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Blizzard Launches A Professional Sports League For 'Overwatch' (usatoday.com)
An anonymous reader quotes USA Today:
One of Blizzard Entertainment's hottest video games is making the jump into a professional sports league. [Blizzard] announced Friday the launch of Overwatch League, a professional video gaming league kicking off its inaugural season during the second half of 2017... Blizzard says the league will combine competitive video gaming -- better known as eSports with hallmarks of professional sports leagues like the National Football League, complete with teams based in various cities worldwide featuring owners who will cultivate team and player development... Blizzard will start by recruiting prospective owners representing cities in the Americas, Europe, Asia and other parts of the globe... Players who get picked up by a team are guaranteed contracts complete with benefits, and owners will be required to take steps to develop their players and grow their fan bases.
Overwatch already has 20 million players after just four months. Could professional videogame competitions someday become more popular than football?
Overwatch already has 20 million players after just four months. Could professional videogame competitions someday become more popular than football?
Cars are infinitely faster than anyone can run, but we still hold tracck and field events.
Had this been 2010, I would have agreed with you. The numbers for 2015 show that esports isn't just a game these days, though. Sure, these aren't NFL or MLB numbers, but they aren't minor either.
http://esports-marketing-blog....
You're right, which is why it's not called "sports", it's called "e-sports".
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
So what you have here is 36 million viewers for the top gaming events and 30k people attending physically. Compare the former to some YouTube videos of some YouTube "stars" and the latter to the average E3 (or BlizzCon) attendance number and you'll see that this is pretty much what I was talking about: People who are not only interested in a certain activity but are most likely actively participating in it and only because of this interested in watching those that are good at it.
There isn't much room for increasing those numbers unless playing computer games in a competitive multiplayer environment becomes the favorite pastime of a sizable portion of the population.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
ESports is a thing, it's big, and it's growing fast.
Errr... three years ago an e-sports event became the fastest selling event ever to sellout the Staples Center... http://www.redbull.com/us/en/e...
The leagues it has needs better organization, stability, and developer agnosticism. I don't trust that Blizzard's "Overwatch League" will be kicking around ten years from now, but I expect that MLG and EVO will.
For an idea on how e-sports could actually change to a lasting, reliable force, Chris Kluwe (who's pretty on point for this sort of stuff) spells it out entirely.
https://newzoo.com/insights/ar... Has caught baseball & hockey for US male millennials
However, games like Starcraft sold in the millions, and some players are considered super stars in their countries.
Just because your girlfriend neither plays nor watches Starcraft competitions, it does not mean that jap. or korean school girls do it neither.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Sportsball is bad enough, but watching other people play computer games, for fuck's sake?
Get off the couch, people!
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
And when the cars can be controlled by AI (which won't be far off)?
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
What's next? Calling Scrabble tournaments "sports" events? Not all competitions are sports events. Most, if not all, sports events are competitions. See the difference?
Old people don't get young people. News at 11.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
You mean like the part of the population that has grown up playing Nintendo games or spending their free time gaming on a PC? A sizable portion of the upcoming generation already plays computer games. Eventually the people who didn't grow up playing computer games will die off.
Your exact argument could have been applied to basketball or football in their infancy, and yet they're some of the most popular sports in the U.S. at this point. Whether or not Overwatch, or any other computer game reaches anywhere near that level is debatable, but Valve's Dota 2 championship had a $20 million prize pool this year. Hard to scoff at that.
player unions? W2 or 1099? travel costs?
Also what will be on the clock time and off the clock time?
Will the player be able to cover the costs of a tax pro to deal with the Jock taxes? and will the teams / Blizzard have there own issues with that if say they try to do some tricks that the IRS or others say no you can't do that.
Yes, professional e-sports is a thing, and yes, endorsements by the stars is valuable to prospective sponsors, but I doubt that this is ever going to become as big as current pro-sports like football or (outside the US) the real kind of football that you actually play with your feet. I don't doubt that you can attract a few thousands to a couple ten thousand people to come to some global event, and you will find a million or ten to watch it if broadcast world wide, but that's basically your potential market. You also can't do that on a weekly base like the various sports events now without saturating the market very quickly.
Yes, there is a market. But I doubt that it will ever become any bigger than for other niche games like chess or curling. There are also fans of either, but neither has any kind of mass appeal.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yes, there is a market. But I doubt that it will ever become any bigger than for other niche games like chess or curling. There are also fans of either, but neither has any kind of mass appeal.
People said the same thing about video games 10,20,30 years ago. Now, video gaming is a ~$100 billion USD industry that makes ~2.5 times the revenue of global box office sales (all film/TV revenue together is still quite a bit more, at ~$300 billion, but the gap is closing). And only ~$40 billion of that is mobile gaming. The days of video gaming being a "niche market" are long since over. And you can easily do weekly events, though no ones started doing that yet, in part because if you want to watch video games, you can hope on Twitch and watch them anytime, no need to limit yourself to a few hours a day on one specific day. Hell, the top 5 games on Twitch right now have ~500,000 people watching them.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
...yet, there are professional chess (and Go, shogi) players. It's just smaller economics than football, but that's okay.
It's not the fall that kills you. It's the sudden stop at the end. -Douglas Adams
If eSports want to get a loyal fanbase they need a stable game: The same game played for many years, small amount of changes, rules easy to understand.
There's a few popular sports (10,20?) How many games are there that are played professionally? For how long?
A video game.
I'm surprised you were able to use a pronoun in there, and deduce a shortened implication from context instead of being retard-grade explicit.
Yes playing video games is a huge market. Watching video games not so much.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
League of Legends has been adding new champions consistently from 40 in 2009 to 133 today. That's a LOT of changes, and they've been quite successful. I don't play LoL anymore, but the games are still "okay" to watch. I wouldn't go out of my way. Same with CS:GO. Overwatch I'm actively playing, Diamond ranked, and I can't stand watching games. It's *too* chaotic, there's too much to watch and a caster can never get the full picture.
It's when your mummy is always looking out for you and doing those tricky Google searches for you until you get a bit bigger.
One difference between video games and ball sports is that unlike ball sports, video games are subject to an exclusive right to perform them publicly. A game's publisher holds copyright that it can use and in some cases has used to ban leagues from publicly performing its games. Blizzard, for example, has had a spat with KeSPA from 2008 through 2011. This doesn't bode well for potential competitors to Blizzard's league.
If the National League held copyright on baseball, the American League, Negro National League, and Negro American League could never have formed. (The NL and AL eventually merged to form MLB, and most NNL and NAL players were signed to MLB teams after World War II.)
If the National Football League held copyright on gridiron football, the American Football League could never have formed. (They eventually merged to form the present NFL.)
If the National Basketball League held copyright on gridiron football, the Basketball Association of America and American Basketball Association could never have formed. (The NBL merged with the BAA and ABA to form the NBA.)
Yes, there is a market. But I doubt that it will ever become any bigger than for other niche games like chess or curling. There are also fans of either, but neither has any kind of mass appeal.
I broadly agree with you. However I expect interest in "traditional" sports to fall as well - all the arguments against videogames as a spectator sport are the same for football as a spectator sport. The only thing these sports have in their favour is momentum - every watches a match/talks about a match because their friends are all watching/talking about a match.
Watching sports was a draw when kids had little else to do. Now, they've got a ton of other activities more interesting than watching a match. They've also got lots of ways for social groupings whilst previously the best way for a group to get together was at a match (as spectators).
I suspect that within a few generations football will be limited to a niche like chess is - only the parents of the kids who play will follow the sport.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Well, I'm not that sure. Team sports are attractive for one single reason: You can't just do them at home. Even if I am in shape and able to play football, I still need a lot of friends to get a game going. Plus, I could get hurt. So, if I'm interested in that sport, the only way to enjoy it (if I don't have a lot of friends that share that interest) is to watch it on TV.
Plus, the learning curve to play it in a way that's good enough to not drop the ball more often than catching it is pretty steep. It is way easier and appealing to just watch people who can do it well do it.
The same isn't true for computer games. Here, it's trivial to play them yourself if you're interested. Moreover, the difference in "appeal" between you trying (and failing) and someone who can do it well isn't that big. Especially when it comes to appeal.
Maybe I'm biased as someone who can actually play computer game decently, but then again, if I couldn't, why the hell would I be interested in them in the first place?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, I'm not that sure. Team sports are attractive for one single reason: You can't just do them at home. Even if I am in shape and able to play football, I still need a lot of friends to get a game going. Plus, I could get hurt. So, if I'm interested in that sport, the only way to enjoy it (if I don't have a lot of friends that share that interest) is to watch it on TV.
Well, that's why I said that the interest would fall. Sports as a spectator pastime was interesting because there was so little else to interest a teen/young adult. That has changed. Prior to 2000, the average person was the target audience for sports (matches, news, etc). Post-2010 the average person plays more phone-games than viewing sport.
Looking at the stats (last time I looked sometime last year), sports viewers still made up less than 10% of the population while at one point in the past it was well over 65%. Right now there are more people playing smartphone games than there are people watching sport (combined). This is why I think sports viewership numbers are going to dive down to the same level as videogame viewership numbers.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Sports will take a long time to die off, they have a huge amount of inertia and are still getting record TV deals. The fans may be old, but they won't die for decades. Real sports also has local pride to keep people watching, a Geordie will keep watching Newcastle United FC, but it's much easier to stop watching SKT Telecom T1 if they go to shit.
That's pretty much just Korea, no-one else cared about the Starcraft esports scene. The Japanese don't like PC gaming at all.
I will add my voice to this conversation: I am a CS undergrad/grad and total geek. I am their prime audience in every way except one:
I have not played a video game since HS when I played Starcraft over dialup.
And yet I listen to a nightly SiriusXM radio show about esports and I follow them rabidly
I agree with other commentators that in this instance I am somewhat like a person who has never played a particular sport but will still have an interest. I don't race cars, but I love F1. I don't play tennis, but I love Roger Federer.
There is an audience outside gamers. But, whether it can be harnessed is another thing entirely.
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Why do I meet so many Japanese eve online players or warcraft players then?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.