I remember the early days of Starcraft II when there were lots of teams and sponsors, anytime you got a mic in front of an EG player, they would talk about the team and then list and thank every one of their sponsors. I actually knew who their sponsors were and what they sold. Players would also self promote their social media to help cultivate a following, further increasing their appeal to sponsors. Incontrol was especially great at this.
Nowadays, it seems like players never mention their sponsors or even team names. During WCS NA Challenger, production and casters couldn't even be bothered to get Scarlett's current team name correct. Players usually don't even tell you what their Twitch and Twitter names are so you can more easily follow them.
Sponsors and teams should be getting more attention from players and even casters if they are allowed to speak about them (not sure). More exposure might help attract more sponsors and support more players.
i think it's the sponsor's job to make the players or casters do this. they pay for advertising, and it's their own responsibility to control the level of exposure they're getting through dialogue with players and events. i don't think neeb awkwardly telling me to buy deodorant in the middle of a winners interview is going to magically grow sc2 esports
On August 29 2018 12:13 ZigguratOfUr wrote: There's some discussion about this during the most recent Inside The Scene (which I assume is what motivated that post):
I actually hadn't seen that, I'll check it out. It just occurred to me recently that I didn't know what Ting was or who sponsors Psistorm Gaming and that I couldn't remember Scarlett's new team name. Hearing the old Team Expert name used at WCS and how nobody seemed to care to fix it was the trigger for me I think.
On August 29 2018 12:13 brickrd wrote: i think it's the sponsor's job to make the players or casters do this. they pay for advertising, and it's their own responsibility to control the level of exposure they're getting through dialogue with players and events. i don't think neeb awkwardly telling me to buy deodorant in the middle of a winners interview is going to magically grow sc2 esports
Honestly the player could at least do a little more, some of them don't even thank their team/sponsor in their onstage interview, it wouldn't hurt anyone and it at least give a bit of exposure to them. For example on the top of my head I can't say what Serral team is, of course it's not just the player fault but it could be beneficial too them to try getting their team/sponsor names out there.
Having the team name display in gameheart (the game overlay) also seems like a simple way to make SC2 a bit more interesting to teams. (They have the logo, but they could have the team name written in the overlay)
There used to be professional Esports teams in SC2. Those teams existed for years and they did so because they had/have sponsors and the sponsors saw value in sponsoring the teams. Those teams coached the players to advertise their sponsors. EG was especially good at this while it was still owned by Garfield and had Scoots running it. But there was also Dignitas, Fnatic, Mousesports, Complexity, etc.
Those organizations existed before SC2 and I think all still exist because they knew how to be valuable to sponsors. When SC2 lost a lot of viewership, those organizations moved on to the next big thing so they could continue to be valuable to sponsors. It seems like most of these current teams are just passion projects with Team Liquid being the exception as both a passion project (for SC2) and a professional team.
1) No one is currently offering enough money/support to make it worth their time (if the sponsor doesn't have the leverage to demand more plugs, why do it for free?)
2) Players assume that going above and beyond to promote the limited sponsors that DO exist is unlikely to pay off with more/better sponsorship in the future given the market situation for StarCraft II esports. I'm not saying this is necessarily a correct assumption, as we've seen plenty of past examples of sponsor friendly players/casters being rewarded (iNcontrol etc.). But I can understand why player would have a negative impression of the current SC2 market and not want to bother.
On August 29 2018 12:13 ZigguratOfUr wrote: There's some discussion about this during the most recent Inside The Scene (which I assume is what motivated that post):
I will shamefully copy paste a recap from Reddit :
1, The demographics of Starcraft are better than any other game. You might get 1000 purchases out of 10,000 viewers in SC2 whereas you might get 100 purchases out of 100,000 viewers for Fortnite. SC2 players are older and have more money to spend.
2. Starcraft is difficult for teams. There are no officially sponsored Blizzard team leagues. This is a 1v1 game and no one cares about "Psistorm Gumiho" they would just call him "Gumiho". This can be alleviated by adding team logos and etc in game (team logo on the map itself, having the team logo near the hatchery, team-specific skins, sprays, etc.) There is no real reason to have a wide roster of players. 1 all-star player like Serral will give you more coverage than 20 mid-high tier players. The implication of this is that teams (like Scythe) will sign one GSL player and one WCS circuit player. The one upside to this was that it is cheaper to invest in SC2 compared to other games since you only have to sponsor 1 or 2 players rather than an entire team of 5 people to compete in team-based game.
3. Teams lose money by having a sc2 team. None of these team owners said they made money from their sc division. It is used to increase their brand awareness and make it easier to appear legitimate to sponsors and expand into other areas. Most do it out of passion for the game and/or community.
4. Pitching SC2 to sponsors is not difficult. Most sponsors just want to get into esports and don't know enough about the various options to get in. SC2 is a classic game and is a safe long-term investment in the very short/volatile market that is esports. For example, Fortnite is big now, but it may or may not be popular in 1 year whereas SC2 is guaranteed to still have strong viewership in 2019.
5. Starcraft going F2P has not materially changed these team owners' approach to investment in SC2. All agreed going F2P was a good move by Blizzard and viewership has gone up as a result. It hasn't made serious shifts in their return on investments in their SC divisions but had SC2 not gone F2P it could have had negative long term impacts since pretty much all esports are now F2P. If anything, it has shut down the "ded game" meme and made it even easier to pitch Starcraft to sponsors.
6. (somewhat unrelated) If you can't get to top 50 part-time you won't be able to get top 1 as Full Time. Be realistic with your career goals and realize professional SC2 is not a viable choice for 99.99% of SC2 players.
Players are not your sellout boys, they should focus on playing and represing the team. There is role called social media manager aka (Teams face) which should do exacly what u guys listed here. E.g: Taking care of proper names, twitters etc. etc..
Next is that to actually get some decent money sponsors would want something in return, if its legitimate sponsor which fits into SC2 viewerbase demographic, than its okay to have some kind of logo up and talk to players which should stream. Next maybe setup a bot who would spam links once evey 10-15 minutes.
I know this sounds like a shit job to do in a team, but even if some social media manager in SC2 would request money it would be very very light financial weight.
For example: stupid tweet like this retweeted by the streaming player would get already good amount of exposure (for more popular players)
I think the problem is not that players are dropping the ball, but team are not working with players enough to satisfy both parties.
On August 29 2018 12:07 Zzoram wrote: anytime you got a mic in front of an EG player
Yes, do let's go back to a time where EG manufactured drama for short term eyeballs and prioritized sponsor spots over developing talent.
The scene took years to recover from that drama-mongering ("say something mean about him in the pre-game interview!", "be an asshole on stream so people hatewatch you!"). I reckon the overlap of people who are dedicated long term SC2 players and those who enjoy the Incontrol / IdrA Kardashian show is minuscule.
EPT
Incontrol was especially great at this.
