[Kepler]

Apologies if there have been similar topics, I searched with regards to the thread I'm linking, and couldn't find anything.

Was reading through a thread on TL about how Esports/competitive SC2 could be in for trouble if it's not monetized effectively, and MrBitter decided to chime in here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...rentpage=7#127

The gist of it is, that based on people he's talked to in the industry, some of the events we've come to know and love are really walking a tight-rope in terms of making a profit.

To be honest it has me a little worried for the future of big events like MLG, Dreamhack and IPL, and even the GSL. MLG especially announced a huge prize pool, but I have to wonder how their sponsors hope to make a profit on their investment, are they banking on effective marketing to make back the money they inject? In a lot of cases, as the thread states, streams of games are effectively free, which could be seriously impacting on the events' ability to profit.

This seems to work with other sports such as Formula racing (Marlboro etc.), Football, Rugby and so on, but does E-sports have the potential to reach such a huge audience for marketing like that to be effective?

I worry that it could be more damaging to Australian e-sports, with an already fragile infrastructure that limits us and a relatively small community, a lack of investment could cripple it permanently. Obviously smaller tournaments will always be around, Brood War tournaments in Australia lasted well into the late 2000's.

Obviously bigger names like MLG will be around for a while, as Bitter said they have a lot of financial backing, and have since before SC2 was even around. Money will always be around, but the sheer amount being thrown around is unheard of in the west to the best of my knowledge, of course in places like Korea there's always people throwing around how Flash makes 200k a year.


Talk of 'profiting' from e-sports is going to get dirty looks, but it's pretty much essential if people want e-sports to have a bigger acceptance in the western world (even then, Brood War is still effectively a niche' hobby in SK).

So what are your views? Do you think it's possible we might see E-sports events being toned down for the sake of fiscal reasons, or even the complete removal of some events because of how hard it is to be profitable?