EPTToday I have a piece I filmed for you all with none other than the SC2Improve founder, streamer, and Caster extraordinaire, Wardi. Wardi and I had a lengthy, but fascinating conversation, ranging from his start in SC2, to hosting massive events, his love for Pokemon, and more! I hope you all enjoy this one, Jon was a pleasure to chat with.
Wardi "GSL Has Been Mismanaged Under Afreeca"
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StarcraftHistorian
United States154 Posts
Today I have a piece I filmed for you all with none other than the SC2Improve founder, streamer, and Caster extraordinaire, Wardi. Wardi and I had a lengthy, but fascinating conversation, ranging from his start in SC2, to hosting massive events, his love for Pokemon, and more! I hope you all enjoy this one, Jon was a pleasure to chat with. | ||
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PurE)Rabbit-SF
United States679 Posts
 Much love Wardi and thanks for your work, quite interesting. | ||
afreecaTV.Char
United States337 Posts
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iRkSupperman
Norway140 Posts
Atleast the English language broadcast did its best to try and hide this fact for a long time, GJ on that. | ||
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Haighstrom
United Kingdom207 Posts
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StarcraftHistorian
United States154 Posts
On December 14 2023 05:45 afreecaTV.Char wrote: I really appreciated the Tasteless interview, because at least he added the comment that the community underestimates the costs. The community severely underestimates the costs and simply doesn't see all of the things that must be considered or go into it. It's not a simple "just sell merch and get a foreign sponsor lmao." So glad to see you’re familiar with my work! First off, obviously I’m going for the popcorn headline in some respects, and both Wardi and I are aware it’s a complex and nuanced situation. I’m so glad to have this conversation with someone with a deeper understanding of the GSL’s position. That being said, Afreeca has been in ownership of the GSL for around 8 years. The Patreon campaign is basically the first time money has been generated from the foreign audience during that time. Merch isn’t some cure all, but 8 years of merch sales would represent a lot of capital. Not enough to cover the huge costs of the production I’m sure, but a lot. The GSL VODs generate tons of views with the foreign audience, is there a reason we can’t see sponsorships from foreign orgs on those videos? Is there a reason we can’t see foreign sponsors for the GSL on the whole? Would advertisers that are in foreign markets not pay more for the larger segment of your audience than Korean orgs pay for the tiny domestic viewership? Beyond that, think about the type of revenue that crowdfunding would have generated back in 2015 when the GSL viewership was much larger. Would the hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars that would have been generated over the years not have made a difference? Seems unlikely to me. All in all, it seems to me that a combination of these potential revenue sources would have had a big impact on the bottom line of the show. By all means explain how and why I’m misguided in these opinions, happy to learn! Cheers | ||
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Blargh
United States2103 Posts
Starcraft is really leagues off from LoL viewership (pun unintended), and even LoL is probably a net negative for most of these live productions. | ||
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Ronski
Finland266 Posts
On December 14 2023 06:54 Blargh wrote: I'm not really convinced that merch or the patreon contribute anything meaningful. It'll always be hard to overcome the fact that there just isn't the same kind of interest there used to be. Look at Afreeca's BW events, they do much better than the SC2 ones, but they're all still relatively barebones events and I really doubt there's much meaningful revenues coming from the live events. Afreeca probably makes way more from their BW star streamers than the sum of all live events. Starcraft is really leagues off from LoL viewership (pun unintended), and even LoL is probably a net negative for most of these live productions. I think this is because of the Korean domestic market. BW is more popular in Korea but not more popular as a whole. If Afreeca runs both games in a similar manner and marketing mostly for the Korean domestic audience then SC2 will get less viewership. SC2 should be marketed more towards the foreign audience. | ||
Nakajin
Canada8989 Posts
MLG is done, NASL is done, GOMTV is done, SPOTV is done, OGaming is done, Take is only hanging on by pouring his own money in HSC. IEM and Dreamhack only manage 2 offline event a year and haven't done in studio regional tournament in almost half a decade. And that's not counting the dozen of tournament series that has gone under or abandonned SC2 (AsusRog, cheesadelphia, MSI, WESG, etc..) Having a GSL in 2023 is a god damn miracle. You can always do better I guess, but I'd be weary of calling it "mismanaged". | ||
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tigera6
3445 Posts
So basically, Afreeca fault is that they didnt foresee how Blizzard would drop GSL support and react actively for it. And I dont even know how they plan for 2024 with the ESL season being extended for about 6-8 monhts. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26223 Posts
On December 14 2023 06:14 StarcraftHistorian wrote: So glad to see you’re familiar with my work! First off, obviously I’m going for the popcorn headline in some respects, and both Wardi and I are aware it’s a complex and nuanced situation. I’m so glad to have this conversation with someone with a deeper understanding of the GSL’s position. That being said, Afreeca has been in ownership of the GSL for around 8 years. The Patreon campaign is basically the first time money has been generated from the foreign audience during that time. Merch isn’t some cure all, but 8 years of merch sales would represent a lot of capital. Not enough to cover the huge costs of the production I’m sure, but a lot. The GSL VODs generate tons of views with the foreign audience, is there a reason we can’t see sponsorships from foreign orgs on those videos? Is there a reason we can’t see foreign sponsors for the GSL on the whole? Would advertisers that are in foreign markets not pay more for the larger segment of your audience than Korean orgs pay for the tiny domestic viewership? Beyond that, think about the type of revenue that crowdfunding would have generated back in 2015 when the GSL viewership was much larger. Would the hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars that would have been generated over the years not have made a difference? Seems unlikely to me. All in all, it seems to me that a combination of these potential revenue sources would have had a big impact on the bottom line of the show. By all means explain how and why I’m misguided in these opinions, happy to learn! Cheers Love your interviews, haven’t actually seen this particular one yet but figured I’d give my thoughts on just the headline, much as I bemoan the practice :p I think merch plus the demographic maybe not, but certainly Afreeca could have pushed more for foreign sponsorships given that was their main audience. Although I imagine you maybe get some headaches via conflicts with their existing sponsors. Likewise team merch, which I imagine would be the main items of interest, I mean how much would Afreeca itself benefit from lines of merchandise when they’d effectively be selling merch that different team orgs have the rights to? I can only speak for myself but I own one piece of esports merch, an older TL tee from back in the day. Maybe I’m just too old and cantankerous, although I don’t think age wise I’m an outlier on these forums, but most esports merch is super gaudy, clothing is way too flashy, peripherals have RGB out the arse and so I generally steer clear of it. I think the Patreon was successful primarily because people are paying to keep top level Korean StarCraft, basically. If I hear some old bar I enjoyed as a wayward teen is potentially going out of business I’ll go down and have a few beers for old times, help clear some debts. If it’s doing fine I stick with my current haunts. I’m not sure the pull is the same for a GSL that was propped up by Blizz money and sitting pretty. I think Afreeca could have brought in some additional revenue with a Patreon that offered replays and whatnot years back, but I’m not sure how big that pie looks. Personally would have given decent money for first person streams, 2x those plus caster audio is IMO the best possible way to watch SC2. But then again, basically nobody has run tournaments with that setup being possible. One only has to look at what a clusterfuck it was to get Tastosis doing a delayed cast on ASL, I imagine perhaps this is a small insight into potential problems you’d have with a streaming platform with a primarily Korean domestic audience trying to expand commercially to a Western audience that doesn’t use that platform. | ||
Mizenhauer
United States1906 Posts
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Poopi
France12906 Posts
The blame is probably more on blizzard than other orgs | ||
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Shinokuki
United States923 Posts
On December 14 2023 08:01 Ronski wrote: I think this is because of the Korean domestic market. BW is more popular in Korea but not more popular as a whole. If Afreeca runs both games in a similar manner and marketing mostly for the Korean domestic audience then SC2 will get less viewership. SC2 should be marketed more towards the foreign audience. Overall viewership for BW far eclipses SC2's. We had 250k peak viewership for BW last year alone. SC2 can never touch this no matter what. | ||
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StasisField
United States1086 Posts
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tedster
984 Posts
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NoobSkills
United States1601 Posts
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada17148 Posts
On December 14 2023 23:27 Poopi wrote: I kinda disagree with this take, GSL running this long despite a very low KR viewership (and low foreign viewership) / sc2 declining is almost a miracle. The blame is probably more on blizzard than other orgs i agree too! Blizzard should've comprised with the really smart Korean companies that were running Brood War esports in a great way up until 2009. I think when Activision took over that Vivendi leadership promised ATVI the sun the moon and the stars regarding esports. So then Activision tried to "cash in" when Sc2 had its own servers. Giant orgs fighting over big money and the fans these orgs claim they love so much got shafted. On December 14 2023 05:45 afreecaTV.Char wrote: I really appreciated the Tasteless interview, because at least he added the comment that the community underestimates the costs. The community severely underestimates the costs and simply doesn't see all of the things that must be considered or go into it. It's not a simple "just sell merch and get a foreign sponsor lmao." I think the GSL has been amazing under AfreecaTV. It has been great entertainment. Unfortunately, many on here think everything costs nothing and every aspect of their SC2 experience must be perfectly custom fit to their own personal needs. Over the years, the GSL has offered a great entertainment option for me and my friends. | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1247 Posts
On December 15 2023 08:42 JimmyJRaynor wrote: i agree too! Blizzard should've comprised with the really smart Korean companies that were running Brood War esports in a great way up until 2009. Which companies did run BW in an "amazing way"? Don't get me wrong, korean BW was impressive and by far the most advanced system we got in Esports until then, but it also was completly condensed into one country and one scene. Globally, WC3 was far bigger than BW just by the virtue that there actually was a competitive scene outside of Korea. And WC3 was basically run by ESL and a lot of mostly money-burning companies (e.g. ESWC). I seriouly doubt that SC2 would have the success it had if it was run like BW. If anything, there is a chance that Proleague might even have hurt the growth of SC2. Would have been a different story if Proleague was an actual global league, with a system that actually promoted global competition. On December 15 2023 01:40 Shinokuki wrote: Overall viewership for BW far eclipses SC2's. We had 250k peak viewership for BW last year alone. SC2 can never touch this no matter what. Are you confusing peak and overall viewership? Because the only data I can find is that BW has an all-time peak with ~70K, while SC2 more than doubles that with 176K | ||
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Sd13
Vietnam186 Posts
ASL11 finals total afreeca viewer total + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](https://imgur.com/qxfcanj) ASL16 final viewer count + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](https://imgur.com/fUz3wsO) StarCraft: Remastered viewer metrics October 2023 + Show Spoiler + ![[image loading]](https://imgur.com/CIkWIZc) | ||
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