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On September 08 2014 05:00 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2014 04:54 AWalker9 wrote:On September 08 2014 04:41 Plansix wrote:On September 08 2014 04:22 y0su wrote:On September 08 2014 04:09 Plansix wrote:On September 08 2014 04:06 Hider wrote:On September 07 2014 22:45 sixfour wrote:On September 07 2014 22:37 Necro)Phagist( wrote:
Well WCS AM is going to be dead to me after this, GSL is on too late for me to watch live. So I guess I'm gonna have to rely on WCS EU to watch.
I never understood why so many people wanted region lock like this? Sure it will promote maybe a bit of growth in the foreign scenes for a season or two, but after that the novelty of foreign players playing will wear off and viewership is going to plummet. carmac said it best: https://twitter.com/mbCARMAC/status/507931765831266304 Instead of comparing apples to oranges, it would fit Carmac to try and explain why no region-locked tournament has been created by the market forces (invisible hand). If fans really prefered to watch the 50th best foreigner in action over the 50th, then tournaments would never have invited the Koreans in the first place. The reason why local leagues has higher viewership numbers (in that region) than Premier league is that the domestic club/team league has been branded strongly throughout your entire childhood. Creating such a strong brand for (medicore) domestic Starcraft players is extremely time-consuming, and Starcraft isn't in its grow-phase anymore. You cannot go around making investments into the infastructure of Starcraft and hope it will improve the scene 5 years from now on. Rather, focus needs to be on how viewer numbersc an be maximized over the next 1-2 years. Another issue with the argument is that domestic leagues still have critical viewer numbers from domestic viewers. In Denmark, there are still 50k-300K who regularly watch the Danish league, however Starcraft is way way too small to rely on only Danish viewers for a Danish tournament. Thus, any type of foreign events needs on foreign fans all around the world watching the event. However, while I would care about how a Danish starcrat player performs, I care much less about how some russians plays, thus this makes the attraction rates of foreign starcraft players much less than the attractivity of wathcing domestic football players. That doens't mean that there isn't some extra value to watching foreigners playing it out, however, we only wanna watch the very very best foriengers. In football, I can watch my local team playing, even if its bad, but in no way am I gonna watch a medicore Russian playing. Thus, Carmac's comparison cannot be applied for WCS. Thank god they are not running an only Danish tournament. And if they were, the prize pool would likely be smaller and it would be easier to keep it competitive and sustainable. But the cherry picking of facts continues while armature sports leagues still get viewership. Japanese baseball does just fine even though it isn't the MLB. And how many Japanese currently compete in the MLB? Is the goal to try to grow the player/fan base OR try to increase the skill level of the top players within the regions? The point is that the fanbase and viewership is independent of the skill in the region. People can be fans of something without it being the highest level of play and enjoy watching it. Region locking and tiers of play has always been part of every competitive everything. The argument that "SC2 fans want to see the highest level of play" is people projecting their point of view onto the entire community and assuming that their opinion is the majority, even though the polls at the beginning of the thread say otherwise. If you want to make the sport anaology then look at the football Premier League in the UK it lacks any region locking whatsoever but it's the most viewed football league in the world. This means the skill of all involved is higher and there are a lack of English players in the top teams as the best teams prefer to have the more established and skillful players. But is that the only football people watch is all of the world? Or do people watch regional leagues regardless of skill level?
Yes, and that's why people are currently watching "WTB European". I also think that many more tournaments could be more "local".
The other big thing to consider is how many WCS AM (NA?) viewers were actually EU viewers... and will those viewers be as interested in a potentially watered down event? I believe we're more likely to see a viewership drop instead of increase.
I also fear that this could be in two ways be a problem within the Korean scene:
a) B level Koreans are pushed out of the game.
b) Top level Koreans develop even more because of the level of competition (combined with the loss of top players in EU/NA leads to an even bigger foreigner-Korean skill gap)
Conversely, if skill truly is so important to viewers we should be seeing more Korean tournaments pop up!
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Yes, and that's why people are currently watching "WTB European". I also think that many more tournaments could be more "local".
Well around 8-10K watched the finals of a tournament showing the supposed 2 best european starcraft player (I guess its the 3rd-to-4th best given Snute and Bunny not participating). I don't think that's particularly high given the quality, and looking at the viewer numbers for the semi-final or final can be misleading. Rather, it's imporrtant to look at viewer numbers in the group stages of a 32-man tournament since that will contain a lot more medicority. I believed that it just had a couple of thousands.
Watching the very best foreigners is always gonna create solid viewer numbers, but watching the 30th best European isn't, and that's the main problem with the WCS change as it rewards medicore foreigners instead of the "very best foreigners". We can still see the latter battling it out against Koreans (or each other) in the current system.
I do agree with you that there is a market for "best foreigner"-tournaments, but I don't think WCS EU or WCS NA should be that place. I guess a middle-ground I could see would be to have a region-lock but combine EU and NA (in order to increase average skill of foreigners) while expanding upon WCS Korea.
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If the koreans come over to get the price money its unfair for the resident players because they don't have the environment to play on that level but the koreans get their price money to keep their lifestyle. If the koreans stay in their country its unfair because they have so much pressure against each other but the regional weaker players in NA/EU get the opportunity to get some price money and viewership to maybe build something out of it.
Ath the end both solutions cause a problem so the deciding factor is what the viewer wants. And the most viewers want to see players from their region that later represent them on the finals.
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I'm personally against closed polls, don't know where else to post about this but it affects this thread.
As someone who is more casual now and doesn't follow things enough to justify voting, this effects my experience reading threads and viewing LR recommendations. Although LR recommendations eventually become viewable for everyone, I have to wait for a while to find out the games I want to watch.
Furthermore, I am not qualified enough to vote on some of these matters and I just want to see the results.
This is my opinion though  . I may be in the minority!
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On September 08 2014 05:08 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2014 05:03 AWalker9 wrote:On September 08 2014 05:00 Plansix wrote:On September 08 2014 04:54 AWalker9 wrote:On September 08 2014 04:41 Plansix wrote:On September 08 2014 04:22 y0su wrote:On September 08 2014 04:09 Plansix wrote:On September 08 2014 04:06 Hider wrote:On September 07 2014 22:45 sixfour wrote:On September 07 2014 22:37 Necro)Phagist( wrote:
Well WCS AM is going to be dead to me after this, GSL is on too late for me to watch live. So I guess I'm gonna have to rely on WCS EU to watch.
I never understood why so many people wanted region lock like this? Sure it will promote maybe a bit of growth in the foreign scenes for a season or two, but after that the novelty of foreign players playing will wear off and viewership is going to plummet. carmac said it best: https://twitter.com/mbCARMAC/status/507931765831266304 Instead of comparing apples to oranges, it would fit Carmac to try and explain why no region-locked tournament has been created by the market forces (invisible hand). If fans really prefered to watch the 50th best foreigner in action over the 50th, then tournaments would never have invited the Koreans in the first place. The reason why local leagues has higher viewership numbers (in that region) than Premier league is that the domestic club/team league has been branded strongly throughout your entire childhood. Creating such a strong brand for (medicore) domestic Starcraft players is extremely time-consuming, and Starcraft isn't in its grow-phase anymore. You cannot go around making investments into the infastructure of Starcraft and hope it will improve the scene 5 years from now on. Rather, focus needs to be on how viewer numbersc an be maximized over the next 1-2 years. Another issue with the argument is that domestic leagues still have critical viewer numbers from domestic viewers. In Denmark, there are still 50k-300K who regularly watch the Danish league, however Starcraft is way way too small to rely on only Danish viewers for a Danish tournament. Thus, any type of foreign events needs on foreign fans all around the world watching the event. However, while I would care about how a Danish starcrat player performs, I care much less about how some russians plays, thus this makes the attraction rates of foreign starcraft players much less than the attractivity of wathcing domestic football players. That doens't mean that there isn't some extra value to watching foreigners playing it out, however, we only wanna watch the very very best foriengers. In football, I can watch my local team playing, even if its bad, but in no way am I gonna watch a medicore Russian playing. Thus, Carmac's comparison cannot be applied for WCS. Thank god they are not running an only Danish tournament. And if they were, the prize pool would likely be smaller and it would be easier to keep it competitive and sustainable. But the cherry picking of facts continues while armature sports leagues still get viewership. Japanese baseball does just fine even though it isn't the MLB. And how many Japanese currently compete in the MLB? Is the goal to try to grow the player/fan base OR try to increase the skill level of the top players within the regions? The point is that the fanbase and viewership is independent of the skill in the region. People can be fans of something without it being the highest level of play and enjoy watching it. Region locking and tiers of play has always been part of every competitive everything. The argument that "SC2 fans want to see the highest level of play" is people projecting their point of view onto the entire community and assuming that their opinion is the majority, even though the polls at the beginning of the thread say otherwise. If you want to make the sport anaology then look at the football Premier League in the UK it lacks any region locking whatsoever but it's the most viewed football league in the world. This means the skill of all involved is higher and there are a lack of English players in the top teams as the best teams prefer to have the more established and skillful players. But is that the only football people watch is all of the world? Or do people watch regional leagues regardless of skill level? Umm no but it's by far and away the most watched league in the world, others aren't even close. Well I think the point is that you can have regional league being watched a lot by people in that region (e.g. Danish football leauge is more popular than premier league in Denmark). This means that mediocre players can use the regional league to get a decent income while improving their skill and then move on to a bigger league if they are good enough. However, that model won't work for Sc2 (as I tried to argue previously). The issue is that you cannot get Danish people interested in following Russians for anything else than their skill level, and no country can really produce a critical level of numbers to be self-sustaining on their own. Therefore, the global scene needs to be united and cannot be divided into self-sustaining regional or local leagues that people can make a living off. Instead the league needs to be based (mainly) on skill if it wants to maximize viewer numbers.
Isn't Copa America already NA's region locked league? That's funded by Blizzard and gives out prize money.
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On September 08 2014 09:01 AWalker9 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2014 05:08 Hider wrote:On September 08 2014 05:03 AWalker9 wrote:On September 08 2014 05:00 Plansix wrote:On September 08 2014 04:54 AWalker9 wrote:On September 08 2014 04:41 Plansix wrote:On September 08 2014 04:22 y0su wrote:On September 08 2014 04:09 Plansix wrote:On September 08 2014 04:06 Hider wrote:Instead of comparing apples to oranges, it would fit Carmac to try and explain why no region-locked tournament has been created by the market forces (invisible hand). If fans really prefered to watch the 50th best foreigner in action over the 50th, then tournaments would never have invited the Koreans in the first place. The reason why local leagues has higher viewership numbers (in that region) than Premier league is that the domestic club/team league has been branded strongly throughout your entire childhood. Creating such a strong brand for (medicore) domestic Starcraft players is extremely time-consuming, and Starcraft isn't in its grow-phase anymore. You cannot go around making investments into the infastructure of Starcraft and hope it will improve the scene 5 years from now on. Rather, focus needs to be on how viewer numbersc an be maximized over the next 1-2 years. Another issue with the argument is that domestic leagues still have critical viewer numbers from domestic viewers. In Denmark, there are still 50k-300K who regularly watch the Danish league, however Starcraft is way way too small to rely on only Danish viewers for a Danish tournament. Thus, any type of foreign events needs on foreign fans all around the world watching the event. However, while I would care about how a Danish starcrat player performs, I care much less about how some russians plays, thus this makes the attraction rates of foreign starcraft players much less than the attractivity of wathcing domestic football players. That doens't mean that there isn't some extra value to watching foreigners playing it out, however, we only wanna watch the very very best foriengers. In football, I can watch my local team playing, even if its bad, but in no way am I gonna watch a medicore Russian playing. Thus, Carmac's comparison cannot be applied for WCS. Thank god they are not running an only Danish tournament. And if they were, the prize pool would likely be smaller and it would be easier to keep it competitive and sustainable. But the cherry picking of facts continues while armature sports leagues still get viewership. Japanese baseball does just fine even though it isn't the MLB. And how many Japanese currently compete in the MLB? Is the goal to try to grow the player/fan base OR try to increase the skill level of the top players within the regions? The point is that the fanbase and viewership is independent of the skill in the region. People can be fans of something without it being the highest level of play and enjoy watching it. Region locking and tiers of play has always been part of every competitive everything. The argument that "SC2 fans want to see the highest level of play" is people projecting their point of view onto the entire community and assuming that their opinion is the majority, even though the polls at the beginning of the thread say otherwise. If you want to make the sport anaology then look at the football Premier League in the UK it lacks any region locking whatsoever but it's the most viewed football league in the world. This means the skill of all involved is higher and there are a lack of English players in the top teams as the best teams prefer to have the more established and skillful players. But is that the only football people watch is all of the world? Or do people watch regional leagues regardless of skill level? Umm no but it's by far and away the most watched league in the world, others aren't even close. Well I think the point is that you can have regional league being watched a lot by people in that region (e.g. Danish football leauge is more popular than premier league in Denmark). This means that mediocre players can use the regional league to get a decent income while improving their skill and then move on to a bigger league if they are good enough. However, that model won't work for Sc2 (as I tried to argue previously). The issue is that you cannot get Danish people interested in following Russians for anything else than their skill level, and no country can really produce a critical level of numbers to be self-sustaining on their own. Therefore, the global scene needs to be united and cannot be divided into self-sustaining regional or local leagues that people can make a living off. Instead the league needs to be based (mainly) on skill if it wants to maximize viewer numbers. Isn't Copa America already NA's region locked league? That's funded by Blizzard and gives out prize money.
It's a Latin American tournament. Only this year did they allow a restricted number of North Americans to participate in the qualifiers, which I hope won't be the case next year now that the North Americans have their own significant region-locked event.
Also, the scope and promotion level are so far apart between WCS and Copa America, it's not really a valid comparison.
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Look at how many fucks are being given to Copa America.
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On September 08 2014 09:07 Circumstance wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2014 09:01 AWalker9 wrote:On September 08 2014 05:08 Hider wrote:On September 08 2014 05:03 AWalker9 wrote:On September 08 2014 05:00 Plansix wrote:On September 08 2014 04:54 AWalker9 wrote:On September 08 2014 04:41 Plansix wrote:On September 08 2014 04:22 y0su wrote:On September 08 2014 04:09 Plansix wrote:On September 08 2014 04:06 Hider wrote:
[quote]
Instead of comparing apples to oranges, it would fit Carmac to try and explain why no region-locked tournament has been created by the market forces (invisible hand). If fans really prefered to watch the 50th best foreigner in action over the 50th, then tournaments would never have invited the Koreans in the first place.
The reason why local leagues has higher viewership numbers (in that region) than Premier league is that the domestic club/team league has been branded strongly throughout your entire childhood. Creating such a strong brand for (medicore) domestic Starcraft players is extremely time-consuming, and Starcraft isn't in its grow-phase anymore. You cannot go around making investments into the infastructure of Starcraft and hope it will improve the scene 5 years from now on. Rather, focus needs to be on how viewer numbersc an be maximized over the next 1-2 years.
Another issue with the argument is that domestic leagues still have critical viewer numbers from domestic viewers. In Denmark, there are still 50k-300K who regularly watch the Danish league, however Starcraft is way way too small to rely on only Danish viewers for a Danish tournament. Thus, any type of foreign events needs on foreign fans all around the world watching the event. However, while I would care about how a Danish starcrat player performs, I care much less about how some russians plays, thus this makes the attraction rates of foreign starcraft players much less than the attractivity of wathcing domestic football players.
That doens't mean that there isn't some extra value to watching foreigners playing it out, however, we only wanna watch the very very best foriengers. In football, I can watch my local team playing, even if its bad, but in no way am I gonna watch a medicore Russian playing.
Thus, Carmac's comparison cannot be applied for WCS. Thank god they are not running an only Danish tournament. And if they were, the prize pool would likely be smaller and it would be easier to keep it competitive and sustainable. But the cherry picking of facts continues while armature sports leagues still get viewership. Japanese baseball does just fine even though it isn't the MLB. And how many Japanese currently compete in the MLB? Is the goal to try to grow the player/fan base OR try to increase the skill level of the top players within the regions? The point is that the fanbase and viewership is independent of the skill in the region. People can be fans of something without it being the highest level of play and enjoy watching it. Region locking and tiers of play has always been part of every competitive everything. The argument that "SC2 fans want to see the highest level of play" is people projecting their point of view onto the entire community and assuming that their opinion is the majority, even though the polls at the beginning of the thread say otherwise. If you want to make the sport anaology then look at the football Premier League in the UK it lacks any region locking whatsoever but it's the most viewed football league in the world. This means the skill of all involved is higher and there are a lack of English players in the top teams as the best teams prefer to have the more established and skillful players. But is that the only football people watch is all of the world? Or do people watch regional leagues regardless of skill level? Umm no but it's by far and away the most watched league in the world, others aren't even close. Well I think the point is that you can have regional league being watched a lot by people in that region (e.g. Danish football leauge is more popular than premier league in Denmark). This means that mediocre players can use the regional league to get a decent income while improving their skill and then move on to a bigger league if they are good enough. However, that model won't work for Sc2 (as I tried to argue previously). The issue is that you cannot get Danish people interested in following Russians for anything else than their skill level, and no country can really produce a critical level of numbers to be self-sustaining on their own. Therefore, the global scene needs to be united and cannot be divided into self-sustaining regional or local leagues that people can make a living off. Instead the league needs to be based (mainly) on skill if it wants to maximize viewer numbers. Isn't Copa America already NA's region locked league? That's funded by Blizzard and gives out prize money. It's a Latin American tournament. Only this year did they allow a restricted number of North Americans to participate in the qualifiers, which I hope won't be the case next year now that the North Americans have their own significant region-locked event. Also, the scope and promotion level are so far apart between WCS and Copa America, it's not really a valid comparison.
Still if there really was such a huge underlying interest for watching local players, wouldn't we expect somewhat decent viewer numbers? Obviously it cannot be compared directly to WCS, but still... at least 5-7K?
I think when this isn't the case, it just goes to show that skills matters. "Who is the best European" had 8-10K because the skill-level was pretty high overall, but if someone arranged a tournament called "Who is the best Korean" it would probably gather 15-20K viewers, and "who is the best Latin American" would probably get below 5K.
Thus, I feel each time I look at the data, it just supports my overall thesis that skill level is the main driver (with very few exceptions such as when Destiny goes on to hype his own tournaments).
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Sweden33719 Posts
On September 08 2014 05:18 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +Yes, and that's why people are currently watching "WTB European". I also think that many more tournaments could be more "local". Well around 8-10K watched the finals of a tournament showing the supposed 2 best european starcraft player (I guess its the 3rd-to-4th best given Snute and Bunny not participating). I don't think that's particularly high given the quality, and looking at the viewer numbers for the semi-final or final can be misleading. Rather, it's imporrtant to look at viewer numbers in the group stages of a 32-man tournament since that will contain a lot more medicority. I believed that it just had a couple of thousands. Watching the very best foreigners is always gonna create solid viewer numbers, but watching the 30th best European isn't, and that's the main problem with the WCS change as it rewards medicore foreigners instead of the "very best foreigners". We can still see the latter battling it out against Koreans (or each other) in the current system. I do agree with you that there is a market for "best foreigner"-tournaments, but I don't think WCS EU or WCS NA should be that place. I guess a middle-ground I could see would be to have a region-lock but combine EU and NA (in order to increase average skill of foreigners) while expanding upon WCS Korea.
1) That tournament didn't even have several of the best non-koreans (Snute, Bunny, Scarlett, Huk etc)
2) They said on stream, this tournament had WAY more viewers than the events with koreans they had held so saying it's 'bad numbers' is bullshit, the numbers are great.
3) People talking about premier league:
What is The Home Grown Player Rule?
Instituted at the beginning of the 2010/11 season, the Home Grown Player Requirement was designed to incentivize (or, more accurately, force) Premier League teams to sign players who were developed within the English League system, or develop such players themselves.
The Requirement is basically this: Each Premier League team can only register 25 players over the age of 21 for that season’s first-team matches. Of those 25 players, no more than 17 can be non-Home Grown Players. In other words, if you want the full complement of 25 over-21 players, you have to have at least 8 Home Grown Players. Note that this rule ONLY applies to Premier League matches, not fixtures in other competitions.
And do you think a single EPL player is playing in the UK without a visa? Because they aren't. Requiring a visa is not a strange requirement... I had to get a visa to play GSL -_-
That being said Blizzard SHOULD work to help people get athlete visas that are interested, especially ones that were already in WCS.
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I think this is brilliant move.
People are saying that this model of "united" league improves overall level of foreigners´ gameplay, but that is not true. Only those progamers that actually moved or at least spend a lot of time in respective regions and playing on respective ladders contribute to that.
Foreign scene is not improving because bunch of koreans who live in Korea and then play WCS Ro32 online with high latency and if advance, fligh over to play 2-5 matches.
But all of those got a taste of what it feels to compete in Eu/NA. And now they are forced to make choice... Who knows, maybe some of them will actually follow Polt and we might end up with more Koreans living and practicing outside of Korea.
And those others who were never serious about it and only joined Eu/NA to escape Korean competition... I personally think we are better without them. There are arleady some Koreans, and I seriously believe this will make more come.
Brilliant move indeed.
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The best viewership we had for WCS outside the the Global Finals was: WCS EU S1 2013 Day 2
2013
WCS EU S1 Finals
Finals Day 1 had an average of: 55060
Finals Day 2 had an average of 80461 (Stephano vs Mvp in the final)
WCS KR (GSL) S1 Finals
Had an average: 39738 (Soulkey vs INnoVation in the final)
WCS AM S1 Finals
Finals Day 1 had an average of: 35468
Finals Day 2 had an average of: 43999 (HerO vs Revival in the final)
Season 1 Finals (In Korea)
Finals Day 1 had an average of: 19190
Finals Day 2 had an average of: 26321
Finals Day had an average of: 33648 (sOs vs INnoVation in the final)
WCS KR S2 (OSL) Finals
Had an average of: 18880 (Rain vs Maru in the final)
WCS EU S2 Finals
Finals Day 1 had an average of: 45574
Finals Day 2 had an average of: 49893 (MC vs duckdeok in the final)
WCS AM S2 Finals
Finals Day 1 had an average of: 35711
Finals Day 2 had an average of: 43682 (Jaedong vs Polt in the final)
Season 2 Finals (EU)
Finals Day 1 had an average of: 57452
Finals Day 2 had an average of: 65112
Finals Day 3 had an average of: 72782 (Jaedong vs Bomber in the final)
WCS EU S3 Finals
Finals Day 1 had an average of: 35065
Finals Day 2 had an average of: 42943 (MMA vs MC in the final)
WCS KR S3 (GSL) Finals
Finals had an average of: 27264 (Dear vs soO in the final)
WCS AM S3 Finals
Finals Day 1 had an average of: 28625
Finals Day 2 had an average of: 29800 (Polt vs ByuL in the final)
Season 3 Finals (AM)
Finals Day 1 had an average of: 39666
Finals Day 2 had an average of: 45478
Finals Day 3 had an average of: 64584 (Dear vs Soulkey in the final)
Global Finals
Finals Day 1 had an average of: 92404
Finals Day 2 had an average of: 88648 (Jaedong vs sOs in the final)
2014 So Far...
GSL S1:
Finals had an average of: 20873 (Zest vs soO in the final)
WCS EU S1 Finals*
Finals Day 1 had an average of: 24968
Finals Day 2 had an average of: 25755
Finals Day 3 had an average of: 30300
Finals Day 4 had an average of: 44113 (MMA vs MC in the final)
WCS AM S1 Finals*
Finals Day 1 had an average of: 31918
Finals Day 2 had an average of: 30075
Finals Day 3 had an average of: 30998
Finals Day 4 had an average of: 35337 (HyuN vs Oz in the final)
*NOTE: Due to NASL folding ESL picked up WCS AM and due to short timing both WCS EU and AM finals were on the same day and split which is why it is different to all the other finals.
GSL S2
Finals had an average of: 17643 (Classic vs soO in the final)
WCS EU S2 Finals
Finals Day 1 had an average of: 28643
Finals Day 2 had an average of: 38129 (StarDust vs San in the final)
WCS AM S2 Finals
Finals Day 1 had an average of: 24150
Finals Day 2 had an average of: 31974 (Bomber vs Pigbaby in the final)
Observations
- It is clear when looking at this that WCS EU has been consistently the most popular outside of the Season Finals with Stephano vs Mvp in S1 2013 a highlight throughout all of WCS.
- GSL consistently struggles due to the time of day in which it takes place as AM are sleeping and EU are working or have school. Also none of the finals since Soulkey vs INnoVation have had the same level of hype with that series regarded as one of the best of the year simply because of the comeback.
- WCS AM has pretty consistent throughout.
- The high figures of the season finals indicates that people due enjoy watching koreans battle it out for high stakes.
- The season finals were generally the most popular events, concluding with the Global Finals.
- The hype generated by the Stephano vs Mvp series have gone unmatched and by looking at the figures it suggests as said time and again foreigner vs Korean finals have the most hype.
- Viewership for WCS is down this year especially compared with the early seasons last year.
Sources:
- http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/415709-top-50-streamers-in-may-2013-plus-wcs-numbers#WCS
- http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/419726-top-50-streamers-in-june-2013-plus-wcs-numbers#WCS
- http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/427676-top-50-streamers-in-august-2013-plus-wcs-numbers#WCS
- http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/434097-top-50-streamers-in-october-2013-wcs-numbers#WCS
- http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/449843-top-50-streamers-in-april-2014#WCS
- http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/460778-top-50-streamers-in-june-2014#WCS
- http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/464044-top-50-streamers-in-july-2014#WCS
- http://www.fuzic.nl/events/?order_by=vh&order=desc
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On September 08 2014 10:13 Liquid`Jinro wrote:
I had to get a visa to play GSL -_-
This single sentence does more to justify Blizzard's decision than any 5-paragraph argument I, or any other mere fan, could make.
On September 08 2014 10:13 Liquid`Jinro wrote:
That being said Blizzard SHOULD work to help people get athlete visas that are interested, especially ones that were already in WCS.
Agreed, not because of this change, but because more countries granting more athlete visas for esports is good for everyone, regardless of reason, context, or game.
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Sweden33719 Posts
This single sentence does more to justify Blizzard's decision than any 5-paragraph argument I, or any other mere fan, could make.
To be fair I didn't have one in the beginning, and the reason I had to get one was because of Korean immigration department and not Blizzard or GSL, but legally all the koreans playing WCS AM and EU probably should have visas too.
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On September 08 2014 10:26 AWalker9 wrote:
snip
Very interesting statistics, great post. Nice to see someone is keeping the historical data on all of this stuff. I knew Stephano vs Mvp was big but I didn't realize just how much bigger it was than most of the other WCS events. That series also has 365k views on the ESL youtube channel.
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As long as they make GSL Prize money higher and give it more points, and partner up with SPL to get some WCS points and also increase its prize pool, im happy with other regions being region locked
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Well, this is interesting....
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Just occurred to me, the "'s safe to say that the changes in progress will have an impact on the points distribution, which is currently being assessed." is probably not referring to GSL, but rather how other tournaments dish them out. Past couple of months people were discussing how ridiculous amounts of points are given out (MC, Hyun for a few examples).
While I agree 100% agree GSL should get more -a lot more, I don't see Blizzard changing it up. Theoretically all WCS regions should be equal in all ways.. but Blizzard isn't very good at being practical when it matters.
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EPT
