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Not sure the case for "older" sport like soccer/football, But in US, MLB owns baseball. NFL owns American football. What I mean is, they literally own the mech

Not sure the case for "older" sport like soccer/football, But in US, MLB owns baseball. NFL owns American football. What I mean is, they literally own the mechanism of play for these two sports and allow the individual teams to compete in the leagues, which they must make many concessions to be a part of. aA "copy" of MLB can't pop up and play the same exact game, MLB owns every part of it. IE; your "problem" with competitive gaming infrastructure is exactly how competitive sport is and has succeded. Apples to oranges of course tho

bbanyc 4y ago
The USFL exists. It doesn’t really compete with the NFL but that’s more due to NFL teams having much more money with which to buy nearly all the top talent.
s_dev 4y ago
That's not a good example. Here's why: How many kids play baseball in the US and don't pay royalties to MLB? How many kids play football and don't pay royalties to NFL? All these same kids -- when playing Starcraft have already in someway paid Blizzard money. You cannot play Starcraft legally without paying them money. You can play football in your backyard whenever you want.
- Tenoke 4y ago
  SC2 is f2p so you can. You also typically will pay some manufacturer for basketball equipment before you play.
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    Yeah, instead of price it'd make more sense to talk about centralized control.
  - bena 4y ago
    That money doesn't go to the leagues however. You don't have to pay the NBA. Hell, you don't even have to pay Wilson, the official basketball manufacturer of basketballs for the NBA. You could buy a Spalding, or any random brand.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  > when playing Starcraft have already in someway paid Blizzard money. You cannot play Starcraft legally without paying them money. Strictly speaking, you can: both StarCraft 1 and StarCraft 2 have free versions. You do need to pay for the HD graphics for SC1 though, and for SC2 you'd have to pay for some campaigns or co-op commanders. And it's quite common for eSports to be free to play, with mostly just charging for cosmetics. I get what you mean, though: even if there are free versions, it's still explicitly under the game developer's control.
  - aflag 4y ago
    I think the point is more that you can't play without blizzard's consent. You can't just download the game and host your own server to play with your friends. If blizzard changes the rules (makes a patch) you need to play with the new rules. You can't host a server if the starcraft 2 servers are down (not that uncommon nowadays). If blizzard decides to stop the servers (or if it just goes under), you can't play anymore. That's a very different relationship from NFL or MLB.
    - TulliusCicero 4y ago
      You are generally correct, but this being HN I'm gonna do some informative nitpicks anyway: * SC2 works as you say, but from what I remember SC1's Korean leagues were run without Blizzard's consent/management. Obviously with SC2 they then 'fixed the glitch'. Probably the same for SC Remastered as well. * There's an interesting case where the old C&C games are being slowly reimplemented in full by open source coders, in which case I imagine EA can't do anything even if they wanted to: https://www.openra.net/ https://www.openra.net/
- toast0 4y ago
  How about ice hockey? If you're on a team in a league in the US, you're probably paying USA Hockey something. (Not sure if USA Hockey is related to the NHL, but it seems related to the olympic hockey teams).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bena 4y ago
You're right and wrong. The MLB doesn't "own" baseball nor does the NFL "own" football. Both of them are gestalt entities comprised of the member clubs. The NFL are the 32 member clubs. MLB are the 30 member clubs. You can't start a football team and compete in the NFL because the 32 member teams don't want to play against you. Any concessions a team makes "to the league" is really a concession made to the other teams. For the NFL, every year, the 32 owners get together and vote on various rule changes. Same with the MLB. MLB is a little weird in that it does have a government allowed monopoly on professional baseball, but no other league does. Like, you could start a rival baseball league, but MLB could take whatever action it wanted to squash your league (assuming all those actions were legal otherwise). But nothing except very anti-competitive practices are stopping you from starting your own baseball league. Just, good luck airing your games, or finding fields that can seat more than 500 people, or being able to sell tickets online, or advertising. MLB can make agreements to exclude rival leagues from everything. The NFL can't do that. Which is why you get the USFL, the XFL, the Spring League, the AAFL, the XFL again, Arena football, etc. It's just that no one is capable of putting up the money to compete with the NFL. You're either overpaying what any NFL club would pay for a player or fielding players no NFL club would take. And that's not to dismiss any of those guys in terms of athletic ability. Being in the top 1% of athletic ability is still pretty fucking good. But the NFL would be more like the top 0.1%. But no one is doing that. Average salaries for all of these leagues were under the average salary for the NFL of the time. There just isn't the money because there's no base. And it's because the NFL has built its brand(s) over decades. The NFL makes money hand over fist because they've gotten there over the years. And they essentially got in when the competition was on their level. New competitors on the scene have a much harder path. The biggest difference is that professional sports leagues are essentially team owned and team run. Collectively, but still. A better analogy would be Wilson, Rawlings, Nike, Spalding, etc. Wilson make a football called "The Duke". It is made to the specifications set forth by the NFL. They also make the NBAs basketballs. Rawlings makes the baseballs for the MLB. Wilson/Rawlings gets exactly zero input into how the game is played. The people who agreed to play each other do that. Whereas in eSports, the maker of the equipment (essentially) is the one dictating how to play the game. It would be like if the US Playing Card Company decided to start dictating how the World Series of Poker was run. So what you have is that eSports is seen as advertising for the game rather than the product itself. That's what separates other leagues from eSports. Every other professional sports league treats the competition as the product. Mainly because they have to. Riot, Epic, Blizzard, Valve, WotC, etc. all see their "professional" leagues as advertising avenues for their "actual" product.
jnwatson 4y ago
The existence of the XFL is evidence that NFL doesn't own the sport of football.

bbanyc 4y ago

The USFL exists. It doesn’t really compete with the NFL but that’s more due to NFL teams having much more money with which to buy nearly all the top talent.

s_dev 4y ago

That's not a good example. Here's why: How many kids play baseball in the US and don't pay royalties to MLB? How many kids play football and don't pay royalties to NFL? All these same kids -- when playing Starcraft have already in someway paid Blizzard money. You cannot play Starcraft legally without paying them money. You can play football in your backyard whenever you want.

Tenoke 4y ago
SC2 is f2p so you can. You also typically will pay some manufacturer for basketball equipment before you play.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  Yeah, instead of price it'd make more sense to talk about centralized control.
- bena 4y ago
  That money doesn't go to the leagues however. You don't have to pay the NBA. Hell, you don't even have to pay Wilson, the official basketball manufacturer of basketballs for the NBA. You could buy a Spalding, or any random brand.
TulliusCicero 4y ago
> when playing Starcraft have already in someway paid Blizzard money. You cannot play Starcraft legally without paying them money. Strictly speaking, you can: both StarCraft 1 and StarCraft 2 have free versions. You do need to pay for the HD graphics for SC1 though, and for SC2 you'd have to pay for some campaigns or co-op commanders. And it's quite common for eSports to be free to play, with mostly just charging for cosmetics. I get what you mean, though: even if there are free versions, it's still explicitly under the game developer's control.
- aflag 4y ago
  I think the point is more that you can't play without blizzard's consent. You can't just download the game and host your own server to play with your friends. If blizzard changes the rules (makes a patch) you need to play with the new rules. You can't host a server if the starcraft 2 servers are down (not that uncommon nowadays). If blizzard decides to stop the servers (or if it just goes under), you can't play anymore. That's a very different relationship from NFL or MLB.
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    You are generally correct, but this being HN I'm gonna do some informative nitpicks anyway: * SC2 works as you say, but from what I remember SC1's Korean leagues were run without Blizzard's consent/management. Obviously with SC2 they then 'fixed the glitch'. Probably the same for SC Remastered as well. * There's an interesting case where the old C&C games are being slowly reimplemented in full by open source coders, in which case I imagine EA can't do anything even if they wanted to: https://www.openra.net/ https://www.openra.net/
toast0 4y ago
How about ice hockey? If you're on a team in a league in the US, you're probably paying USA Hockey something. (Not sure if USA Hockey is related to the NHL, but it seems related to the olympic hockey teams).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bena 4y ago

You're right and wrong. The MLB doesn't "own" baseball nor does the NFL "own" football. Both of them are gestalt entities comprised of the member clubs. The NFL are the 32 member clubs. MLB are the 30 member clubs. You can't start a football team and compete in the NFL because the 32 member teams don't want to play against you. Any concessions a team makes "to the league" is really a concession made to the other teams. For the NFL, every year, the 32 owners get together and vote on various rule changes. Same with the MLB. MLB is a little weird in that it does have a government allowed monopoly on professional baseball, but no other league does. Like, you could start a rival baseball league, but MLB could take whatever action it wanted to squash your league (assuming all those actions were legal otherwise). But nothing except very anti-competitive practices are stopping you from starting your own baseball league. Just, good luck airing your games, or finding fields that can seat more than 500 people, or being able to sell tickets online, or advertising. MLB can make agreements to exclude rival leagues from everything. The NFL can't do that. Which is why you get the USFL, the XFL, the Spring League, the AAFL, the XFL again, Arena football, etc. It's just that no one is capable of putting up the money to compete with the NFL. You're either overpaying what any NFL club would pay for a player or fielding players no NFL club would take. And that's not to dismiss any of those guys in terms of athletic ability. Being in the top 1% of athletic ability is still pretty fucking good. But the NFL would be more like the top 0.1%. But no one is doing that. Average salaries for all of these leagues were under the average salary for the NFL of the time. There just isn't the money because there's no base. And it's because the NFL has built its brand(s) over decades. The NFL makes money hand over fist because they've gotten there over the years. And they essentially got in when the competition was on their level. New competitors on the scene have a much harder path. The biggest difference is that professional sports leagues are essentially team owned and team run. Collectively, but still. A better analogy would be Wilson, Rawlings, Nike, Spalding, etc. Wilson make a football called "The Duke". It is made to the specifications set forth by the NFL. They also make the NBAs basketballs. Rawlings makes the baseballs for the MLB. Wilson/Rawlings gets exactly zero input into how the game is played. The people who agreed to play each other do that. Whereas in eSports, the maker of the equipment (essentially) is the one dictating how to play the game. It would be like if the US Playing Card Company decided to start dictating how the World Series of Poker was run. So what you have is that eSports is seen as advertising for the game rather than the product itself. That's what separates other leagues from eSports. Every other professional sports league treats the competition as the product. Mainly because they have to. Riot, Epic, Blizzard, Valve, WotC, etc. all see their "professional" leagues as advertising avenues for their "actual" product.

jnwatson 4y ago

The existence of the XFL is evidence that NFL doesn't own the sport of football.