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With all the uncertainties about WCS recently a lot of people in the community seem to be angry at Blizzard because they are feeling like Blizzard is (potentially) letting SC2 Esports die. But I am wondering: Why does Blizzard have to be the one running it? I know that it has been like that for a long time now but it hasn't always been like that.
In the first few years of SC2 we had a lot of independent tournaments like MLG, many IEMs, WCG, IPL, NASL and the Korean leagues were also doing their own thing with less involvement from Blizzard. Why aren't tournaments like that possible anymore today? If many companies were able to fund such tournaments even back in 2011, then shouldn't it be even easier now, since esports as a whole and sites like twitch have only gotten bigger?
Maybe there are good reasons for this but I don't really know that much about the business side of esports, so maybe some people who understand that side better can explain this to me. I don't mean to say that the people attacking Blizzard are wrong. I just genuinely don't understand this part.
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They haven’t, just the expensive ones. Renting a convention centre for a tournament can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for just the venue, not including staff and equipment and prize pool. Starcraft 2 just isn’t big enough anymore to sell tens of thousands of tickets on its own. Starcraft 2 monthly active players is now measured in hundreds of thousands and not millions, and that’s spread across the world so there aren’t enough in one area to fill a stadium. Now Starcraft 2 might draw in hundreds to low thousands of live audience at a Dreamhack or IEM which also has other games splitting the venue cost. Blizzard has to pay these big event organizers to include Starcraft 2 because they can’t sell enough tickets to profit otherwise.
Now we have Olimoleague, BaseTradeTV, WardiiTV, OSC, etc. for third party online tournaments where the cost to run them is much lower, just prize pool and a caster or two and maybe an admin. It’s probably part of why Blizzard traded WCS at Dreamhack Liepzig for WCS Winter mostly online with the finals in a small venue for 1 day.
TakeTV can run Home Story Cup because he already has the venue and runs it as a gaming bar, so the extra cost is just prize pool, a few flights, and maybe a bit of extra staff and streaming cost, which can be crowd funded or covered by a sponsor chipping in a relatively cheap amount in the tens of thousands.
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There is something to add to Zzorams points. It's not only about how big SC2 is compared to earlier days. It's also highly about how big SC2 is compared to the it's competitors. 2010-2012, maybe even in 2013 SC2 was the biggest esports title in the world. Thus most sponsors were interested in SC2. This changed the more other esports came up and overshadowed SC2. SC2 isn't really smaller now but it just didn't grow as much as other games. Sponsors almost automatically aim for the biggest titles which attract the most interest. Another point is that esports was really a new thing in 2010-2012. It was a promising field to invest in, so it would be a realistic option to make SC2 events even if they didn't pay out in order to access a market which promised great profit in the future. Those gold rush days are over. We also have to consider that sponsor money isn't endless. Esports audience may grow and there is certainly still potential for more sponsors. But the main sponsors that are already in esports have a limited marketing budget. They probably can't invest much more in esports but rather will change their distribution of money (which often means most money on the new hot shit in the town).
edit: And another point: Prizemoney grew drastically in SC2 over the years. So it wasn't as easy any more for event hosts like Dreamhack or Assembly to cover costs for tournaments if they still wanted to be relevant in the competition of big esport events.
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Cost-effectively speaking, I love those medium-sized tournaments like Homestory Cup or Cheesadelphia because they are offline and the cheaper location actually allows for such a chill atmosphere that you feel like you are there and not watching. Nationwars and other tournaments are partially offline, which is also nice. I guess I want to say I like offline tournaments and am, cost-effectively speaking, not a huge fan of those big stages
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If you want to run a large scale tournament, don't you need Blizzard's approval? There's so much CS:GO tournaments because Valve doesn't have to approve every single one no? Whereas there's very few for LoL because Riot runs everything?
*I could be wrong as I'm fairly new to the Lol scene and don't really follow CS:GO despite watching a lot of their tournaments.
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On January 16 2019 05:15 geokilla wrote: If you want to run a large scale tournament, don't you need Blizzard's approval? Correct. https://communitytournaments.blizzardesports.com/en-us/
A tournament with over $10,000 in prize money or an organization giving out more than $50,000 over a 12 month period have to apply for a custom license. Also if your sponsor gives more than 10K you need a custom license.
There's a lot of third party tournaments, but most are "community licensed" events and online only. Blizzard does not "run" offline events like Homestory Cup, Cheesadelphia or PSISTORM Cup but they need to be involved for technical reasons (other reasons too im sure) like whitelisting the IP of the event center so that a large number of players can play at the same time.
Notwithstanding the games 8+ year age, the World Championship Series is mapped out from the get-go. Every point is allocated to certain events, all leading to BlizzCon, there's no demand in this market for a big independent tournament like MLG days of old.
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Personally I would love it, just to have some more opportunities to get myself to a tournament. I've only had the opportunity to attend one in my long time playing SC2 - it was IPL3, and I had so much fun meeting so many players that were my heroes at the time - Stephano (who went on to win it), iNcontroL, HuK, Machine, I got a photo with MMA and Ryung (both with SlayerS at the time). In some random closet in my house I still have the t-shirt that I got with as many signatures as possible. Liquid'Nazgul signed my Team Liquid t-shirt, and I wore that shirt until it died and faded away.
TSL 3 was an amazing experience. I don't think I've been hyped for a tournament as much until this past Blizzcon.
Ahh, nostalgia.
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this year will have more matches in China
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On January 15 2019 23:35 shadow4723 wrote: Cost-effectively speaking, I love those medium-sized tournaments like Homestory Cup or Cheesadelphia because they are offline and the cheaper location actually allows for such a chill atmosphere that you feel like you are there and not watching. Nationwars and other tournaments are partially offline, which is also nice. I guess I want to say I like offline tournaments and am, cost-effectively speaking, not a huge fan of those big stages
Note that HSC is still a losing activity for Take and he is able to make it work only thanks to fan donations (typically raised during the previous HSC). It is just overall a completely terrible business considering that the costs for a reasonable offline production, even if you own the venue.
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