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Twitch acquires eSports pro-gaming team Evil Geniuses
- baq 12y agosmart move for twitch. they have a platform, an audience and some among the top performers in the scene.
- coralreef 12y agoSeems almost like a conflict of interest though. Like the NBA owning one of its own teams.
- thisone 12y agowouldn't it be more: Like NBC owning a team?
- coralreef 12y agoThats true. What came to my mind was the NBA actually did own one of its teams for a while in a bailout, I think it was Charlotte.
- sachinag 12y agoFox used to own the Dodgers. Disney used to own the Angels and the Ducks. Liberty Media still owns the Braves (I think). MSG owns the Knicks and Rangers. And a bunch of other teams own their networks - the Red Sox own NESN, the Yankees own a large part of YES. Fox owns half of the Big Ten Network. ESPN owns a large part of the Longhorn Network and the SEC Network. I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that there's a ton of precedent.
- hkmurakami 12y agoTurner Network used to own the Braves iirc?
- thisone 12y agonot quibbling about precedent or anything along those lines. I'm just interested in the correctness of the metaphor.
- ilyanep 12y agoYeah, this is more apt, since Twitch doesn't directly run any major tournaments that I know of (although they do often sponsor some).
- diziet 12y agoIn e-sports land, KeSPA owned Team 8 (now Jin Air Green Wings) for a year or so until they found a sponsor. MBCGame owned MBCGame HERO for a while.
- LiroXIV 12y agoCome to Canada, this is very much a norm: Multiple sports teams are owned by Rogers, Bell (the two big media/telecommunications firms), or a combination of both. And guess which companies own the two major television sports network chains in Canada? Surprise surprise. The Toronto Maple Leafs are owned by MLSE: Rogers and Bell own a joint majority stake in MLSE, and split regional broadcast rights to their games. Additionally, Rogers is the sole national rightsholder of the NHL in Canada as of this season. Hello, Monopoly. Rogers itself also owns the Toronto Blue Jays AND the national rights to MLB games in Canada. Bell owns a stake in the Montreal Canadiens of the NHL too, but only its French-language sports network (which, for the longest time, was the only channel of its kind in Canada) airs its regional games. Rogers owns the English-language regional television rights to most Canadian NHL teams.
- baq 12y agothis was already the case, one example: http://d2l.gg/ http://d2l.gg/
- yuncun 12y agoI'm a business/legal newb, but when you mention conflict of interest, is there any actual real recourse against this?
- coralreef 12y agoUnlikely, Twitch would have to do something pretty significant to harm other teams in an anti-competitive manner. Even then, I'm not sure anyone can do anything.
- heyheyhey 12y ago> Like the NBA owning one of its own teams. NBA has owned teams in the past; most recently being the New Orleans Pelicans from 2010-2012.
- coralreef 12y agoYep, they generally only do so for short terms in special cases. It's not good for the league to own a team.
- MysticFear 12y agoAmazon the General Electric of the internet
- aeturnum 12y agoGoodGame has a number of other teams (Team Tinker and Alliance on the DOTA scene?) under management. Thus the name change from EG some time back. Pro gaming is a commercially interesting scene. I'm not involved but I've had some interesting conversations with people involved in the scene (Garfield included). Talk about a capital-limited environment.
- IanChiles 12y agoTinker and Alliance are looking pretty shaky in the long term - Tinker just dropped out of a tournament and Alliance was unable to play games of theirs earlier today. It looks right now like they'll soon see major changes, disband, or become one team. Alliance also sponsors a League of Legends team and a few other teams in other scenes though. EDIT: This also includes D2L - a relatively large DOTA league, as well as parts of CLG (CounterLogic Gaming) - http://clgaming.net/news/611-kelby-may-steps-down-as-general-manager http://clgaming.net/news/611-kelby-may-steps-down-as-general...
- bdz 12y agoI think Alliance will be fine. There was a really good interview with Loda at the Summit where he said that he has a plan/vision but Chessie's medical problems were a big blow to them (remember they were beating VG and Mushi's Team Malaysia 2-0 in China just 2 months ago). That's why Bulldog is also on a break, they don't want to play with standins.
- britknight 12y agoLoda also had a good performance at the Summit recently, standing in for Tinker. Even if Alliance may not be so hot on the scene right now, the talent at the core of their team is still present.
- anxman 12y agoBig congrats to Emmett and Alex. I'm thrilled to see EG and Twitch join forces. Alex is one of the best in the eSports business and this will provide a great home to them.
- hkmurakami 12y agoThey seem to recognize and accept that the market paradigm is rapidly moving from one of dominance of the platform to dominance of content [1]. EG has one of the strongest content and persona (i.e. character driven narrative) in the scene in the world and certainly in the West (not entirely sure how the older European powerhouses like SK Gaming have fared in recent years). The question to me is whether additional acquisitions may be in order. For example, would they perhaps move to acquire Sean Plott's Day[9] TV? Even in "regular sports", ratings rise when narratives like rivalries or dynasties are in play. We saw the decline of viewership in Starcraft:Broodwar in Korea when such narratives fizzled and when the old stars faded from relevance, despite the considerable increase in overall skill level. Starcraft 2 has arguably suffered from the relative lack of such a narrative, due in part to the fragmentation of its competitive scene. Blizzard has taken matters into its own hands with WCS, following Riot's lead. The question to me is how, if at all, Twitch will involve itself, given that its success depends on content and content very much hinges on narrative. [1] I am not sure if Amazon is involved with the decision at all, but since Amazon Prime Instant Video is in a platform and content war with Netflix and others, it wouldn't surprise me if they influenced the move.
- chez17 12y agoFinally, a topic I'm somewhat of an expert in on HN! >Even in "regular sports", ratings rise when narratives like rivalries or dynasties are in play. We saw the decline of viewership in Starcraft:Broodwar in Korea when such narratives fizzled and when the old stars faded from relevance, despite the considerable increase in overall skill level. There were new stars and new rivalries. This totally leaves out the Savior scandal, competing games, and how unique and what fluke BW actually was. A game never meant to be played competitively, pushed to it's limits for years and years and years by the players and map makers, broken mechanics that turned out to balance the game near flawlessly. The list goes on and on. BW was an anomoly in the esports world, a game being played competitively 10 years after it's made is not normal. Melee is the only game that comes to mind that is similar. Counter Strike is still being played of course, but not the original game, no patches, like BW or Melee. >Starcraft 2 has arguably suffered from the relative lack of such a narrative, due in part to the fragmentation of its competitive scene. I disagree 1000%! SC2 suffered from horrible balance decisions, a battle.net system that was objectively worse than BW and WC3, no LAN, and an over-zealous Blizzards-Activision that wanted to extract as much money as possible as quickly as possible. Things like putting limits on how much a prize pool can be before Blizzard takes a cut actually encouraged tournaments to stay smaller the first year or two of SC2. No LAN meant games would crap out and couldn't be restarted with tens of thousands of dollars on the line. No automated tournaments, no clans, no nothing. Battle.net 2.0 was so bad, such a monumental fuck up, it shows that Blizzard literally had no idea what they were doing and did not care what the community thought. We begged for years for things that were not that hard to implement for a gigantic company like Blizzard. Finally, the balance. When you balance a game for the lowest level player, it may bring a short spike in players but the reward of a high skilled play is gone. There is no reason to work hard and figure things out. The competitive scene suffered due to these decisions. Finally, the worst choice of them all, to let Wings of Liberty (vanilla SC2) fester and die while they developed Heart of the Swarm (the first expansion). Broodlord/Infester became so boring and dull to watch for months and months while Blizzard didn't do anything. They waited for HotS. And guess what? Want HotS? You have to buy the original as well! Good call! Not greedy at all. So many truly terrible decisions killed SC2 and it's a damn shame. As you can tell, I'm bitter. SC2 had great narratives. Huk vs Korea, Boxer coming back, Nada coming back, Idra (love him or hate him), the EG/TL stuff then Huk going to EG!, so many great runs through GSL or MLG, White-Ra beating MC at that worlds game!, MMA the prodigy of Boxer, MMA vs MVP at Blizzcon, so many great stories. The scene died because Blizzard fucking killed it. My beautiful Starcraft destroyed out of greed and shortsightedness.
- cliftonk 12y agoI played CounterStrike competitively against EG more times during my college years than I can count. Congratulations on the acquisition!
- bogardon 12y agowhat team
- smrtinsert 12y agobizarre. isn't this like espn buying an nfl team?
- ps4fanboy 12y agoI wonder if EG streams will get featured more often now.
- effekt 12y agoNo.
- Reebles 12y agoPlenty of media organizations have owned and continue to own sports teams. In fact Disney simultaneously owned both ESPN and the Anaheim Angels for a number of years before selling the team.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- billhendricksjr 12y agoAnd the NBA owned the New Orleans franchise for a few years.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- JetSpiegel 12y agoThis is hilarious. Like the e-sport thugs won't fill that thug-shaped hole. Even more hilarious, strategy games are somehow more "intellectually based" than regular sports. "Oh, you play single player games, what a weirdo!"
- soneca 12y agoI am with you in I am happy too with eSports becoming more mainstream. But I disagree with your perception of "sport thugs" and "purely physical abilities". Traditional sport stars are looked upon because of their skills, not 'pure physical abilities'. See the recent "one hand catch" on american football. Messi on soccer, NBA best plays of the week. Physical abilities are more of a necessity on pro traditional sports rather than the reason the stars are admired. At the same time, eSports are not totally "intellectually based". FPS, in my point of view, has the same proportion of skills and strategy as any traditional sports. Games like League of Legends have indeed more strategy involved, but still demand skills. No eSports is like chess or traditional card games, and I guess that is why their are such an interesting show.
- uncoder0 12y ago>No eSports is like chess or traditional card games Hearthstone is an obvious counter point to this. http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/13665270 http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/13665270 This tournament is created by blizzard which has an obvious incentive but there are plenty of other large hearthstone tournaments with healthy audiences.
- soneca 12y agoThe skills in Hearthstone are in place in form of powerfull and rare cards. It is not like adversaries using the same cards as in poker. Site, different presentation than skills, but the same role
- LukeB_UK 12y agoWhy do sites feel the need to hijack and speed up the scroll. DON'T DO IT!
- effekt 12y agoI'm sorry.
- socialist_coder 12y agoHmm, why would Twitch want to own multiple eSports teams? How does that advance Twitch's goals?
- towelguy 12y agoThat way they make sure those teams stay on their platform?
- effekt 12y agoIt's not about the teams - it's about the people that handle the teams.
- socialist_coder 12y agoThat makes total sense.
- NamTaf 12y agoBecause then they have control over the generation of some of their flagship content, which in turn drives revenue. It's no different to Apple buying fab labs, sapphire plants, etc. to ensure that they can continue to churn out cutting edge devices.
- nperez 12y agoOops, forgot to fill this in: "I’ll be doing an AMA tomorrow at [time] on [subreddit] for those of you who have questions or who’re interested in learning more."
- effekt 12y agoD'oh!
- danielvinson 12y agoThis announcement gives me a very nostalgic comfort - As a former competitive Counter-Strike player turned eSports tournament organizer and co-founder of an (in the end) unsuccessful eSports organization, this really reaffirms much of my time spent and makes me really regret leaving eSports when I did. I'm very happy to see Alex Garfield, who I looked up to when almost nobody knew who he was, help turn eSports into a true professional sport that it deserves to be, and even happier to see the huge amount of support that Twitch is providing to the entire community.
- seanalltogether 12y agoSome interesting conversations happening in the league of legends subreddit http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/2osl1p/evil_geniuses_gg_agency_bought_by_twitch_tv/ http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/2osl1p/evil...
- LandoCalrissian 12y agoJustin Wong is playing for twitch now. Didn't expect that.
- pselbert 12y agoI skimmed through the article expecting to see mention of some of the notable Capcom/Marvel players. I'm still not sure why that wasn't mentioned. A number of those guys (Ricky, Arturo, Justin) were friends of mine back before I left the scene, long before all of the team business started.
- ericglyman 12y agoEchoes of the agency-ization happening in other areas of tech (1) Today's Top Product Hunt - http://www.producthunt.com/posts/hidden-founders http://www.producthunt.com/posts/hidden-founders (2) One of New Yorker's big Nov. 2014 Stories - http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/programmers-price http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/programmers-pri...
- crazypyro 12y agoCan we fix the title please? Twitch acquired much more than just Evil Geniuses, they acquired Good Game Agency which owns and manages quite a few teams and other e-sports related things. (As he points out in his statement)
- goeric 12y agoSmart move. It's amazing how far the e-sports industry has come in the last few years. When I was invited to compete at CGS Combine (which Alex references in this post), I knew it was way ahead of its time. There's a lot of big opportunities and unsolved problems in this space to tackle.
- baby 12y agoWhen I saw the website and the name and the references to counter strike I immediately thought of GG[1] the french team that was #1st for a pretty long time. Also they were renting servers for a lot of money and they were synonyme with quality (it was always a pleasure to play a match on a goodgame server). [1]: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodgame_%28%C3%A9quipe%29 http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodgame_%28%C3%A9quipe%29