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LoL events get 100-200k streaming viewers because Riot pours money in to promoting them. SC2 tournaments look amateurish in comparison because they are self-s

LoL events get 100-200k streaming viewers because Riot pours money in to promoting them. SC2 tournaments look amateurish in comparison because they are self-sustaining, i.e. funded by the sponsors and viewers with no support from Blizzard. The question is not why SC2 doesn't get more viewers, it's why a 10+ year old game that barely even gets bugfixes can still support an industry of professional players and commentators. It's a matter of perspective. If the Superbowl struggled to sell tickets, but more people than ever were playing football in parks, would that mean the sport is dying or thriving? I think that's what this article almost managed to figure out: esports isn't failing, esports in a big arena with cheerleaders and fireworks is failing, while esports in the form of streamers cobbling together a decent paycheck from youtube+twitch+patreon is surprisingly popular.

Kranar 4y ago
LoL doesn't get 200k viewers, it gets 2-5 million viewers [1]. Blizzard officially sponsors the ESL Pro Tour and DreamHack SC2 Masters [2]. LoL is also older than SC2, it was released in 2009 whereas SC2 was released in 2010. I am not going to argue that esports is dead, I don't think it is. I will argue that SC2 is dead, just looking at Twitch right now, there are only 1.2k viewers for the game as a whole. As I write this post, there are three times more people watching a single woman doing nothing but eat Jello than the entirety of people watching Starcraft 2. [1] https://escharts.com/games/lol https://escharts.com/games/lol [2] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mtgs-esl-and-dreamhack-enters-three-year-agreement-with-blizzard-entertainment-300982675.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mtgs-esl-and-dreamh...
- ineptech 4y ago
  How many people are watching American football on Twitch? Does that mean it's dead? You can't just pick one metric and decide that's the important one. LoL might be technically older than SC2, but surely you would agree that SC2's heyday came a long time before LoL's, yes? My point isn't to compare them and say one is better than the other, but to say that SC2 is further along than LoL on the same curve. In other word's, LoL's future probably isn't "bigger than soccer" nor "totally dead", it's "chugging along with a small steady player base and a few hundred people playing it professionally, but not filling arenas", which is where SC2 has been for 5+ years. edit: as for investment, I think Blizzard's "sponsorship" amounts to letting them use the logo. Certainly they're not paying for things like professional caster studios and advertising, like Riot does.
  - Kranar 4y ago
    About 12 million people watch the NFL on Twitch. Not sure what you count as a heyday, but LoL was always more popular than SC2 as an eSport. LoL's first championship was in 2011 and debuted with 1.69 million viewers. The peak viewership for SC2 of all time was WCS 2018 with a peak viewership of 176k. As for your statement about Blizzard, I think instead of guessing things further and just speculating on this subject, you should do some basic research. Your claims have all been wildly inaccurate. A simple Google search would inform you that Blizzard paid over 8 million dollars in sponsorship towards ESL Pro Tour, including 1.9 million dollars in prize money for 2020-2021 circuit and 2.4 million dollars for the 2021-2023 circuits. The idea that Blizzard's sponsorship is nothing more than the rights for ESL to use a logo is so comically false I have to wonder if you're actually trying to discuss this in good faith or just trolling.
    - ineptech 4y ago
      I admittedly did no research, I am just (accurately, I think) passing on the view of the community, which is that Blizzard has all but abandoned the game. How sure are you of those numbers, in particular how sure are you that they're not including the "value" of the logo, and/or money that actually came from sponsors? FWIW, at your urging I did do a belated search, and the first source I saw shows 1.9M as the entire prize pool for ESL 20-21, not Blizzard's portion. It can't all have come from Blizzard, unless they plaster "Intel" all over everything just to be nice. Look, maybe I undersold it, maybe Blizzard does chip in a non-trivial amount of prize money. But would you agree with my point, which is that Riot spends way more than Blizzard on the trappings of esports, and also that Blizzard used to spend a lot more than they do today? Who do you think pays the LoL casters, and who do you think pays the SC2 casters? And would you also agree that one day LoL's popularity will wane to SC2-like levels, and that the most likely outcome is that it will more or less resemble SC2 in the sense that it is still a real esport with real tournaments and people playing it professionally, but would constitute a "failed esport" in the sense that this article is portraying esports as failing because they don't pack arenas like regular sports?
      - ilyt 4y ago

Kranar 4y ago

LoL doesn't get 200k viewers, it gets 2-5 million viewers [1]. Blizzard officially sponsors the ESL Pro Tour and DreamHack SC2 Masters [2]. LoL is also older than SC2, it was released in 2009 whereas SC2 was released in 2010. I am not going to argue that esports is dead, I don't think it is. I will argue that SC2 is dead, just looking at Twitch right now, there are only 1.2k viewers for the game as a whole. As I write this post, there are three times more people watching a single woman doing nothing but eat Jello than the entirety of people watching Starcraft 2. [1] https://escharts.com/games/lol https://escharts.com/games/lol [2] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mtgs-esl-and-dreamhack-enters-three-year-agreement-with-blizzard-entertainment-300982675.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mtgs-esl-and-dreamh...

ineptech 4y ago
How many people are watching American football on Twitch? Does that mean it's dead? You can't just pick one metric and decide that's the important one. LoL might be technically older than SC2, but surely you would agree that SC2's heyday came a long time before LoL's, yes? My point isn't to compare them and say one is better than the other, but to say that SC2 is further along than LoL on the same curve. In other word's, LoL's future probably isn't "bigger than soccer" nor "totally dead", it's "chugging along with a small steady player base and a few hundred people playing it professionally, but not filling arenas", which is where SC2 has been for 5+ years. edit: as for investment, I think Blizzard's "sponsorship" amounts to letting them use the logo. Certainly they're not paying for things like professional caster studios and advertising, like Riot does.
- Kranar 4y ago
  About 12 million people watch the NFL on Twitch. Not sure what you count as a heyday, but LoL was always more popular than SC2 as an eSport. LoL's first championship was in 2011 and debuted with 1.69 million viewers. The peak viewership for SC2 of all time was WCS 2018 with a peak viewership of 176k. As for your statement about Blizzard, I think instead of guessing things further and just speculating on this subject, you should do some basic research. Your claims have all been wildly inaccurate. A simple Google search would inform you that Blizzard paid over 8 million dollars in sponsorship towards ESL Pro Tour, including 1.9 million dollars in prize money for 2020-2021 circuit and 2.4 million dollars for the 2021-2023 circuits. The idea that Blizzard's sponsorship is nothing more than the rights for ESL to use a logo is so comically false I have to wonder if you're actually trying to discuss this in good faith or just trolling.
  - ineptech 4y ago
    I admittedly did no research, I am just (accurately, I think) passing on the view of the community, which is that Blizzard has all but abandoned the game. How sure are you of those numbers, in particular how sure are you that they're not including the "value" of the logo, and/or money that actually came from sponsors? FWIW, at your urging I did do a belated search, and the first source I saw shows 1.9M as the entire prize pool for ESL 20-21, not Blizzard's portion. It can't all have come from Blizzard, unless they plaster "Intel" all over everything just to be nice. Look, maybe I undersold it, maybe Blizzard does chip in a non-trivial amount of prize money. But would you agree with my point, which is that Riot spends way more than Blizzard on the trappings of esports, and also that Blizzard used to spend a lot more than they do today? Who do you think pays the LoL casters, and who do you think pays the SC2 casters? And would you also agree that one day LoL's popularity will wane to SC2-like levels, and that the most likely outcome is that it will more or less resemble SC2 in the sense that it is still a real esport with real tournaments and people playing it professionally, but would constitute a "failed esport" in the sense that this article is portraying esports as failing because they don't pack arenas like regular sports?
    - ilyt 4y ago