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I really feel like Esports should have been built up slowly around more first principles. Keep the overhead as low as possible in the beginning. You're just goi

I really feel like Esports should have been built up slowly around more first principles. Keep the overhead as low as possible in the beginning. You're just going to be losing money in the beginning so why not minimize that cost. Pay the players a liveable wage, and cover their expenses to travel to the venues. As they become more popular do paid meet and greets with fans. Raffles for merch as well as other video game paraphenalia (peripherals, consoles, games, computers etc), and start acquiring sponsors. Have a promotional Amazon link. Make YouTube videos documenting the process, and get the adsense. The two main goals would be consistent placing at tournaments and breaking even, then becoming cash flow positive. Slowly increase player salaries in line with the profits and larger sponsor ships. But that isn't what happened. People started creating the teams and spending millions on player salaries. This put immense pressure from the beginning to getting cash flow positive, placing first in every tournament etc. And now we are seeing the ramifications of this. Don't get me wrong there were other external factors as well. I wouldn't try to create an esports team around any Nintendo Ip for example given their track record. And the collapse of OWL due Blizzard management doesn't help.

karmakurtisaani 4y ago
I think the problem with your approach is competition. If you did as you described, a competitor would see the opportunity and start their own league, offering bigger salaries to get the best players. So anyone seriously trying to corner the market kind of has to go in with the big bucks and hope that eventually the popularity catches up.
banannaise 4y ago
Esports look exactly like the venture capital industries that propped them up. Lighting money on fire for the sake of scale was a natural play for them, and arguably the only way they got those ad/sponsor dollars in the first place. It's not surprising that they reflect the environment they grew up in. But you are correct that now the question becomes who can create a sustainable model in the ashes of what came before.
leetcrew 4y ago
> I really feel like Esports should have been built up slowly around more first principles. Keep the overhead as low as possible in the beginning. You're just going to be losing money in the beginning so why not minimize that cost. that was also tried. on the surface, it looks like eSports has come out of nowhere, but people have been trying to make the economics work out for decades now. the earlier attempts looked a lot more like the scrappy model you are describing. disclaimer: this is a counterstrike-centric history bc that's what I was interested in at the time. I understand the starcraft (for example) pro scene was a bit more stable. CPL was started in 1997, and distributed a mere $3mm in prize money between then and its 2008 demise. then there was CGS, which weirdly tried to replicate the American football TV experience. that league was notable at the time for actually paying players a salary (though only about $30k iirc). then things were mostly dormant (in terms of capital investment) until twitch took off and the game companies themselves took a more active interest in the scene, leading to the massive prize pools and tournaments you see today. maybe we just haven't hit the right moment for esports to be economically viable, but to me it seems like something is fundamentally broken with the idea. it's telling that top twitch streamers make more money than the world's best competitive players of that game. imagine a world where ray lewis in his prime could make more money live streaming random pickup games and reading donation messages out loud. the NFL could not exist in that world.
Macha 4y ago
I think you need to compare the fate of newer e-sports endeavours like heroes of the storm which were very heavily inflated by blizzard support, and those that evolved a bit more from grassroots like starcraft or dota to see what's sustainable. The starcraft scene has weathered its decline as blizzard lost interest and while it's shrank to a more manageable size, is still clearly capable of continuing without blizzard doing more than not shutting down the game servers (the SC1 scene, not even requiring that much). While heroes of the storm collapsed without Blizzard, as will overwatch.

karmakurtisaani 4y ago

I think the problem with your approach is competition. If you did as you described, a competitor would see the opportunity and start their own league, offering bigger salaries to get the best players. So anyone seriously trying to corner the market kind of has to go in with the big bucks and hope that eventually the popularity catches up.

banannaise 4y ago

Esports look exactly like the venture capital industries that propped them up. Lighting money on fire for the sake of scale was a natural play for them, and arguably the only way they got those ad/sponsor dollars in the first place. It's not surprising that they reflect the environment they grew up in. But you are correct that now the question becomes who can create a sustainable model in the ashes of what came before.

leetcrew 4y ago

> I really feel like Esports should have been built up slowly around more first principles. Keep the overhead as low as possible in the beginning. You're just going to be losing money in the beginning so why not minimize that cost. that was also tried. on the surface, it looks like eSports has come out of nowhere, but people have been trying to make the economics work out for decades now. the earlier attempts looked a lot more like the scrappy model you are describing. disclaimer: this is a counterstrike-centric history bc that's what I was interested in at the time. I understand the starcraft (for example) pro scene was a bit more stable. CPL was started in 1997, and distributed a mere $3mm in prize money between then and its 2008 demise. then there was CGS, which weirdly tried to replicate the American football TV experience. that league was notable at the time for actually paying players a salary (though only about $30k iirc). then things were mostly dormant (in terms of capital investment) until twitch took off and the game companies themselves took a more active interest in the scene, leading to the massive prize pools and tournaments you see today. maybe we just haven't hit the right moment for esports to be economically viable, but to me it seems like something is fundamentally broken with the idea. it's telling that top twitch streamers make more money than the world's best competitive players of that game. imagine a world where ray lewis in his prime could make more money live streaming random pickup games and reading donation messages out loud. the NFL could not exist in that world.

Macha 4y ago

I think you need to compare the fate of newer e-sports endeavours like heroes of the storm which were very heavily inflated by blizzard support, and those that evolved a bit more from grassroots like starcraft or dota to see what's sustainable. The starcraft scene has weathered its decline as blizzard lost interest and while it's shrank to a more manageable size, is still clearly capable of continuing without blizzard doing more than not shutting down the game servers (the SC1 scene, not even requiring that much). While heroes of the storm collapsed without Blizzard, as will overwatch.