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Modern MBA: The Crooked Business of Esports

finalflame

Member


Don't know if anyone else here watches / enjoys Modern MBA, but the dude makes incredible deep-dive videos on different industries and niches. This one on the absolute crock of shit that is the eSports "business" really stood out to me.

tl;dr eSports teams make no money, virtually never have, and basically exist for players and creators to milk money out of. Not a single team / brand has found a path to long-term sustainable profitability.
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
It will be a travesty if ESports aren’t threatening the big 4 traditional sports in the next 10 years. What crazy potential there.
 

Dorfdad

Gold Member
I could solve it having been on both sides I see the problem but ain’t giving out anything for free lol. Of course the IP holders have to see the same vision but they don’t want to give away money they don’t have to. Esports organizations exist to grow their organization without much care about replaceable talent. Talent cares about themselves because they know they have a limited lifespan on a “team” so they out for themselves.

I can only speak for Fortnite. Org have been leaving because EPIC refuses to partner with orgs because they just don’t feel they need them. However they sell skins and when as a creator you have a skin when it’s released you get 2-3x the return on those skin purchases. Why not allow legit ESPorts organizations that meet certain requirements have their skin sold in the shop? With all that revenue given back to the teams to improve roster and grow their organizations?

Well in the case of Fortnite I believe the answer is they don’t want 1000 players being the cream of the crop. I believe they want everyone to feel like they can win. If only signed esports teams or players can win prize pools at lans than they feel millions won’t compete and they lose out of the possibility of them spending money cause they will move on to other games.
 
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Men_in_Boxes

Snake Oil Salesman
I could solve it having been on both sides I see the problem but ain’t giving out anything for free lol. Of course the IP holders have to see the same vision but they don’t want to give away money they don’t have to. Esports organizations exist to grow their organization without much care about replaceable talent. Talent cares about themselves because they know they have a limited lifespan on a “team” so they out for themselves.

I can only speak for Fortnite. Org have been leaving because EPIC refuses to partner with orgs because they just don’t feel they need them. However they sell skins and when as a creator you have a skin when it’s released you get 2-3x the return on those skin purchases. Why not allow legit ESPorts organizations that meet certain requirements have their skin sold in the shop? With all that revenue given back to the teams to improve roster and grow their organizations?

Well in the case of Fortnite I believe the answer is they don’t want 1000 players being the cream of the crop. I believe they want everyone to feel like they can win. If only signed esports teams or players can win prize pools at lans than they feel millions won’t compete and they lose out of the possibility of them spending money cause they will move on to other games.
I've often thought the games need to be better, and they need to pull in the player audience rather than the top .00001 percent of most talented players.

Imagine if once per year, the developer / publisher invited 10,000 players to participate in a large bracket. You televise / stream a number of matches from this special group and award the winner a grand prize pool at the end. If 10k people are in some kind of money ranked league, then how many people will watch because they know a person who has a chance to actually win.

Gamings biggest strength is it's interactive nature. Esports just mimics the model of watching the best players play. They have to leverage it's strengths.
 

Success

Member
Esports will always exist for certain games like fighting games.

The issue is that people have been trying too hard to manufacture it for some games like Overwatch.
 
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