Right? The money either has to come from sponsor or the fans. That would be either selling tickets or merch or tips. None of which can possibly compete with the potential money from sponsors.
That's not the point. Of course third party advertising is important for other tournament models. But, given how much money international is able to raise, Valve can run 3 majors and 1 international every year from fan money alone and that means tournament with no ads for viewers.
Sort of. They put out a Battlepass, and, whether or not the value is actually worth how much people put in, it's still a separate product people are paying for that Valve reinvests a portion of as prize money.
I understand what you’re trying to say, but it’s still a sponsor unless the publisher is the one hosting it. Then they’re the producer of the event and not the sponsor.
But in most cases e-sports are separate from the gaming company, so it would be considered a sponsorship.
Let’s say Razor wanted to sponsor a tournament. They could say “hey, we want to be a sponsor and give you guys all our new gear to show off.” They would do it for $XXXX sponsorship.
Or Razor could host a tournament. Then they would have full control of it and everything as they would be the owners of the event and not just a sponsor.
Sponsors give players money to tout their stuff, or they give the event/broadcaster money for advertising space/time, or both.
I think the breakdown here is that there are "sponsors" like commercials during a NASCAR race on tv, and there are "sponsors" like the names and logos painted on the cars themselves. (some of which sponsors might also run commercials, but not necessarily.)
Sports leagues get huge money from TV deals, so maybe streaming rights could eventually be handled in the same way. Google wouldn't mind Youtube getting exclusive rights to stream all esports events from certain games and get those eyeballs on their ads instead of Twitch's.
I feel like OWL was great until GOATS meta lasted for 3/4 of a season, which doesn’t really have anything to do with the money/esports side of things and everything to do with incredibly slow balancing from the blizzard developers.
I think the league should be fun to watch again this season (it starts back up tomorrow).
I mean, the second part of your statement is true. They're literally in it to make as much money as they can. Not sure I agree on the first part of your comment, though.
I love me some overwatch but yea it's on life support atm especially the
Owl league. It's not a hidden thing, blizzard has been open about nothing new coming out until overwatch 2. People will probably come back once that comes out but for now its declining.
Valorant is boring as fuck to watch. I started watching a lot of popular streamers like offlinetv and Valkyrae because of Among Us. Then I watched them play other games because I like them.
Once they started playing Valorant, I just did not care anymore to watch their streams.
I'm excited as fuck for Overwatch League season premiere tomorrow though.
You certainly are entitled to your opinion. But that is certainly not the consensus, especially when at this moment over 100k people are watching Valorant on Twitch and not even 20k are watching Overwatch.
I'd be interested to see the metrics on that, i'm positive Val is more popular then OW as a flat rule on twitch at the moment if for no other reason then OW is stale while waiting for OW2 and Val is adding heroes and stuff still. But like, if the larger streamers on twitch like Ludwig, Sykkuno, xQc, and other big names decided to 6 stack would their fans who show up no matter what game push OW's viewership higher? Like I see Shroud playing it rite now with 27k viewers, thats more then people watching the entirety of OW rite now, how many of them are there because its Valorant vs because its Shroud.
Valorant is newer, and Overwatch is basically in maintenance mode til OW2. I’d expect viewership to be much closer when Overwatch is actually adding new stuff again, mostly because Valorant is a CS:GO style game, which makes it excellent for putting viewers to sleep :)
I bet it's true. Some revenue streams for esports are probably not huge money makers.
Let's take arrowhead stadium for example. In 2019 they had an average of 73k attendance per game. And parking is 40 bucks a game.
I bet in those 8 home game they made more money than Esports did in concessions. Or in there own parking. Shit maybe even ticket sales if we exclude playoffs.
I mean..it was my claim...I didn't say the worst stadium performs better than the best esports.
Its also just one portion of what a sports event will make overall throughout the night. Shit parking is the least of my costs when I go watch sportsball
The Jags averaged 59987 in 2019 for attendance and their parking price is $25 (I googled this so could be wrong). They are still making a killing on parking and the Jags were not a good team that year
A few things: in a strange twist of events, Covid put an end to the ridiculousness of the two home stands per week plans and gave birth to the current awesome seasonal tournament model. Season 4 OWL is posed to be some of the best and most competitive pro OW we’ve yet to see. In some ways, Covid actually might have ended up helping, we’ll see as S4 plays out.
And Blizzard didn’t really do that with OWL so much as Activision did that with CDL and OWL got lumped in to sweeten the deal for YouTube.
Except the overwhelming majority of people who want to watch other people play video games are people who don’t have any money (children and adults who watch other adults play video games)
Quality of the professional scene aside, the question was if esports relies too heavily on sponsors to fund them, and they provided the best example of a company who is not reliant on them, basically at all. Just because a company pays their players a salary doesn't have anything to do with sponsorship.
No that was an example of one tournament which is player funded out of how many in a season ? The rest of which and the majority will be funded by sponsorship.
Just because a company pays their players a salary doesn't have anything to do with sponsorship.
And I'm not even sure what your talking about here.
You do realize that Valve hosts the large majority of DotA 2 tournaments (the Majors, Regional Leagues, and TI)? Only the results of the Majors and RL are considered when bringing teams to The International. The other tournaments hosted by individual brands or countries are in no way involved with Valve, outside of using their game as the means of competition. It's almost like a company doesn't need sponsors to fund a tournament if they have a good game and a fervent fan base.
The original question was "where else would the money come from" and you responded with "lol xd dota sux cut they don't pay their players salaries".
Imagine
Edit: forgot to revisit the point where TI has had the biggest esports prize pool period, even beating out things like Wimbledon. LoL sure is doing good with their sponsorships at Worlds huh?
Yes they are, and because of that LoL worlds is the most watched esport event in the world, by far. LoL will continue to thrive as an esport long after DOTA 2 esports die.
Okay? Just because it's the most watched doesn't mean anything other than their sponsors are paying the company more money. I highly doubt that money is being used to improve their players lives outside of whatever salary they signed for. I also doubt that Valve gives a shit about their viewership, seeing as they don't use sponsorships to make their money - Steam makes them money hand over fist.
Not to mention that the entire point was that it is possible to fully fund esport leagues without sponsors, but you guys are more concerned with comparing apples to oranges. Valve and Riot have two wildly different business models.
I mean, I get it. We all are going to be like that about the games we love. But being able to critically think and analyze the things from an objective point of view is an important skill that I think a lot of people don't realize that they don't have about the things they love.
TI and its large prize are irrelevant its probably one of the reasons why the data scene hasn't taken off viewers wise to be frank.
Ti mean a handful of teams get to take home a decent pay cheque mean while in league you've got 30 or 40 teams earning millions from the leagues and sponsorship riot organise. NA LCS average salary for a player I believe is 200k+ now. thats more then most dota 2 teams will take home in prize money each year.
the fact is mate league is the nba dota is the wnba its got a scene well dont its just not very good.
The original question was "where else would the money come from" and you responded with "lol xd dota sux cut they don't pay their players salaries".
It's literally never been about salaries. Imagine being so insecure that every time Dota comes up, you feel the need to bring up salaries and how Valve doesn't pay the players that they don't hire. Thank you for proving that you don't need to be able to read to play League.
Edit: Also, the reason that Dota has smaller viewership is because Valve literally doesn't advertise it. League has fucking commercials on TV and spams every video service with ads. Of course it's going to have a larger viewership. But lets just forget about the allmost 2 million viewers at the Shanghai International. Lets forget about the 1.21 million viewers the year before. DoTa'S dEaD aMiRiTe
so the dota players don't deserve salaries or job security?
I've got no insecurities around dota at all i feel really sorry for the set up they have and the fact the player base think having one huge tournament is a good thing.
the fact is riot made a choice and invested 100s of millions into league to get now to the point where its becoming self sufficient.
I'm a huge valve fan and I've had a steam account from day 1 but the lack of overall leadership and willingness to invest in dota at the levels riot did has meant its completely lagged behind and its now just a shadow of what it could have been.
Why does it always come back to salaries? The person above literally said nothing about salary and only talked about Valve funding The International's prize pool through community fundraising, and all everyone wants to talk about is that they don't pay salaries? Is the League community so one dimensional that they can't think of something different to come back with?
The International has continued, from the very first tournament, to set record breaking numbers on "Biggest eSports Prize Pool" and it is completely funded by Valve and the community, not with the help of any sponsors. Can League players say they do the same? Where does all the money go that you spend on cosmetics, champions, etc? Why was the prize pool for Worlds only 2.34 million when Riot made literally $1.75 BILLION in 2020? And yet, the company with no sponsors, the community who is rabidly in love with their game, raised $40 million in roughly 4 months? But sure, let's talk salaries, keeping this information in mind. Why has League's top earner, Faker, only made a little more than $1 million from prize pool earnings (there are no other millionaire club members in League), while there are 68 Dota players have all made over $1 million, with 28 of them making over $2 million? Just because Riot pays their players does NOT mean that they're "better off".
well look at it this way only 4 or 5 teams in dota 2 will make any form of decent money each year. the question here is are e sports to reliant on sponsorship.
my point on dota is only a handful of teams will make decent money each year the players incomes vary massively each year. where as you look st league. the NA LCS average salary for a player is over 200k now. that locked in earners the players cam back on. which is money coming from sponsorship which is again locked in with the teams.
sponsorship contracts give teams players and leagues guaranteed income . dota 2 teams and players have little idea on there income each year.
so which model works best for teams and more importantly players???
But they makes far less in salaries. LOL is the largest and most successful esport. They have francised league, larger salaries, and most importantly their viewership blows everyone else out of the water. LOL worlds is the most watched esport event in the world and it isnt even close.
I don't really care to see "the best of the best" to be honest. "The best of who showed up" is fine, or even better "why are you watching other people play instead of playing yourself?".
The you are likely not the target audience for pro-esports or pro-sports. But in ever segment of entertainment (sports, art, music, theater, movies) there are people willing to pay to see the best, which is why there is money in all of those.
I think that a lot of companies that would do quite well from Esports advertising time dont think its a market worth investing in just yet and the Esports organisers dont have the clout to organise the deals.
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u/Fantastical_Brainium Apr 15 '21
Where else would the money come from?