Here we are again, time to breakdown the rights and the wrongs, the whys and wherefores of SHOUTcraft America Winter and see what needs to be improved for the future.
It didn't break!
Perhaps the most surprising thing to a lot of people is that unlike the previous SHOUTcraft America which was plagued by technical problems we suffered a grand total of zero. Yup, none at all. The stream was rock solid the entire way through encoding hundreds of thousands of frames and dropping absolutely none at all. I played it safe this time around. My computer has the horsepower to encode at 60fps with Gamesource in Xsplit without dropping frames, unfortunately Starcraft 2 is a poorly optimised game during large battles on high and ultra detail levels and even on this monstrous rig will drop below 60fps during big fights. Certain maps also have framerate issues which have yet to be fully resolved. Even if Starcraft 2 did benefit heavily from SLI which it does not (it literally receives zero benefit from SLI), Xsplit doesn't play nice with SLI (neither does OBS so stop asking) and the game only uses 2 of the 6 physical 6 virtual cores that my cpu actually has, so it's nowhere near able to utilize my computers full potential. I have to wonder if a second machine with hardware capture to encode would allow the game to stay at 60fps on ultra during big fights but I doubt even that is possible, I'm going to have a word with the guys who do the production at Dreamhack and see if they have some kind of sorcery going on that lets them hold 60fps constantly regardless of fight size, but I have the feeling that they too are dropping below 60. This is something that needs to be sorted out come Legacy of the Void, the games optimisation has only gotten worse over the course of expansions and this causes problems for tournament organisers and players alike.
All of that said however, the choice to go with 30fps on our stream seemed to be the right call and ensured rock solid streaming and framerate experience with increased visual quality for everyone at 720p+. Our stream looked pretty damn good, though I imagine that had something to do with Stronger Colors in Gameheart.
If you're not using Gameheart, you're shooting yourself in the foot
A big round of applause for Gameheart and its developers. Those maps continue to go from strength to strength in terms of their functionality. The ingame scoreboard was a huge timesaver for us and allowed me to reduce the complexity of the production process resulting in less (afaik actually no) production errors. We'll continue to use Gameheart exclusively for any events we run in future and urge other tournaments to do the same. The functionality of these maps is peerless and strong colours imho should become standard for tournament play since it gives a superior viewing experience to spectators. This is particularly true in mirror matchups, specifically ZvZ where the coloured banelings make it much easier for spectators and casters to see exactly what's going on at any given moment in the early game. I've seen some of the upcoming functionality for this map and it's extremely exciting. The sponsor was particularly pleased to see their branding on the map and as a teamowner I've always been happy to see our teams logo there too. Brand awareness is a real thing even if you aren't making money out of it directly, people should see the Axiom logo and know exactly what it is at first glance. Gameheart maps have done a lot to make that happen and they continue to make online matches more viable as promotional tools for teams and sponsors. I honestly have nothing bad to say about Gameheart in its current form and it's only going to get stronger as the new patch brings extensions into play which will allow Gameheart to be used on every map without the team having to individually alter each of them.
Time to get transparent with the numbers
I like transparency, maybe a little too much for other peoples tastes. So instead of telling you what my stats are, I will show them to you.
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There ya go. Let's compare to how SHOUTcraft America Season 1 did.
32152 SCI4 Day 1 Maximum concurrent viewers 49337 SCI4 Day 2 Maximum concurrent viewers
449405 SCI4 Day 1 Total views 445978 SCI4 Day 2 Total views
198120 SCI4 Day 1 Unique viewers 184462 SCI4 Day 2 Unique viewers
36315 SCA Day 1 Max Concurrents 22231 SCA Day 2 Max Concurrents 21604 SCA Day 3 Max Concurrents 13426 SCA Day 4 Max Concurrents 34058 SCA Day 5 Max Concurrents 27550 SCA Day 6 Max Concurrents 18322 SCA Day 7 Max Concurrents
334620 SCA Day 1 Total Views 155060 SCA Day 2 Total Views 147480 SCA Day 3 Total Views 85220 SCA Day 4 Total Views 255960 SCA Day 5 Total Views 161440 SCA Day 6 Total Views 59780 SCA Day 7 Total Views
181360 SCA Day 1 Unique Viewers 86640 SCA Day 2 Unique Viewers 81540 SCA Day 3 Unique Viewers 55420 SCA Day 4 Unique Viewers 145880 SCA Day 5 Unique Viewers 98140 SCA Day 6 Unique Viewers 41460 SCA Day 7 Unique Viewers
Day 2 unique stats on SHOUTcraft America Winter were better than Day 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 stats during the original SHOUTcraft America tournament. Day 2 concurrent stats were better than Day 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7 of the original SHOUTcraft America tournament. You can see 2 spikes during SCA that ended up being significantly higher than SCA:W, Day 1 and Day 5. The explanations are fairly simple I think. Day 1 benefited from significant hype but more importantly, curiosity from the community. This curiosity dropped off after the first day and numbers continued to fall throughout the group stage, rallying in the RO8 almost entirely because of IdrAs co-cast, which was shortly after his release from EG and announcement of his intention to cease competing as a professional player and move into casting. This was his first gig after that and the massive publicity surrounding IdrA at the time gave a big boost to the numbers on the day that he was casting. I'm personally quite proud of that move as it proved to be savvy. In this case while IdrA is extremely well-regarded as a cocaster, the hype surrounding him has waned as all things do. The memory of his dismissal is faded but he still commands a significant fanbase and SCA:W absolutely benefited from that, not to mention his stellar analytical ability and dry humour.
Another important thing to consider was the fact that Day 1 clashed with ASUS ROG Northcon. This was a stellar confluence of bad luck on our part. We had scheduled our event so that it would start after ASUS ROG Northcon was supposed to end, however that tournament was plagued with issues and huge delays which meant that the finals overlapped with us significantly. The stars aligned and left a killer round of 4 and an unbelievable story for their finals. Would Jaedong beat the kong curse or would Scarlett at 1 minute to midnight prevent the Korean all-kill? 2 of the most hyped players on the planet were on the stage and unfortunately SCA:W could not compete with that. We suffered on Day 1 from this clash but it didn't end there.
Forfeits
This was by far the most disappointing part of our event and left viewers feeling robbed of series they'd been looking forward. Frankly Day 1 was a disaster when it came to actually showing BO5s. What was supposed to be a full roster of 4 BO5s ended up being 1 actual BO5, 2 forfeits mid-series and a postponed Scarlett vs Hitman match. Demuslim vs HuK was supposed to be the title fight for the evening and many fans were looking forward to it, however instead we saw lackluster play and a mid-series forfeit. Players who are ill cannot play to their full potential, that much is obvious. Demuslim did not make it clear what the problem was prior to his match beginning. He asked for a postponement but at that point we had already postponed one BO5 which would have shortened the evening dramatically and left us with a massive workload on Day 2 (4 BO5s and a BO7, which was certainly not the plan). I feel that if a player cannot play to his full potential then that information should be given clearly prior to the event even beginning. The situation at the time was it was never made fully clear by the player why he wished to postpone his match and it was done just before the match was schedule to begin. Just so you understand my role, I am caster, observer, producer and tournament organiser. I have logistical support from Genna who does a lot of the organisation before the event and admin support from Vequeth but when it comes to the live show, the majority of the duties fall on me and they do so all at once in a live environment with no safety net. My mind is always in several places at once during these events and I was already frustrated due to the issues we'd had with Northcon and Majors previous forfeit. Having to make a snap judgment call during a live show without all the facts and no preparation for having that particular bombshell dropped is just not good, there's no other way to really describe it. Did I make the right call? Should I have postponed that match too? I don't know, but the end result is we had 2 forfeits and we had to take them both at face value.
So how do we fix this?
For any future events run under the SHOUTcraft brand I am instituting 3 new rules going forward.
1) Players wishing to compete in a SHOUTcraft tournament must not attend another tournament at the same time as SHOUTcraft 2) Players who forfeit their match during a SHOUTcraft event will be ineligible for any future SHOUTcraft events. If a player forfeits at least 24 hours in advance of the event, this penalty will not apply. 3) SHOUTcraft will take a snapshot of ladder ranks including “chase” players who did not quite make the qualification spots and put those players on standby to fill spots of players who forfeit. Those players will directly replace the forfeited player in the bracket and will play that players scheduled opponent as normal.
Neither of these rules are retroactive because well, that would be a dick move. This puts a greater impetus on us to minimise clashes with these tournaments and showmatches so we don't put players in awkward positions when it comes to deciding which tournament to compete in. It also gives greater room to both our tournament and other events to reach their full viewer potential. Due to Blizzards WCS changes in 2014, we feel confident that there is room now for everyone to put on their event without having to worry about losing viewers and star players to another concurrent event. Were these rules in effect, we would not have had to postpone Scarletts match (this is not her fault by the way, she was playing within the rules of our event and her tournament dragged on far longer than expected) and the issue with Major would not have occurred either (he was at a LAN tournament that evidently had a poor connection which caused his forfeit).
Spots in these tournaments are very limited, so it is vitally important that we get the most out of each of them. We could have had Suppy or CatZ playing in this tournament were we able to replace our forfeited players. Unfortunately those players forfeited mid series which would have made that absolutely impossible. These new rules should minimise the chance of that ever happening again.
A word from our sponsors
I asked our sponsor http://shoutcraft.ting.com to do a writeup on their opinions of how the event went. This writeup contains an unprecedented level of transparency which they have allowed us to share with the public. This is a unique opportunity for us to educate the eSports public on the fiscal realities of these events. This might be a shock for some of you.
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ShoutCraft America Sponsorship Summary
Statistics
Cost of event - $5,000
7400 Total Visitors
US Visitors -2,786 2.44 pages and 1:29m duration 366 visitors 3+ minutes ($13.66 per visitor) 14 signups ($357.14 per acquisition)
Keep in mind this is only traffic directed to http://shoutcraft.ting.com. Using comparisons from the ShoutCraft weekend versus past weekends, it’s likely we brought 3,000ish visitors to ting.com as well.
While this wouldn't be considered a "marketing success," we really feel good about supporting the eSports scene. The amount of appreciation we received from eSports fans was insane, and we’re thrilled that the community is so grateful to its sponsors. We were successful in terms of increasing awareness about our service, but we didn’t see a high number of conversions (which, unfortunately was the main goal of the marketing contest). This was somewhat expected, as we know it takes time before most people decide to switch their mobile providers (due to ETF’s, waiting till the new year, high cost of purchasing a device outright). The table below also confirms this fact, as the conversions have been fairly consistent over the past 8 days since the event. We’re hoping this trend will continue, and I’ll be sure to give you updates intermittently (if you’d like).
If you’re wondering how we have 14 conversions above (instead of 12, like here), it’s because I had two r/Starcraft users who I helped sign up but they forgot to use shoutcraft.ting.com (I manually added the $25 code)
Feedback and future events
First off, I want to let you know that the VP of marketing said he’s really interested in the gaming scene and that it definitely shows a lot of promise. He believes (and I do as well), that with some minor changes on both sides, a future ShoutCraft event could be a very successful marketing campaign for Ting. I’m not yet sure what our marketing budget is for 2014, but I’m hoping that we’ll be able to sponsor another ShoutCraft event in the next few months (if that’s something you guys would be interested in doing as well). I can’t make any promise of this, but I’ll be sure to let you know right away if I’m told anything else. During the ShoutCraft event, I thought the quantity of Ting placements was great, however, I think that the quality of promotional content could be improved upon. At the beginning of Saturday’s broadcast, you provided great insight into our service and how we’re different from other carriers, but I don’t think you went into any similar detail over the rest of the weekend (I could be mistaken, though, I missed a few minutes here and there). While the prerecorded ads between games brought considerable traffic to our site, we received >200 concurrent visitors (almost double compared to any other point in the weekend) when you spoke live about our service. What’s also interesting, is that this live read was during the ASUS ROG North Con Scarlett/Jaedong final when we had around 14,000~ viewers. Would be interesting to see the amount of visitors on shoutcraft.ting.com if a detailed live read would have happened during Sunday’s viewership. The Twitch conversations seemed positive around Ting, as did reddit and Team Liquid conversations, so I don’t think slightly longer live reads would be a problem for the audience.
We have a variety of competitive advantages over other US mobile providers, therefore optimal promotion for us during the event would be to touch on one key benefit each time Ting is mentioned. So for example, here are some things you could mention during the broadcast.
* Ting will pay 25% of your Early Termination Fee, up to $75 per device, when you switch to Ting!
*Ting has a savings calculator. Input your usage and instantly see if switching to Ting will save you money. This is the best way for potential customers to realize their savings. It's worth noting that savings are likely for those who are not heavy data users.
* Ting now supports Sprint iPhone 4/4s' * No hold customer support
* Online account dashboard that lets you control everything about your mobile plan. Turn off data/text message/voice, alerts for all 3, etc
* Referral program gives you $50 for your first referral, $25 for every referral after.
* Unique rates, if you use under 500MB a month of data you're almost guaranteed to save with Ting.
* Included voice/text roaming on Verizon
(Just fyi, we will likely have some new devices, promotions and updates if/when the next Shoutcraft)
Thanks for a successful first event, it was a pleasure working with you and I hope we can do so again soon!
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Reality sets in
So there you have it. As a pure business venture, SHOUTcraft America Winter can be considered a failure. It did not provide the requisite ROI for the company providing the sponsorship. That's actually a bit of a cold hard gutpunch of reality when you think about it, a $5000 tournament did not provide enough ROI for the sponsor and if they did not believe in the concept of eSports and wanted to support it regardless, it's not likely they would attempt it again because the numbers simply were not there. It begs the question, is a service like Ting.com an ideal sponsor for an event like this? Some might say anything is an ideal sponsor and to some degree I'd say that's true but if you want them to invest longterm they have to see Return on Investment. Ting is unfortunately a US only carrier. As you can see by the statistics they provided, only 37.6% of the visitors to the site during the event could actually use the service at all. These regional restrictions are actually a huge problem for sponsors and it's something we've run into as a unique problem with Axiom eSports as well. We are a Korean team with an international audience, which makes getting Korean sponsorship in the way that eSF and Kespa teams do nigh on impossible. It also makes marketing the team to a foreign sponsor difficult because they see Koreans and they think “well we're not interested in the Korean market”. We've had multiple sponsors turn us down on this basis. While the US was the largest single demographic in terms of viewership over the weekend as you can see by the stats I provided earlier, they are not in fact the majority of the viewers as a whole. I've said it time and again, you cannot ignore that European demographic and they proved that once more even with a tournament consisting entirely of players that were not from their region. Focusing on Europe as generally a good idea when it comes to bringing in the viewers and SCI4, an entirely European invitational lineup had the strongest numbers we've ever had for an online tournament and afaik, it holds the unbeaten record for concurrent and unique views for an online only event. This does not bode well for future SHOUTcraft America events. The focus in US players hurts our viewership, it's as simple as that. We had the heavy hitters from the US/Canada/Mexico regions, HuK, Major and Scarlett and that was not enough to bring in the big numbers. As nice as brand awareness is, for a US-only sponsor, any viewer outside of the US is effectively useless to them. As thrilled as Ting no doubt were to be receiving so much love and support from the community, unfortunately companies can't run on those alone. This was not the fault of the viewership or Ting.com, it's simply a reality that we have to face when creating events. We as tournament organisers have to provide the maximum possible ROI and it is far easier to do that when you are advertising a product that is accessible to your full international audience.
We as organisers also fucked up, or more specifically I did. We could have promoted them better. The information Ting has given me in this report will be invaluable in future to ensure that we're doing a better job of promoting our sponsor. I would hope that other tournament organisers, particularly of smaller online events also look at this as useful advice. We could have done a better job pushing the sponsor, we could have made those numbers better and we failed to do that and for that I sincerely apologise. That guilt will not go away anytime soon.
The silver lining
This sounds very doom and gloom but there are positives to be looked at here. For one thing, Ting may benefit from the long-tail. Their brand awareness has been raised significantly in the gaming market. The VoDs of the event will stick around indefinitely and will represent the Ting brand for years to come. They may generate further signups and as the report states, switching mobile provider is not a quick decision for many people. They may wait until their contract expires, they may run into problems months down the line with their provider and remember “oh yeah, I heard about Ting during that tournament”. In the long-run the event could work out well for them, but that's impossible to know. It did without question succeed in raising Tings profile among the Starcraft community and that could be considered a win, even if the stats do not support that yet. We should also celebrate the fact that an American only event actually pulled in significant numbers. SHOUTcraft has always been the top dog when it comes to online only events, I don't know of any event that beats it and even SHOUTcraft America maintains that position. That could honestly be to the waning popularity of online-only events however and it's hard to say if a new SHOUTcraft invitational would rival SHOUTcraft 4 for viewership, though I'm confident it could with the right players. To the best of my knowledge, SHOUTcraft this year, both SCA and SCA:W were the most successful online only events in terms of viewership. People want to watch American players, but it's going to be a long road before they want to watch them as much as Europeans or the more popular Koreans. America remains a relatively distant third in terms of the level of interest in competition from that region. That is something we must work to remedy in 2014 and everyone has to pitch in. The reputation of the scene was tarnished by the forfeits. It added fuel to the “Americans don't practice” fire and community support is vital to keeping the scene alive and vibrant. If you lose that support you might as well pack up and go home. High-tier foreigners fighting Koreans is still the top viewer draw, regional competition will come in second to that every time unless there is a huge switch in the way that we perceive the game. Foreigner success is important to pushing viewers towards the idea that foreigner vs foreigner competition is fun to watch. SCA:W in my opinion did not convince them of that, with forfeits aplenty and an unfortunately fairly one-sided final. Kane I feel was the standout player to generate the entertaining macro games with his trademark aggressive style and Hitman had his breakthrough performance in a surprising upset. That's what the tournament will be known for and I'd rather it have been known as a great event that showcased all the players well, but unfortunately it did not.
Can SHOUTcraft America continue? Potentially. It may require further cash injections from myself to do so, it may even have to switch to a crowd-funded or at least crowd-supported model to some degree. I'd like to thank Ting.com for their support and hope we can work together again in 2014 and give it another shot. I'd also like to work with other sponsors that have international appeal since even an American event still has majority viewership in the EU. I think with the right sponsor would could generate appropriate ROI for this event and not have to rely on the sponsors good will and long-term hopes. If this were a SHOUTcraft Invitational with the kind of lineup we had for SCI4 I have no doubt that with the right sponsor we could have given them enough eye-balls. With the advice that Ting has given me in regards to properly promoting the sponsor, with the fixes in the rules and the right lineup and quality of games, I think eventually SHOUTcraft America can be considered a commercial success rather than just a moral one.
Thanks for reading and thank you for watching SHOUTcraft. We will see you in 2014, in some form or another.
Very interesting write up. Thanks a lot for the transparency. Its also very nice to see your insight as an organizer of the event. Thanks again for helping out the NA Scene with SHOUTcraft's and being awesome!
Impressive writeup and insane transparency. Regardless of the ROI/ results in numbers, hope to see the event again in some shape or form. Thanks again TB.
I'm actually very impressed that Ting provided the feedback they did and allowed you to post all their info publicly. I hope they take another shot, because it sounds like with a more experienced effort, an event like this could actually be worthwhile for them.
Anyway, thanks as always for doing what you can to help improve the American scene. I don't always agree with everything you say, but I definitely respect the work you put in.
Here's to more successful NA based events in the future!
Imo, twitch should have some sort of feature where each region can view a different streams and which allows you to send them commercials based on their region. That would allow you, for example, find a sponsort for NA and EU, organize an event for NA and EU, and in each event show the viewers a commerial of their local sponsor.
On December 19 2013 05:20 KrazyTrumpet wrote: I'm actually very impressed that Ting provided the feedback they did and allowed you to post all their info publicly. I hope they take another shot, because it sounds like with a more experienced effort, an event like this could actually be worthwhile for them.
We understand that every marketing campaign won't always be an instant success. The important thing to us is looking at what could have improved on, and learning from these mistakes moving forward. At Ting, we pride ourselves on being as honest and transparent as possible. This is pretty evident through our straightforward rates, lack of administrative/recovery fees, and the fact that we give you the inside scoop on device news almost the second we hear about it.
While it remains to be seen, I really do hope we'll get another chance to sponsor a ShoutCraft and work with TB . I also want to give a thanks to Alex (Axeltoss), who was the one who hooked me up with John in the first place.
A lot of people should read this post. Sometimes I feel that maybe 1% of the people posting on this site actually understand how business and sponsoring works. Thank you for this awesome post! (and the tournament ofc)
Thank you for the insane transparency and of course going through the hardships of doing the tournament itself. Unfortunately I wasn't able to catch even a minute of the tournament due to collision with the NorthCon and a busy day after that. But thank you nonetheless <3
it is fantastic that you managed to construct a rational, in depth, information filled blog post and at the same time mentioned Ting.com about 34875938 times. and it all sounded 100% natural (probably because it was ).
A shrewd piece of post event marketing on your part TotalBiscuit.
if you can't "sell SC2" to big hitter advertisers.. no one can.
Wow, I just noticed the population to viewers ratio when it comes to Austria (200ppm compared to US 150ppm). Seems like we are actually one of those countries with the highest cynical proportion :-).
I'm surprised about the low US ROI tho; for a NA-only event I was expecting a lot more US viewers and not an EU majority. However I think day1 did it's part in overall lower numbers for day2.
Let's be honest (and TB said it already), day1 was mostly an entertainment disaster. And I wouldn't be surprised if it resulted in lower day2 viewer numbers because of that (day2 should always be higher, because there are people not watching group/brackets but rarely the other way around).
I can point out three major issues why:
1) Forfeits. Yes, they can happen, but in this case it was extreme. twitter folk were kidding about the ratio of player who actually made it into the next round by winning their matches. I think this new rule should help out with that issue.
2) Map pool. Ladder maps are okay, but let's be honest, they are generally the most boring to watch. It is way more entertaining to see players out of their comfort-zone instead of watching stuff you experience while playing ladder. For example I really missed the Lava map, simply because it was my favorite map at the RedBull Battlegrounds tournament. Having only Fruit in the pool resulted in a veto of the more interesting one to watch.
3) Character. This time around, the tournament felt lifeless - I can't put my finger down to it, but I had the impression most players didn't care at all. The executions looked sloppy and unmotivated. Maybe everyone just had a bad day.
In other words while the casting was fine, the source material seem to be a bit lacking. But ofc this is only my personal impression.
One thing: People in chat were posting "pls play sponsor ad" every break without an ad. I think you could have played it every break without any negative feedback, because the ad itself was very tasteful.
You might be able to get a bunch more subscribers if you make a quick Wufoo form (www.wufoo.com) to collect email addresses from Redditors, and post a link there. That thread should be on the front page for a while longer.
On December 19 2013 05:20 KrazyTrumpet wrote: I'm actually very impressed that Ting provided the feedback they did and allowed you to post all their info publicly. I hope they take another shot, because it sounds like with a more experienced effort, an event like this could actually be worthwhile for them.
We understand that every marketing campaign won't always be an instant success. The important thing to us is looking at what could have improved on, and learning from these mistakes moving forward. At Ting, we pride ourselves on being as honest and transparent as possible. This is pretty evident through our straightforward rates, lack of administrative/recovery fees, and the fact that we give you the inside scoop on device news almost the second we hear about it.
While it remains to be seen, I really do hope we'll get another chance to sponsor a ShoutCraft and work with TB . I also want to give a thanks to Alex (Axeltoss), who was the one who hooked me up with John in the first place.
Seriously, thank you for giving this venture a shot. I hope the results were at least encouraging enough to allow your higher ups to try to justify another chance.
Can SHOUTcraft America continue? Potentially. It may require further cash injections from myself to do so, it may even have to switch to a crowd-funded or at least crowd-supported model to some degree.
It would be interesting to see how a crowd-sourced modem will work with SHOUTCraft. I am usually skeptical putting my tiny money down on something but I won't have any problems doing it if it is ran by TB.
On December 19 2013 05:01 TotalBiscuit wrote:It may require further cash injections from myself to do so, it may even have to switch to a crowd-funded or at least crowd-supported model to some degree.
It's kinda funny how eSports viewers would rather donate money than buy something from a sponsor.
TotalBiscuit = the Sonic of StarCraft 2 :D Great job, I'm just sad that players seemed to come to this tournament with lackluster mindset. And let's face it, it's not like most of them are too busy playing in so many high end tournaments to give this a little more effort.
Really interesting read. This level of transparency is refreshing, and being someone in the field of business, it's just of general interest to me. I hope to see Ting continue with these Shoutcrafts. It would be fun for us, and hopefully it will become more succesful for them!
I really loved watching both shoutcrafts and, I must say, this write-up was as interesting as the tournaments themselves. Fantastic job on and off the match screen.
On December 19 2013 05:01 TotalBiscuit wrote:It may require further cash injections from myself to do so, it may even have to switch to a crowd-funded or at least crowd-supported model to some degree.
It's kinda funny how eSports viewers would rather donate money than buy something from a sponsor.
Not really surprising. If I donate 10 €, I donate 10 €. I can do that every time I want and have 10 €. I can't reasonably and mostly don't want to buy a new mobile contract, a new router, a keyboard or whatever only because some company sponsors an event.
Twitch should implement a feature that allows you to display custom Starcraft overlays to different geographic regions. It would then be possible to sell advertising space to different companies for the same tournament and attract more sponsorship.
I don't think that switching to a crowd-funded method of funding is a bad thing. Weren't the old shoutcraft events funded by tshirt sales, or something like that? I'd drop 15-20 bucks for a shoutcraft shirt, easily.
Excellent post-mortem, and my god the transparency all around on this is fantastic. Many kudos to TB and also to Ting (and ActionJesse, whom I am assuming is associated with Ting) for putting on the event and then giving us not just a "It was a great event!" PR spin, but solid numbers and an honest, rational breakdown of the event, problems, and proposed solutions to the problems. I hope Ting decides to continue with eSports, and I know TB will take his own issues into account in all future events he does.
Just putting out the numbers and marketing evaluation as Ting did makes them someone I will seriously consider. (They're totally right, though, about changing service not being a snap decision. Especially in the US.)
Thanks TB. This is good stuff and just what eSports needs. We (eSportsMax and TenTonHammer) would be honored to help you financially with the next tournament. You (and other eSports event organizers) are welcome to contact me at john at eSportsMax.com .
ShoutCraft, HomeStory Cup, etc. are the types of events that will grow the industry from the grassroots.
My door is always open to anyone putting on that type of event.
Thank you for the transparecy. It is great to get all of these informations. I think the SHOUTcraft America Winter event was great to watch and I'm excited for SHOUTcraft to reappear next year in some way.
It is awsome to see people like TB putting so much effort and in some way or another faith in eSport and especially in SC. I hope to see the community growing over the next few years.
It is sad though, that the ROI for Ting was not as expected. Never the less I think those kind of events can be a good opportunity for companies.
All in all it was a great job from TB and Genna. Keep it up!
Very interesting read indeed and very valuable feedback from Ting. I'm sure the knowledge both parts have gained from this will be very useful in the next tournaments. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us!
I don't agree with your conclusion: "As a pure business venture, SHOUTcraft America Winter can be considered a failure. It did not provide the requisite ROI for the company providing the sponsorship. "
The long-term effect of this kind of sponsoring by far exceeds any short term ROI. Just counting how many people signed up that weekend for Ting service doesn't make sense, the event has strengthened the brand Ting for the 50k+ people that watched the tournament and will undoubtedly generate future revenue for them.
As a real example of the long-term effect of this kind of marketing, last month I purchased an Acer laptop for my daughter. For the past 10 years I've been using Dell laptops, I would probably not have considered Acer if it weren't for their involvement in Starcraft.
On December 19 2013 06:54 deepfield1 wrote: So basically we need a ShoutCraft : Europe!
But that doesn't meet the purpose to support the AM scene :o Maybe ting isn't the 'right' sponsor for an online only event. But as tb mentioned, a long term revenue isn't far-fetched.
Very interesting read! Thank you for sharing! I can imagine it is not that easy to find a sponsor-organizer connection the benefits both sides, despite the big hardware manufactures.
Thank you for sharing TB. I always find the business part of event organizing very interesting. This was the most educational postmortem I've ever been presented in the eSPORTS scene.
A suggestion/ or idea:
As you are broadcasting from series to series you could use that time during the series you are broadcasting to have someone else set-up a skype-call with the previous series winner and do a short interview. You can then show that interview at the end of (or during) the next series. It would make a great filler and create more story-line and maybe you could get the players to say something positive about the sponsor of the event?
On December 19 2013 06:02 MaxiTB wrote: Wow, I just noticed the population to viewers ratio when it comes to Austria (200ppm compared to US 150ppm). Seems like we are actually one of those countries with the highest cynical proportion :-).
I'm surprised about the low US ROI tho; for a NA-only event I was expecting a lot more US viewers and not an EU majority. However I think day1 did it's part in overall lower numbers for day2.
Let's be honest (and TB said it already), day1 was mostly an entertainment disaster. And I wouldn't be surprised if it resulted in lower day2 viewer numbers because of that (day2 should always be higher, because there are people not watching group/brackets but rarely the other way around).
I can point out three major issues why:
1) Forfeits. Yes, they can happen, but in this case it was extreme. twitter folk were kidding about the ratio of player who actually made it into the next round by winning their matches. I think this new rule should help out with that issue.
2) Map pool. Ladder maps are okay, but let's be honest, they are generally the most boring to watch. It is way more entertaining to see players out of their comfort-zone instead of watching stuff you experience while playing ladder. For example I really missed the Lava map, simply because it was my favorite map at the RedBull Battlegrounds tournament. Having only Fruit in the pool resulted in a veto of the more interesting one to watch.
3) Character. This time around, the tournament felt lifeless - I can't put my finger down to it, but I had the impression most players didn't care at all. The executions looked sloppy and unmotivated. Maybe everyone just had a bad day.
In other words while the casting was fine, the source material seem to be a bit lacking. But ofc this is only my personal impression.
One thing: People in chat were posting "pls play sponsor ad" every break without an ad. I think you could have played it every break without any negative feedback, because the ad itself was very tasteful.
I agree for the most part, but your second point would need further consideration. The point of this tournament is for exposure to those American players who are not Scarlett and being sent to every tournament. For them, the only practice they're getting is ladder play. I think it would be a bit out of the ordinary to on one hand say "here is a tournament for you ladder warriors" and then in the same breath say "but........... we're not playing ladder maps".
I think for this type of tournament, we have to stomach the ladder maps. Or you know, Blizzard needs to be a bit more proactive about rotating maps in and out of the lineup. But this is something they said they planned on doing in one of the recent reports they published.
On December 19 2013 06:02 MaxiTB wrote: Wow, I just noticed the population to viewers ratio when it comes to Austria (200ppm compared to US 150ppm). Seems like we are actually one of those countries with the highest cynical proportion :-).
I'm surprised about the low US ROI tho; for a NA-only event I was expecting a lot more US viewers and not an EU majority. However I think day1 did it's part in overall lower numbers for day2.
Let's be honest (and TB said it already), day1 was mostly an entertainment disaster. And I wouldn't be surprised if it resulted in lower day2 viewer numbers because of that (day2 should always be higher, because there are people not watching group/brackets but rarely the other way around).
I can point out three major issues why:
1) Forfeits. Yes, they can happen, but in this case it was extreme. twitter folk were kidding about the ratio of player who actually made it into the next round by winning their matches. I think this new rule should help out with that issue.
2) Map pool. Ladder maps are okay, but let's be honest, they are generally the most boring to watch. It is way more entertaining to see players out of their comfort-zone instead of watching stuff you experience while playing ladder. For example I really missed the Lava map, simply because it was my favorite map at the RedBull Battlegrounds tournament. Having only Fruit in the pool resulted in a veto of the more interesting one to watch.
3) Character. This time around, the tournament felt lifeless - I can't put my finger down to it, but I had the impression most players didn't care at all. The executions looked sloppy and unmotivated. Maybe everyone just had a bad day.
In other words while the casting was fine, the source material seem to be a bit lacking. But ofc this is only my personal impression.
One thing: People in chat were posting "pls play sponsor ad" every break without an ad. I think you could have played it every break without any negative feedback, because the ad itself was very tasteful.
I agree for the most part, but your second point would need further consideration. The point of this tournament is for exposure to those American players who are not Scarlett and being sent to every tournament. For them, the only practice they're getting is ladder play. I think it would be a bit out of the ordinary to on one hand say "here is a tournament for you ladder warriors" and then in the same breath say "but........... we're not playing ladder maps".
I think for this type of tournament, we have to stomach the ladder maps. Or you know, Blizzard needs to be a bit more proactive about rotating maps in and out of the lineup. But this is something they said they planned on doing in one of the recent reports they published.
I'm not sure about that point. I wasn't talking about using only Korean tournament maps, but maps that are actually barely played in any tournament. I'm pretty sure professional players will feel more uncomfortable with those than ladder players or at least on the same level.
OTOH it would spice things up on the entertainment side (aka for viewers), because uncomfortable players result generally in non-standard situation, which is less boring to watch than build A versus build B. It's like watching a movie and half way through you know how the story will unfold.
Buuut maybe I was watching too much SC and clinch to any excitement beyond the ordinary. In fact I now prefer watching stuff like Huskies Bronze League because it's less predictable and more dynamic.
Hey TB. Thanks for writing this and really enjoyed the tournament.
I noticed you said high tier foreigners fighting top koreans is still the top draw, which is true. How familiar are you with the format of the Little League World Series? I'm sure other events have used a format like this but this is just the first thing that comes to mind. In the little league world series, teams are broken up into 2 halves: Teams from the USA and Teams from the rest of the world. Then the winner of each bracket meets in the finals (USA Champ vs World Champ).
I was wondering if it sounds feasible to kind of adapt this to SHOUTCraft. Instead of USA vs the World like little league baseball you could maybe do Koreans vs World or Koreans vs Americas even. You could maybe still have the same qualification process where you make everyone play on the NA server or whatever and take the top players. Maybe even for the Koreans you could use that bracket as like an in house tournament with Axiom, Acer, and TheStC or whatever. idk. I haven't thought that whole part through yet. But then you get a good mix of Korean vs Korean games as well as having a bracket of foreigner vs foreigner games. There could be a separate prize for winning each bracket and then kind of like a showmatch/grand final type thing for Korean winner vs Foreigner winner.
I feel like if this could somehow get tweaked you could kind of hit all the points of viewership people are looking for while still helping the degree of difficulty of the ladder in NA increase and support those players. Obviously a problem will be that it would make the tournament longer and probably cost more money, so I am not sure how that would be circumvented yet, but I was just wondering if something like that sounded feasible?
I know your trying to develop the foreign scene so the korean part of the tournament sounds kind of outside the scope of the tournament's objective, but I was thinking maybe it could be used as something to help draw unsure people in. Just want to say thanks again for running this tournament!
TB could you comment on having more than 1 sponsor and how that effects marketability. Ohh and could you also link us some tip jar numbers? Ohh I'd also recommend making tip jar slightly more available U watched the stream a bit and you barely mentioned compared to SCA where you made it into a really big deal.
Really fun tourney, to bad demuslim wimped out like that People get sick but common we all know that no Korean would ever withdraw halfway through a series like that
Very interesting read. I think crowd funding would be very interesting to try. And, obviously, shoutcraft europe again (if I'm not mistaken, the last one was the one that had Thorzain and Stephano in the finals)
On December 19 2013 09:45 Ace Frehley wrote: Very interesting read. I think crowd funding would be very interesting to try. And, obviously, shoutcraft europe again (if I'm not mistaken, the last one was the one that had Thorzain and Stephano in the finals)
I don't think any European has a decent shot at beating Naniwa in a bo5 at the moment though. Perhaps in PvP with some tricky play.
On December 19 2013 09:35 thezanursic wrote: TB could you comment on having more than 1 sponsor and how that effects marketability. Ohh and could you also link us some tip jar numbers? Ohh I'd also recommend making tip jar slightly more available U watched the stream a bit and you barely mentioned compared to SCA where you made it into a really big deal.
Thanks!
It became impossible to track tipjars when Chipin shut down. We've yet to find a service to replace it.
On December 19 2013 09:45 Ace Frehley wrote: Very interesting read. I think crowd funding would be very interesting to try. And, obviously, shoutcraft europe again (if I'm not mistaken, the last one was the one that had Thorzain and Stephano in the finals)
I don't think any European has a decent shot at beating Naniwa in a bo5 at the moment though. Perhaps in PvP with some tricky play.
Brilliant post, excellent tournament. May I ask what do you mean when you say that you "could have promoted them better"? In my opinion Ting had a big presence in SCA and was presented in a positive light, all viewers knew who the sponsor of the event was without getting annoyed about the amount of ads.
Anyway, a big thank you to you John, and to Genna. Also you guys at Ting are fricking awesome!
During the ShoutCraft event, I thought the quantity of Ting placements was great, however, I think that the quality of promotional content could be improved upon. At the beginning of Saturday’s broadcast, you provided great insight into our service and how we’re different from other carriers, but I don’t think you went into any similar detail over the rest of the weekend (I could be mistaken, though, I missed a few minutes here and there). While the prerecorded ads between games brought considerable traffic to our site, we received >200 concurrent visitors (almost double compared to any other point in the weekend) when you spoke live about our service. What’s also interesting, is that this live read was during the ASUS ROG North Con Scarlett/Jaedong final when we had around 14,000~ viewers. Would be interesting to see the amount of visitors on shoutcraft.ting.com if a detailed live read would have happened during Sunday’s viewership. The Twitch conversations seemed positive around Ting, as did reddit and Team Liquid conversations, so I don’t think slightly longer live reads would be a problem for the audience.
I think there is a thing that is very important to add to this point, and that is to start shifting what the viewers think of when we start talking about supporting esports/the tourney etc. Currently there's a lot of views that this means to unconditionally donate money, thank the sponsors on reddit/TL or buy the product that the sponsor is offering cause #savingesports or whatever.
Instead I feel it would be very beneficial for TB in this case, while doing these more detailed sponsor talks, to tell the viewers something like this: If you want to support the tournament, please take the time to actually check out our sponsor at this link and spend a couple of minutes of your time to check if what they offer is of interest to you. Check if you can save money by switching to Ting, and if you will save money then seriously consider making the switch. If their offer is not going to work for you, then instead you can thank them for sponsoring the event on forums/social media.
If viewers can get in the habbit of making a little bit of an effort to look at the product/service offered, and only then consider buying if the offer makes sense to them, that would be a lot better than the attitude of buying the sponsor-product/service is reserved as some form of charity to "save esports", and if you don't have money to donate you ignore it.
On December 19 2013 08:11 mprs wrote: ...American players who are not Scarlett and being sent to every tournament.
Technically Scarlett earned the right to be sent out to a lot of those tournaments though. I wouldn't put Scarlett in the same category as guys like MC (heck, they don't even have a similar sponsorship deal). All about staying relevant.
Is there some way to institute a semi-crowd-funded prize pool like Dota 2? I know SC2 doesn't have in-game viewing or tickets but perhaps a Twitch subscription for only that tournament where 10-15% of the fee goes to the prize pool?
On December 19 2013 06:02 MaxiTB wrote: Wow, I just noticed the population to viewers ratio when it comes to Austria (200ppm compared to US 150ppm). Seems like we are actually one of those countries with the highest cynical proportion :-).
Not bad, but I think we Finnish still beat you to it with our whopping 585ppm viewership :D
But commenting on the original post, I enjoyed watching the tournament, tuning in for most of the show. I missed pretty much no games, although I was jumping between ASUS ROG Northcon and SCA:W during the finals. And I think I fell asleep for a couple of games during Day 1 as well, as the stream terminated I think somewhere around 2 a.m. for me. Fortunately, you had scheduled Day 2 to be more friendly to us Europeans as far as schedules went
Maybe you can look at how HSC and the ATC do their promotions. They let the casters tell about the sponsors and their products between games. For me that sticks around more than just the same commercial over and over again.
You could have a skype talk with the Ting guy and walk through the service together, maybe even answer questions from the live chat or reddit thread!
Great read. First of all, thanks for the tournament. I watched as much as i could and enjoyed my time.
Secondly, I really like the three new rules you mentioned and the idea of having a crowd-funding for the next event. Hopefully we'll see another Shoutcraft!
On December 19 2013 08:40 Shellshock wrote: Hey TB. Thanks for writing this and really enjoyed the tournament.
I noticed you said high tier foreigners fighting top koreans is still the top draw, which is true. How familiar are you with the format of the Little League World Series? I'm sure other events have used a format like this but this is just the first thing that comes to mind. In the little league world series, teams are broken up into 2 halves: Teams from the USA and Teams from the rest of the world. Then the winner of each bracket meets in the finals (USA Champ vs World Champ).
I was wondering if it sounds feasible to kind of adapt this to SHOUTCraft. Instead of USA vs the World like little league baseball you could maybe do Koreans vs World or Koreans vs Americas even. You could maybe still have the same qualification process where you make everyone play on the NA server or whatever and take the top players. Maybe even for the Koreans you could use that bracket as like an in house tournament with Axiom, Acer, and TheStC or whatever. idk. I haven't thought that whole part through yet. But then you get a good mix of Korean vs Korean games as well as having a bracket of foreigner vs foreigner games. There could be a separate prize for winning each bracket and then kind of like a showmatch/grand final type thing for Korean winner vs Foreigner winner.
I feel like if this could somehow get tweaked you could kind of hit all the points of viewership people are looking for while still helping the degree of difficulty of the ladder in NA increase and support those players. Obviously a problem will be that it would make the tournament longer and probably cost more money, so I am not sure how that would be circumvented yet, but I was just wondering if something like that sounded feasible?
I know your trying to develop the foreign scene so the korean part of the tournament sounds kind of outside the scope of the tournament's objective, but I was thinking maybe it could be used as something to help draw unsure people in. Just want to say thanks again for running this tournament!
I like this a lot. I was going to suggest America vs Europe, instead of Koreans, but either way would be refreshing!
Absolutely loved the ladder portion of this tournament. With the guys on the last days jostling for positions to get in the tournament and stuff, came right down to the wire and was real drama. Something fresh and made the ladder a much improved place for NA players. Sadly I never got around to watching the actual tournament as I wasn't online whenever it was on, but oh well. I hope to support the next one of these if there is one! Great work.
On December 19 2013 16:25 AxionSteel wrote: Absolutely loved the ladder portion of this tournament. With the guys on the last days jostling for positions to get in the tournament and stuff, came right down to the wire and was real drama. Something fresh and made the ladder a much improved place for NA players. Sadly I never got around to watching the actual tournament as I wasn't online whenever it was on, but oh well. I hope to support the next one of these if there is one! Great work.
Hey TB! Thought i could maybe add to this, if you're reading thread
unfortunately Starcraft 2 is a poorly optimised game during large battles on high and ultra detail levels and even on this monstrous rig will drop below 60fps during big fights. Certain maps also have framerate issues which have yet to be fully resolved. Even if Starcraft 2 did benefit heavily from SLI which it does not (it literally receives zero benefit from SLI), Xsplit doesn't play nice with SLI (neither does OBS so stop asking) and the game only uses 2 of the 6 physical 6 virtual cores that my cpu actually has, so it's nowhere near able to utilize my computers full potential. I have to wonder if a second machine with hardware capture to encode would allow the game to stay at 60fps on ultra during big fights but I doubt even that is possible, I'm going to have a word with the guys who do the production at Dreamhack and see if they have some kind of sorcery going on that lets them hold 60fps constantly regardless of fight size, but I have the feeling that they too are dropping below 60.
The big killer settings are physics, effects, reflections, other graphics settings don't really matter so much. If you disable reflections and physics and maybe turn effects down to Medium, you can leave everything else up/maxed and your FPS will largely be the same as low settings in fights - because you have plenty of graphical horsepower to do that, your FPS is just limited by 1 thread on your CPU. The game does scale with SLI, the problem is that adding more GPU power doesn't help at all when CPU bound, so FPS doesn't go up in fights etc.
I have to wonder if a second machine with hardware capture to encode would allow the game to stay at 60fps on ultra during big fights but I doubt even that is possible
There's maybe some way to avoid the performance hit from using gamesource or game capture whatever you choose to use, i'm not really sure though. 2-pc setups are not well documented and i've never (in years of spam refreshing tl tech) seen any kind of benchmark
I'm going to have a word with the guys who do the production at Dreamhack and see if they have some kind of sorcery going on that lets them hold 60fps constantly regardless of fight size, but I have the feeling that they too are dropping below 60
They do not, their system is weaker than mine and they are losing FPS from gamesource/game capture/whatever especially at high resolution and FPS stream. I've seen their streams way below 60fps at times, and it's not really easy to keep FPS way up in sc2
I did a few benchmarks recently on Haswell system, and i've got a youtube video of the benchmark run recorded with shadowplay* (and i've benchmarked to make sure no performance loss) so you can see the performance there:
*Youtube re-encode cuts half of the FPS and really messes up quality - you can get around that some with a little bit of work, this is just a source-file upload quick and easy
^This was to show returns from CPU/RAM performance in sc2. It's labeled core speed (very important), uncore speed (not really very relevant), RAM speed
Are you running your ~3930k? at stock?
Either way, you might want to check out Nvidia Shadowplay. It uses onboard h264 encoder on the GPU as well as some other stuff to bypass performance hits from recording/streaming, there's no performance loss in sc2 (at least in battles etc). It's useful for recording but they recently added and are working on (and actively discussing on forums) twitch streaming with it, which may not be ideal if you want the cleanest looking stream, but it will almost certainly be a better performance option for a high FPS (60fps) stream
Thanks for this very interesting write up. Seems like actively talking about the sponsor on stream, visiting their website etc (like Take does at all his shows) is the best way to promote a sponsor. This way people don't have anything else to do and why should they not visit the website during this downtime? An additional ad block of prerecorded ads after the "promotion show" should also provide more time for the users to spend on the website Or maybe a scanable QR code included in the sponsor banner would be very good to allow people to easily access the sponsor site via a mobile device without interrupting the actual stream?
Sorry to hear it didn't work out. You stupidly get a lot of hate for being one of the most supportive people in StarCraft through all the rockiness right now. With people like you, we will not just survive, but thrive! I really liked the event.
My one piece of constructive criticism is that more build-up hype (days/weeks ahead of time) would help a ton. I'd say I am a pretty avid StarCraft viewer, but I didn't know about the games until a while after the streams started. However, I know enough about the on-the-fly nature of SHOUTcraft America to know how it's hard to have that in order in time; so I know why that wasn't really there.
Excellent post, TB, many thanks for sharing. I'm even more amazed at Ting's clarity. It's a bit of a pity that they don't offer services in Europe. Maybe the next Shoutcast can be joint-sponsored by Ting and a european company? It might be hard to convince this hypothetical company of your european viewership for an american tournament. America vs Europe is an enticing idea, but there'd be complications with choosing the server to play on.
Just calculated how large of a propotion of a country's populace was watching SCA:W. All numbers are in person per million calculated from the data given by TB and the population estimates given by Wikipedia, rounded to full persons. Nordic countries seem to be in a class of their own when it comes to percentage of populace watching Starcraft II
You may also wish to calculate the increased viewership of NA streams on the days leading up to the event - these numbers should probably be included in your estimate for total viewership of the event itsself.
It's interesting Ting how mentions how (specifically) TB could have better promoted them, because I was thinking about this topic a few days ago. How long has CM Storm been sponsoring Polt? Several months? He gives them a shoutout every interview he does, but hes never given any sort of details as to what CM Storm does. I had to look it up myself - not with the intention of "supporting" anybody, I just wanted to know wtf it was. Turns out it's a company I've already known, but I wasn't aware the entire time of this sponsorship. People can really do a better job with their sponsor promotions. When NASL had LA Eat (forget the exact name) as a sponsor, they did a really good job describing exactly what the company did.
On December 19 2013 20:02 ADSRelease wrote: Sorry to hear it didn't work out. You stupidly get a lot of hate for being one of the most supportive people in StarCraft through all the rockiness right now. With people like you, we will not just survive, but thrive! I really liked the event.
My one piece of constructive criticism is that more build-up hype (days/weeks ahead of time) would help a ton. I'd say I am a pretty avid StarCraft viewer, but I didn't know about the games until a while after the streams started. However, I know enough about the on-the-fly nature of SHOUTcraft America to know how it's hard to have that in order in time; so I know why that wasn't really there.
PS-Congrats on Axiom's wild success!
Honestly we hyped this a lot about a month before it began. Not knowing about it is pretty difficult imho, particularly when it was pushed in so many different places
I know this is a general problem with online marketing and not specific to starcraft tournaments, but I think the real problem here is the extreme focus on the number of people who immediately bought the product during the event. I didn't even watch the tournament, but as someone who reads TL and follows the scene, I learned that Ting existed, which I previously did not know. Will I buy from them in the future? Who knows. But without this event, the chance of that happening was zero. Now it's not zero.
When Ford puts an ad in a magazine or sponsors a baseball game, they don't think they those who see the ad are going to instantly put down their magazine and go buy a Ford. What they're hoping is that next time those people want to buy a car, they will guarantee that Ford is one of the companies whose cars get looked at closely, giving the quality of their product a chance to sell when it otherwise might be ignored.
A whole lot of people who are really perfectly in their target demographic now know about their service. That seems to me like it should count as a marketing success.
i think the tournament format which brings the best ROI is with a ~$100 prize pool put on every week of the year. I think ZOTAC, Go4SC2 have the most sustainable formats.
the problem with this format is finding the volunteers to run the show.
On December 19 2013 05:20 KrazyTrumpet wrote: I'm actually very impressed that Ting provided the feedback they did and allowed you to post all their info publicly. I hope they take another shot, because it sounds like with a more experienced effort, an event like this could actually be worthwhile for them.
We understand that every marketing campaign won't always be an instant success. The important thing to us is looking at what could have improved on, and learning from these mistakes moving forward. At Ting, we pride ourselves on being as honest and transparent as possible. This is pretty evident through our straightforward rates, lack of administrative/recovery fees, and the fact that we give you the inside scoop on device news almost the second we hear about it.
While it remains to be seen, I really do hope we'll get another chance to sponsor a ShoutCraft and work with TB . I also want to give a thanks to Alex (Axeltoss), who was the one who hooked me up with John in the first place.
If a company with this style of communication existed in my country, I would seriously consider switching to it just based on this thread. With the current trend of corporate culture, when noone is willing to give you anything than carefully crafted bullshit, I really started to pick targets for my money more based on the feeling I get from the company than just by pure price.
On December 19 2013 05:01 TotalBiscuit wrote: It begs the question, is a service like Ting.com an ideal sponsor for an event like this? Some might say anything is an ideal sponsor and to some degree I'd say that's true but if you want them to invest longterm they have to see Return on Investment.
Whenever I watch an SC2 tournament, the lion's share (if not all) of the sponsors are some kind of tech companies (in the widest sense). You know, the kind of company that produces gaming peripherals, hardware, other video games, phones and mobile devices or associated programs and services. In a way, that's an obvious marketing choice: People who watch SC2 tournaments are gamers and tech geeks, so let's show them products and services for gamers and tech geeks.
Now, even though I don't keep track of it, I think it's safe to say that I've watched dozens of tournaments with hundreds if not thousands of advertisements for tech products and services. And, of course, I've also purchased quite a few of the products that were advertised.
Do you know how many of these products I have bought because of the advertisements? Zero.
Mind you, as I previously mentioned, I'm one of the guys who are actually interested in all that stuff... in other words, these types of products fall well within my area of expertise, where I'm not only able but proud to make an informed decision as a consumer. For instance, when I need, say, a new GPU, I go by the readily available tests on the hardware sites that I visit frequently to find the product that best meets my expectations; I may well ponder over that decision for a week or so, simply because I like thinking about the merits and flaws of GPUs before I buy one. But if the one I end up buying is also the one that was shown in an advertisement, then that's purely coincidental.
I short: I'm killing esports.
Curiously, I don't seem to be the only one. Feel free to do a TL search in the Tech Support forum on this site: In the long history of the Computer Buid, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread (currently sitting at well over 110k views), nobody has even once recommended something "because the company sponsors esports". In fact, nobody has even mentioned the words "sponsor", "esports", "advertisement", asf. during a 3000+ post discussion on nothing but hardware.
Long story short: If you want me to buy from advertisements, show me ads for stuff that I need but don't care all that much about. Show me ads for junk food and soft drinks... I may be the guy who likes video games, but I also have to eat. Chances are, I won't head over to some food resources website to verify that coke achieves a better benchmark than sprite because I don't give a flying fuck about soft drinks. However, I will check the benchmarks for GPUs, so showing me ads for those is rather pointless.
While TB mostly wrote about the return of investment stuff, I think the story line with ladder hero hitman cheesing out Scarlett will be remembered for quite some time. Such stories are practically only possible in a format which uses ladder ranking as qualification.
I hope that one day Blizzard will acknowledge in public which great service the effort of TB is to the NA SC2 scene.
On December 20 2013 05:52 JimmyJRaynor wrote: i think the tournament format which brings the best ROI is with a ~$100 prize pool put on every week of the year. I think ZOTAC, Go4SC2 have the most sustainable formats.
the problem with this format is finding the volunteers to run the show.
Nobody watches those events. Weekly tournaments are a really bad format for maintaining interest. There's too much Starcraft, the presentation and production aren't there, there's no hype, the player lineup is shaky, it's online, you just can't make that work and actually provide real ROI. You'd have to have a caster with an audience do that and good luck finding one of those that has the time. Maybe BasetradeTV is getting to that point, they started off grassroots and are doing a great job building their brand, but honestly those weekly events with tiny prizepools aren't going to get anyone to watch. Yes they provide ROI but you're also only investing $100. You would get better ROI if you threw $100 at Destiny and told him to talk about your product for 20 seconds on his stream.
On December 20 2013 13:03 TotalBiscuit wrote: Nobody watches those events.
do you have the statistics to back that up? zero. really? that must be an exaggeration to get your point across.
On December 20 2013 13:03 TotalBiscuit wrote:You'd have to have a caster with an audience do that and good luck finding one of those that has the time. Maybe BasetradeTV is getting to that point, they started off grassroots and are doing a great job building their brand, but honestly those weekly events with tiny prizepools aren't going to get anyone to watch.
this is the 2nd time you've said no one watches. you have to back that up with some #s. you've done yoemens work providing #s for your own event. Therefore, I'll take the time to get the #s for the weekly events and report back to this thread.
On December 20 2013 13:03 TotalBiscuit wrote: You'd have to have a caster with an audience do that and good luck finding one of those that has the time. Maybe BasetradeTV is getting to that point, they started off grassroots and are doing a great job building their brand,
yes, and also volunteers to run the actual event each week. And, a software system ( like CraftCup.com ) to efficiently run a giant weekly event. Imba.tv had a really solid viewer base for these weekly events as well. it was lack of free time that stopped Imba.tv. As you've noted, its tough to find a team of VOLUNTEERs.
I think BaseTradeTV and Imba.TV have/had the viewer base to provide reasonable ROI for this kind of weekly event. I'll do some digging and get some #s to back up this comment though.
On December 20 2013 13:03 TotalBiscuit wrote: You would get better ROI if you threw $100 at Destiny and told him to talk about your product for 20 seconds on his stream.
i think this week's ZOTAC Cup is a better investment for ZOTAC. It's hard to tell when Destiny is joking around and not joking around. Try to talk the ZOTAC marketing guys into spending money on Destiny.
On December 20 2013 13:03 TotalBiscuit wrote: Yes they provide ROI but you're also only investing $100. You would get better ROI if you threw $100 at Destiny and told him to talk about your product for 20 seconds on his stream.
ok, you've gone from "nobody watches" to "yes they provide ROI". i guess your post is more of a "flow of thoughts" than anything else. which is fine.
you invest $100 per week over a 52 week period. for a total of $5,200. and maybe have a "championship structure" like Go4SC2 or ZOTAC and give away a couple thousand more in a "tournament of champions" like ZOTAC or Go4SC2 does.
I think ZOTAC and Go4SC2 have been going on for so long because they provide solid ROI. Especially with teh web site that backs up the ZOTAC weekly events.
on the other hand TSL stopped at #4 because big-prize-pool/1-time/non-open/online events don't provide enough ROI.
the Achilles Heel for ZOTAC or Go4SC2 is exposed when BaseTradeTV and/or Imba.TV decides "hey we just dont have enough free time to cast this every week". Imba.TV, basically, just disappeared.
If there were 5 or 6 versions of BaseTradeTV around stuff like ZOTAC and Go4SC2 would be far more reliable in terms of guaranteed ROI.
Jimmy I don't really have to back up anything and I certainly don't have time to. The only evidence you need is to see the numbers every single week on these events. The numbers suck, simple as that.
Go and look up the events on fuzic.nl and you will see how low the numbers are
On December 21 2013 01:55 TotalBiscuit wrote: Jimmy I don't really have to back up anything and I certainly don't have time to. The only evidence you need is to see the numbers every single week on these events. The numbers suck, simple as that.
Go and look up the events on fuzic.nl and you will see how low the numbers are
This is why I lovehate you. You're doing so much for esports, and you're able to have an argumentation in such a great way - and then, you just pull a 3-liner in reply to some guy who tried to have a serious conversation with you. Which is poor
Alright since I'm from EU I can't buy into Ting (I do remember how awesome TUCOWS was) but maybe we can help by giving more exposure by liking facebook (similar as to what Take does) or #ting #shoutcraft on twitter.
Also you forget a major selling point which is the demographic. You may not reach alot but you are reaching the right people (not some random cross population bunch).
On December 21 2013 01:55 TotalBiscuit wrote: Jimmy I don't really have to back up anything and I certainly don't have time to. The only evidence you need is to see the numbers every single week on these events. The numbers suck, simple as that.
Go and look up the events on fuzic.nl and you will see how low the numbers are
This is why I lovehate you. You're doing so much for esports, and you're able to have an argumentation in such a great way - and then, you just pull a 3-liner in reply to some guy who tried to have a serious conversation with you. Which is poor
But TB is right. What else is there to say? You want a 5-page exposition on why their numbers suck, and how it would never work?
I really like the insight from the sponsor and this analysis/breakdown as a whole is pretty cool to read. In terms of the whole ROI thing (obviously important if you want future events to be put on) yeah I guess it is pretty lacklustre. However when you take other things into consideration, such as the fact that only 35% of the audience can actually contribute to that ROI and the first day was a bit of a flop in terms of things going to plan, then I think those results actually aren’t too shabby. Rome wasn’t built in a day and these things take time to gain traction, thankfully it seems Ting is very enthusiastic about this and can recognise the emergent potential as well as the urgent issues.
I think a supporting international sponsor is a no-brainer, given the large portion of your audience you’re missing out on. Not sure how happy Ting will be to split their advertising time but who knows.
On December 19 2013 05:01 TotalBiscuit wrote: Can SHOUTcraft America continue? Potentially. It may require further cash injections from myself to do so, it may even have to switch to a crowd-funded or at least crowd-supported model to some degree.
I think this is really the way to go just by looking at the success of the previous SCi tournaments;
SCi 1: During/after the tournament a donation page was set up at the request of the viewers and around $600 was raised SCi 2: This time the donation page was advertised and raised just shy of $5000 SCi 3: $2427 SCi 4: $3904
If memory serves me correct those donations were supplemented by a handful of individuals who donated considerable amounts of money (didn’t Colin Smith donate $1000 one tournament?). For that reason these figures probably look better than they actually are but regardless it shows that people are possibly more willing to contribute themselves by directly donating rather than contribute indirectly by supporting a sponsor (it never does cease to amaze me to see the projects that get funded on kickstarter, I always thought people were very unwilling to part with their money).
Over all I’m pleased with how the event turned out, and I think the 3 new implemented rules will definitely contribute to a better tournament. Also just also thought I’d mention that for me personally one of the biggest draws (which hasn’t actually been mentioned in the post-mortem) was the ladder activity. One of the big goals of the original SCA was to give the American scene a shot in the arm and this time that goal was most definitely realised. The ladder was so vibrant and those last 3-4 hours before the deadline were so exciting.
The viewers contributing to the prize pool is also working out pretty well for Dota. MLG like doubled their prize pool and currently the Star Series tourney has increased it from 50k - 130k
On December 21 2013 01:55 TotalBiscuit wrote: Jimmy I don't really have to back up anything and I certainly don't have time to. The only evidence you need is to see the numbers every single week on these events. The numbers suck, simple as that.
Go and look up the events on fuzic.nl and you will see how low the numbers are
This is why I lovehate you. You're doing so much for esports, and you're able to have an argumentation in such a great way - and then, you just pull a 3-liner in reply to some guy who tried to have a serious conversation with you. Which is poor
But TB is right. What else is there to say? You want a 5-page exposition on why their numbers suck, and how it would never work?
Seriously. What am I missing here?
Not 5 pages ofc, but as for a normal user of TL like me, I don't get why 500-1000 is a sucking number. You can get some ROI out of 500 (let's go even lower, 150-400) viewers a week, depending on the investments and the business model (have a look for basetradetv as an example, rifkin should be able to live from his roughly 500-1000 viewers depending on the event since he's streaming so much)? I would have loved to follow that kind of discussion which TB just declined, which is why I'm not happy with his short answer.
Edit: If that was a marketing blog filled with people who know what they're talking about, I would understand his answer (and I wouldn't feel bad because of the shortness). But this is a TL.net blog open to the public, so if you take the step and go all open with your information, you should moderate the comments in a proper way. Just my opinion.
Edit #2: I'm throwing a lot of viewer numbers around. Those are my assumptions of what they get. If my assumptions are really bad, I'm sorry - and I would have to re-adjust my arguments then .
On December 21 2013 01:55 TotalBiscuit wrote: Jimmy I don't really have to back up anything and I certainly don't have time to. The only evidence you need is to see the numbers every single week on these events. The numbers suck, simple as that.
Go and look up the events on fuzic.nl and you will see how low the numbers are
This is why I lovehate you. You're doing so much for esports, and you're able to have an argumentation in such a great way - and then, you just pull a 3-liner in reply to some guy who tried to have a serious conversation with you. Which is poor
But TB is right. What else is there to say? You want a 5-page exposition on why their numbers suck, and how it would never work?
Seriously. What am I missing here?
Not 5 pages ofc, but as for a normal user of TL like me, I don't get why 500-1000 is a sucking number. You can get some ROI out of 500 (let's go even lower, 150-400) viewers a week, depending on the investments and the business model (have a look for basetradetv as an example, rifkin should be able to live from his roughly 500-1000 viewers depending on the event since he's streaming so much)? I would have loved to follow that kind of discussion which TB just declined, which is why I'm not happy with his short answer.
Edit: If that was a marketing blog filled with people who know what they're talking about, I would understand his answer (and I wouldn't feel bad because of the shortness). But this is a TL.net blog open to the public, so if you take the step and go all open with your information, you should moderate the comments in a proper way. Just my opinion.
Edit #2: I'm throwing a lot of viewer numbers around. Those are my assumptions of what they get. If my assumptions are really bad, I'm sorry - and I would have to re-adjust my arguments then .
First, what do you call "living" as far as revenue from streaming? Second, did you read all the stuff TB gets help to do in preparation for something like this as well as what he deals with live. Just imagine what it would cost to run that event with hired help to make things run more smoothly. Admin and production people aren't cheap, and you're still never guaranteed what quality you'll end up with in the end.
As far as moderating comments, he gave you an inside look (a rare one I'll say) into what goes on and what's needed. Why don't you moderate your expectations instead?
On December 24 2013 11:01 Pontius Pirate wrote: If Ting is America-only, what if you found a co-sponsor that was a Europe-only cell phone carrier?
I'm no expert in marketing, I assume it would be extremely difficult to find a product that appeals to "Europe" as a whole. Multiple countries with their own different laws, unions, watchdogs and vastly contrasting cultures. While American's do have vastly different beliefs they all operate under the same law and (for the most part) follow the same culture. A product marketed to the "European" audience would probably have to have a generic global appeal. The obvious (and very generic) example here is a gaming keyboard, no matter what country you're from, if you're into esports you can probably understand the allure of a gaming keyboard. A product like Ting though would be a lot more difficult, for example, out of all my friend and family and even acquaintances I don't know a single person in the UK who's on a pay-as-you-go network. No way you could market a single mobile phone carrier to the whole of Europe without alienating a portion of that continent.
As a representative of a relatively new sponsor of e-sports events (started for me with the rise of SC2) I really appreciate this write-up and the full transparency it provides.
In terms of measurable ROI we (ASUS Nordic) really do struggle as it is near impossible to track sales conversion. As a hardware manufacturer we have been able to establish a KPI that works for us as it is now, by benchmarking it as part of our product communication and brand media+event mix. Finding the return in terms of CPM value, traditional and social media exposure.
Since this post-mortem and the response to it by the TeamLiquid community will be of great help to me, I just wanted to say thanks you all.