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If people were wondering how Valve could possibly improve on the spectacular TI2 production, well, this is the biggest one. Right now it looks like Valve plans on reusing the Benaroya Hall in the future considering how early they told us they were gonna reuse the venue last year.
It's a great venue. It's got state of the art acoustic features, it looks beautiful, it's got great seats for the audience, and everything went smoothly last year. But it's not fit as a stage like the International.
Biggest issue? It only has 2500 seats. That's TINY for this kind of event when we expect the crowd to go insane and be heard through the streams. Why did the tickets sell out so fast and why was it so hard to get one? It becomes obvious when you take a look at that number. 2500? That's a little more than a large high school.
The venue doesn't need to be comfy or have great acoustics. This is closer to a sporting event than a symphony. Sometimes quantity is better than quality and the people who are going to this event shouldn't be considered "elite". For the purposes of the International, this couldn't be a worse match. To put things into perspective, large basketball stadiums can hold 20k people. If they could rent out a stadium like RIOT did I'm sure this event could fill it up. It'd be insane to have 20k people there all watching Dota.
 
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It's better for them to be "conservative" and sellout with a quality venue, as opposed to overpurchasing on a giant-ass one and under-seating. The majority of views and their greatest concern is going to be the streaming portion, rather than the live one - IMO.
Consider also the nature of the sport - as a live viewer you are watching a giant-ass screen as opposed to a bunch of athletes duking it out in a stadium which encourages frequent breaks and movement. I would say that the venue being comfy with great acoustics is a PLUS. That's a great thing. You're sitting on your ass watching a screen - acoustics comprise a LOT of what you just paid to see.
2500 for this sort of event is impressive and is by no means a disappointment. Also consider that Valve's headquarters are in the Seattle area (Bellevue) - it makes sense for them to rent out the Benaroya.
Though yes, the image of 20k people watching Dota in a venue is a glorious one.
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On May 11 2013 10:48 Qwyn wrote:
It's better for them to be "conservative" and sellout with a quality venue, as opposed to overpurchasing on a giant-ass one and under-seating. The majority of views and their greatest concern is going to be the streaming portion, rather than the live one - IMO.
Consider also the nature of the sport - as a live viewer you are watching a giant-ass screen as opposed to a bunch of athletes duking it out in a stadium which encourages frequent breaks and movement. I would say that the venue being comfy with great acoustics is a PLUS. That's a great thing. You're sitting on your ass watching a screen - acoustics comprise a LOT of what you just paid to see.
2500 for this sort of event is impressive and is by no means a disappointment. Also consider that Valve's headquarters are in the Seattle area (Bellevue) - it makes sense for them to rent out the Benaroya.
Though yes, the image of 20k people watching Dota in a venue is a glorious one.
Yeah, I generally agree with this, until people show time and time again that they want a 20k seating stadium, like the Seahawks arena or another Seattle sports arena, valve shouldn't overshoot it. There isn't a reason for them to do so either, watching it live is awesome, but they are far more concerned with the streaming portion.
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On May 11 2013 10:48 Qwyn wrote:
It's better for them to be "conservative" and sellout with a quality venue, as opposed to overpurchasing on a giant-ass one and under-seating. The majority of views and their greatest concern is going to be the streaming portion, rather than the live one - IMO.
Consider also the nature of the sport - as a live viewer you are watching a giant-ass screen as opposed to a bunch of athletes duking it out in a stadium which encourages frequent breaks and movement. I would say that the venue being comfy with great acoustics is a PLUS. That's a great thing. You're sitting on your ass watching a screen - acoustics comprise a LOT of what you just paid to see.
2500 for this sort of event is impressive and is by no means a disappointment. Also consider that Valve's headquarters are in the Seattle area (Bellevue) - it makes sense for them to rent out the Benaroya.
Though yes, the image of 20k people watching Dota in a venue is a glorious one.
? I'm sure everyone would LOVE to be comfy and have great acoustics at ANY event, but it's not necessary, especially when most of the noise should be coming from the crowd yelling and cheering at this type of event. And you've got it wrong. The venue doesn't give great acoustics for the stream, only for the people in the audience with the sound projecting in a certain direction from the stage. It's engineered for a live performance. If you watched last year you'd realize that the sound quality of the casters was actually kind of mediocre.
2500 people is not anywhere impressive. Have you seen an event with 2500 people? Look at other big tournament finals and where they're held. GSL, G-League, etc. are all held on much bigger stages. This is the International. It deserves the biggest stage. And personally, I find it a better viewing experience if the live crowd is huge.
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On May 11 2013 17:32 Itsmedudeman wrote:Show nested quote +On May 11 2013 10:48 Qwyn wrote:
It's better for them to be "conservative" and sellout with a quality venue, as opposed to overpurchasing on a giant-ass one and under-seating. The majority of views and their greatest concern is going to be the streaming portion, rather than the live one - IMO.
Consider also the nature of the sport - as a live viewer you are watching a giant-ass screen as opposed to a bunch of athletes duking it out in a stadium which encourages frequent breaks and movement. I would say that the venue being comfy with great acoustics is a PLUS. That's a great thing. You're sitting on your ass watching a screen - acoustics comprise a LOT of what you just paid to see.
2500 for this sort of event is impressive and is by no means a disappointment. Also consider that Valve's headquarters are in the Seattle area (Bellevue) - it makes sense for them to rent out the Benaroya.
Though yes, the image of 20k people watching Dota in a venue is a glorious one. ? I'm sure everyone would LOVE to be comfy and have great acoustics at ANY event, but it's not necessary, especially when most of the noise should be coming from the crowd yelling and cheering at this type of event. And you've got it wrong. The venue doesn't give great acoustics for the stream, only for the people in the audience with the sound projecting in a certain direction from the stage. It's engineered for a live performance. If you watched last year you'd realize that the sound quality of the casters was actually kind of mediocre. 2500 people is not anywhere impressive. Have you seen an event with 2500 people? Look at other big tournament finals and where they're held. GSL, G-League, etc. are all held on much bigger stages. This is the International. It deserves the biggest stage. And personally, I find it a better viewing experience if the live crowd is huge.
Actually not true, I've been to several GSL events and the stages were of similar size to Benaroya Hall..the event in Daejon (guess that was March 2011?) had around 1000-1500 seats in my guess, but it was definitely smaller than the stage in Seattle. The DSL going on right now in China is an awesome stage, but if you count the amount of live viewers its similar to the GSL studio, a few hundred max.
Last years International didn't even fill the hall, but the atmosphere was friggin' amazing (wasn't there but just hearing the crowd on stream gave me goosebumps). If this year will be 100% filled, then they can expand into a bigger venue (pretty sure it will be filled judging by the short time it took to sell all the tickets but we'll see).
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Agree. Compare it to the OSL of old, or even the D2SL now it's like nothing.
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51284 Posts
WCG in 2007 was done at Qwest Field - although I'm not too sure how open the space is inside the stadium itself.
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agreed with a new venue, it would also discourage the stupid ticket reselling happening right now
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United States22883 Posts
On May 11 2013 17:32 Itsmedudeman wrote:Show nested quote +On May 11 2013 10:48 Qwyn wrote:
It's better for them to be "conservative" and sellout with a quality venue, as opposed to overpurchasing on a giant-ass one and under-seating. The majority of views and their greatest concern is going to be the streaming portion, rather than the live one - IMO.
Consider also the nature of the sport - as a live viewer you are watching a giant-ass screen as opposed to a bunch of athletes duking it out in a stadium which encourages frequent breaks and movement. I would say that the venue being comfy with great acoustics is a PLUS. That's a great thing. You're sitting on your ass watching a screen - acoustics comprise a LOT of what you just paid to see.
2500 for this sort of event is impressive and is by no means a disappointment. Also consider that Valve's headquarters are in the Seattle area (Bellevue) - it makes sense for them to rent out the Benaroya.
Though yes, the image of 20k people watching Dota in a venue is a glorious one. 2500 people is not anywhere impressive. Have you seen an event with 2500 people? Look at other big tournament finals and where they're held. GSL, G-League, etc. are all held on much bigger stages. This is the International. It deserves the biggest stage. And personally, I find it a better viewing experience if the live crowd is huge.
I think they're better off with a packed 2500 than a half empty 10k. It IS an exclusive event and just like a night club, you want people waiting outside and excited to get in (for TI4.) If you get a big space and can't fill it, it's a much bigger letdown than not being able to let everyone in. The ticket revenue is mostly irrelevant. It's about appearances and they're best served with the appearance of over-demand.
Now it might be possible to achieve that with a 4-5k venue, but they're playing it conservatively and they already know what they've got and how to run things/do production in that theater, so there won't be any growing pains or risks involved.
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