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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 mi

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
    You'd be better to compare it to Dota2, although no doubt you're going to get more things wrong.. Dota2 have all levels of competition historically Valve did "just" the big tourmanent while letting various orgs that popped out of the scene to handle them, it feels way more organic vs LoL/Riot approach of having iron grip over everything competitive
    - ineptech 4y ago
      That seems unnecessarily combative, considering how minor the thing we're discussing is. But since I'm being called out, a) I meant regular LoL events get at least 200k views; I was emphasizing how high it is compared to SC2, so pointing out that the championships got even more is not disputing that, b) I don't know how much Blizzard spends on tourney money, nor Riot or Valve; but I do follow SC2 casually, and the consensus view among the people who would know about Blizzard certainly seems to be that it has dwindled, and c) I looked, the NFL's twitch channel has 62k subscribers and hasn't streamed in months, but I didn't say "Gotcha!" because when I see something that seems way wrong I like to default to assuming that either I misunderstood or they misspoke, and in either case it hardly seems relevant to this discussion.
      - Kranar 4y ago
        >I don't know how much Blizzard spends on tourney money, nor Riot or Valve; but I do follow SC2 casually, and the consensus view among the people who would know about Blizzard certainly seems to be that it has dwindled, Avoid getting information from biased sources. Gaming communities are notoriously bad when it comes to remaining objective about topics or presenting quantitative data that can be independently verified. >I looked, the NFL's twitch channel has 62k subscribers and hasn't streamed in months, but I didn't say "Gotcha!" That's because NFL games aren't streamed on the NFL Twitch account, they are streamed on the following account: https://www.twitch.tv/primevideo https://www.twitch.tv/primevideo Here's a source that the NFL is viewed by 10.8 million people on Twitch: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/nfls-audience-on-twitch-livestream-rises-45-from-last-year/569601/ https://www.marketingdive.com/news/nfls-audience-on-twitch-l... Relevant quote: "Twitch received 10.8 million views for “Thursday Night Football,” for a total of 2.2 million hours viewing time, per the announcement." Your false assertion about the NFL's Twitch channel is once again, comically false and goes to show that you simply do not understand how to properly research this topic, getting your information from biased sources and based on people's feelings instead of looking up authoritative sources that can be quantifiably verified. I would advise that you refrain from taking that biased misinformation and spreading it further. >in either case it hardly seems relevant to this discussion. Then why did you bring it up? If it was never relevant, why did you decide to waste both of our time by making an issue out of it? This is what I mean about discussing things in good faith, you placed the burden on me to look up information that you sought, and then when I point it out and it turns out that the NFL is wildly popular on Twitch getting 10s of millions of views, you decide to do a 180 and declare that it's not relevant.

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
  You'd be better to compare it to Dota2, although no doubt you're going to get more things wrong.. Dota2 have all levels of competition historically Valve did "just" the big tourmanent while letting various orgs that popped out of the scene to handle them, it feels way more organic vs LoL/Riot approach of having iron grip over everything competitive
  - ineptech 4y ago
    That seems unnecessarily combative, considering how minor the thing we're discussing is. But since I'm being called out, a) I meant regular LoL events get at least 200k views; I was emphasizing how high it is compared to SC2, so pointing out that the championships got even more is not disputing that, b) I don't know how much Blizzard spends on tourney money, nor Riot or Valve; but I do follow SC2 casually, and the consensus view among the people who would know about Blizzard certainly seems to be that it has dwindled, and c) I looked, the NFL's twitch channel has 62k subscribers and hasn't streamed in months, but I didn't say "Gotcha!" because when I see something that seems way wrong I like to default to assuming that either I misunderstood or they misspoke, and in either case it hardly seems relevant to this discussion.
    - Kranar 4y ago
      >I don't know how much Blizzard spends on tourney money, nor Riot or Valve; but I do follow SC2 casually, and the consensus view among the people who would know about Blizzard certainly seems to be that it has dwindled, Avoid getting information from biased sources. Gaming communities are notoriously bad when it comes to remaining objective about topics or presenting quantitative data that can be independently verified. >I looked, the NFL's twitch channel has 62k subscribers and hasn't streamed in months, but I didn't say "Gotcha!" That's because NFL games aren't streamed on the NFL Twitch account, they are streamed on the following account: https://www.twitch.tv/primevideo https://www.twitch.tv/primevideo Here's a source that the NFL is viewed by 10.8 million people on Twitch: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/nfls-audience-on-twitch-livestream-rises-45-from-last-year/569601/ https://www.marketingdive.com/news/nfls-audience-on-twitch-l... Relevant quote: "Twitch received 10.8 million views for “Thursday Night Football,” for a total of 2.2 million hours viewing time, per the announcement." Your false assertion about the NFL's Twitch channel is once again, comically false and goes to show that you simply do not understand how to properly research this topic, getting your information from biased sources and based on people's feelings instead of looking up authoritative sources that can be quantifiably verified. I would advise that you refrain from taking that biased misinformation and spreading it further. >in either case it hardly seems relevant to this discussion. Then why did you bring it up? If it was never relevant, why did you decide to waste both of our time by making an issue out of it? This is what I mean about discussing things in good faith, you placed the burden on me to look up information that you sought, and then when I point it out and it turns out that the NFL is wildly popular on Twitch getting 10s of millions of views, you decide to do a 180 and declare that it's not relevant.