I don't really have many direct dealings with Jaxel, we were in negotiations to bring him to Civil War this year, but he asked for more money than I could afford.
A lot of his assertions at TO's and the community are flat out wrong. Hotels usually do not give out venue space for free. They can give you a discount for booking rooms, sure, but free is hard to come by. Even then, it's not a risk free venture, you have to guarantee a large number of room nights rented, otherwise you're on the hook for the event space and/or rooms... and that's a pretty huge price tag. I'm pretty sure Big E took a huge bath on that Summer Jam when a hurricane hit the east coast.
It's really easy to criticize TOs and say they're making a "killing" when all you look at is final numbers and don't really look at the hours of work or the risk involved.
If you think all TO's have to is show up and collect money, you're dead wrong.
I made a small profit the last two Civil War tournaments. These are the first two tournaments in my 11 years running events that I've actually made what could be considered a paycheck on. 11 years running tournaments... two paychecks.
We had 250 people for Civil War 4 and 400 for Civil War V, so it's a fairly large tournament, a step under the UFGTs, CEOs, and ECTs of the scene.
It's really hard to get 400 people to come to an event. You have to build that over years and have to have a proven track record.
And guess what? Neither of those tournaments went in the black until people showed up and paid at the door. Think you can sell a business proposition to run a concert or something and not know if you'll profit or be shelled for stacks until the day of the event?
No freaking way. That's why ticketmaster exists. We have to charge $40 at the freaking door b/c otherwise NO ONE would pre-register and make running huge tournaments almost impossible.
Anyway, what's my pay per hour? WAAAY under minimum wage. I'm pretty sure for this CW it was under $5 and Civil War IV was under $1. Guys like Keits who put way more money in their tournament (and it shows) is even less per hour.
For my venue? I couldn't get a discount on the event space because the room blocks were being rented out at discounted rates ($65 a night). In order to get discounted event space, I'd have to have rooms booked at standard rates and I wasn't willing to do that to the players.
Anywho, him asserting that the "big TOs" are trying to "fleece the community" is just a load of hogwash. There's nothing to fleece.
Case and point: there are NO (zero) professional Tournament Organizers. The closest is Big E, since he runs 3 large events a year. (This is why his hotel probably gives him better rates and he has more equipment than anyone on the EC). But even E has day jobs and night jobs.
If it was such "free money" why isn't everyone else doing it? Why do most TOs seem reluctant, jaded, and frazzled? Because it's more work than it's worth financially, and it's pretty much love of community that keeps it going.
Anywho, on to Jaxel here.
Well, I take it you're retiring from your "streaming career" at major FGC events... cuz I'm not really sure who would want to pay you money now. If you don't like what's going on, you go air it out on the internet instead of person to person. Talk about unprofessional.
What's ironic, is that he even says the knock against him is that he's "unprofessional"... and tries to dispute that by airing all of his dirty laundry on public forums that most TO's aren't a part of.
He tries to knock Big E and said he hasn't been paid for 7 years, but NO streamer really got paid before 2010. Remember when Spooky was "Kings of Poverty". Also, I think Jaxel has enough DONATE buttons all over his pages... even had a damn tip jar at WB7.
CLASSY!
He's not even a "primary" streamer. He'll always want to run streams for HIS game, Soul Calibur, which is a B list draw at best, over what the schedule says. Which is what he did at WB7.
If you look at the archives, the games he streamed the most? Soul Calibur and freaking Windjammers. Meanwhile both Namco and Team Ninja were there wanting TTT2 and DOA5 to be promoted...
And he praises Smash and MLG events, which is hilarious. MLG events aren't great so no one goes unless they want that Esports money... and if Smash events are so great, why'd they pony up $100,000 to get into EVO? Cuz most of their tournaments are adhoc shitshows that rely on randoms to bring gamecubes and 13" CRT TV's and expect Round Robin for everything. Oh, and then they steal a bunch.
Real awesome.
But the cake is saying Triforce isn't shady. He may not be "con artist" shady, but he's going to ask for every favor he can get. He's the only person to ask for special treatment at Civil War just for the honor of having EMP show up.
However, I did have to put up KnuckleDu in a hotel because Triforce flew a 16 year old kid into a city he didn't know without money or a place to stay. He didn't even have a damn cell phone. Bonus: Triforce didn't even show up until the next day.
I'm out. I have no personal issue with Jaxel, I'm just posting to provide some alternative perspective. And express that I'm glad he didn't stream my event. This is not a good look.
