Okay I know that, I feel like these VCs and big owners are building esports like a house of cards and now they are falling down fans have two options either pay $5 to watch esports or go screw off to NFL
The issue is, they have all the options. As Richard says, a lot of them are esports tourists. Even if a game or do monetises their content, it won't make an impact because there won't be a coordinated effort from the industry as a whole. The tourist fans will just swap CS for Valorant, LoL for Dota, etc.
I'd obviously prefer to pay a reasonable subscription, but the industry execs seem to prefer the plan of jumping from one sugar-daddy totalitarian regime to another.
RE: athletic sports fans vs esports...athletic fans at least still have a sense of humor as well, they're hilarious, even today you can still peruse the various online discussion platforms for athletic sports and have a laugh from the organic community memes, and i think the acceptance of criticism across the board is why it still works there
esports fans are less critical every day as they age out and the new younger fans drift in with more fear of backlash for having a chuckle at the expense of someone extraordinarily more well off than them, unless they do something that slightly edges out of the status quo and then all bets are off and it's CANCEL time, they might as well be dead at that point as far as the 14-year-old esports fan is concerned...this drifts around in severity depending on the game
the bluster of CS events has progressed past bland and contrived to just flat out annoying now...i can't think of a single instance of a caster even hinting at something stupid a player or team did in-game (admittedly i didn't watch most of the group games), and even mauisnake and kassad dialed back the disdainful energy that makes Hot Take Point Made a fun show to watch, no one is safe from -=THE PAPER=-
CS esports kicked ass up through 2019 and i'm actually kinda sad that The ReddiTORs seem to have missed out on it because maybe they'd be less inclined to let theocratic tyrants completely take it over...but hey, they asked for this
There's a lot aligned with why I've drifted away from esports in here. I wanted to be a long-term fan but there's just no reason to when 99% of the content and broadcasts are on the level of "Is [flavor of the month midlander] the next Faker??????" by someone who clearly didn't watch or understand prime Faker
I know this is a kind of pleb comment, BUT... ain't it the same in pretty much all sports ever? I mean specifically the point about ephemeral fans. I've seen it in my hobbies time and time again. From 100 people there are 80 who stay for the year and disappear like ash in the wind and those are the major representation most of the time. From the perspective of a true fan of the Sport they seem dumb and short-sighted as they most likely are only following the recent trends of the major social medias (nowdays at least), but from a business perspective this is the majority audience. I know the current state of CS content seems soooo dulled down but I like to think it is not for us. The people who are truely invested seek their content elsewhere. Maybe earlier this wasn't the case since CS didn't reach that critical mass where the truely devoted fans were the core audience but I don't think that is the case anymore. Or I should probably say: the companies think that it is not the case anymore.
I have a personal anecdote for the "spending money on esports" part of the conversation. I wouldn't have a problem with paying for broadcasts of the tournaments. My issue is with money I would be spending directly on the orgs themselves.
I live in the US. I've been playing/following CSGO since 2015. There have been 2 occasions where I have purchased merch directly from an org. First time it was Optic when Tarik, NAF, etc was on it and the second was Liquid about two years ago. The Optic team imploded not very long after and now the players I was a fan of in Liquid aren't there and Liquid aren't even considered NA anymore.
It's much harder for me to justify spending money on esports orgs vs regular sports orgs due to the difference in consistency of teams/orgs. I can drop money on my local baseball/football team without having to worry about the team moving in the foreseeable future. Or buy a player's jersey without worrying about them leaving the team for a long while due to their contracts.
You and Devin Nash need to have a conversation
They did: https://youtu.be/S2cvHZusiic
Okay I know that, I feel like these VCs and big owners are building esports like a house of cards and now they are falling down fans have two options either pay $5 to watch esports or go screw off to NFL
The issue is, they have all the options. As Richard says, a lot of them are esports tourists. Even if a game or do monetises their content, it won't make an impact because there won't be a coordinated effort from the industry as a whole. The tourist fans will just swap CS for Valorant, LoL for Dota, etc.
I'd obviously prefer to pay a reasonable subscription, but the industry execs seem to prefer the plan of jumping from one sugar-daddy totalitarian regime to another.
And this will lead to what incompetence from devs and orgs that will eventually be the end of esports as we know it welcome to the club my friend
RE: athletic sports fans vs esports...athletic fans at least still have a sense of humor as well, they're hilarious, even today you can still peruse the various online discussion platforms for athletic sports and have a laugh from the organic community memes, and i think the acceptance of criticism across the board is why it still works there
esports fans are less critical every day as they age out and the new younger fans drift in with more fear of backlash for having a chuckle at the expense of someone extraordinarily more well off than them, unless they do something that slightly edges out of the status quo and then all bets are off and it's CANCEL time, they might as well be dead at that point as far as the 14-year-old esports fan is concerned...this drifts around in severity depending on the game
the bluster of CS events has progressed past bland and contrived to just flat out annoying now...i can't think of a single instance of a caster even hinting at something stupid a player or team did in-game (admittedly i didn't watch most of the group games), and even mauisnake and kassad dialed back the disdainful energy that makes Hot Take Point Made a fun show to watch, no one is safe from -=THE PAPER=-
CS esports kicked ass up through 2019 and i'm actually kinda sad that The ReddiTORs seem to have missed out on it because maybe they'd be less inclined to let theocratic tyrants completely take it over...but hey, they asked for this
Loved the piece.
There's a lot aligned with why I've drifted away from esports in here. I wanted to be a long-term fan but there's just no reason to when 99% of the content and broadcasts are on the level of "Is [flavor of the month midlander] the next Faker??????" by someone who clearly didn't watch or understand prime Faker
I know this is a kind of pleb comment, BUT... ain't it the same in pretty much all sports ever? I mean specifically the point about ephemeral fans. I've seen it in my hobbies time and time again. From 100 people there are 80 who stay for the year and disappear like ash in the wind and those are the major representation most of the time. From the perspective of a true fan of the Sport they seem dumb and short-sighted as they most likely are only following the recent trends of the major social medias (nowdays at least), but from a business perspective this is the majority audience. I know the current state of CS content seems soooo dulled down but I like to think it is not for us. The people who are truely invested seek their content elsewhere. Maybe earlier this wasn't the case since CS didn't reach that critical mass where the truely devoted fans were the core audience but I don't think that is the case anymore. Or I should probably say: the companies think that it is not the case anymore.
I have a personal anecdote for the "spending money on esports" part of the conversation. I wouldn't have a problem with paying for broadcasts of the tournaments. My issue is with money I would be spending directly on the orgs themselves.
I live in the US. I've been playing/following CSGO since 2015. There have been 2 occasions where I have purchased merch directly from an org. First time it was Optic when Tarik, NAF, etc was on it and the second was Liquid about two years ago. The Optic team imploded not very long after and now the players I was a fan of in Liquid aren't there and Liquid aren't even considered NA anymore.
It's much harder for me to justify spending money on esports orgs vs regular sports orgs due to the difference in consistency of teams/orgs. I can drop money on my local baseball/football team without having to worry about the team moving in the foreseeable future. Or buy a player's jersey without worrying about them leaving the team for a long while due to their contracts.