ESPN: Teams Hesitant To Buy Into Overwatch League Due to High Cost, Undesirable Contract Terms - Sensationalist Headlines

[quote]Activision Blizzard is struggling to sign franchises to its yet-to-launch Overwatch League because the asking price is too high, multiple sources close to existing franchises and investment partners told ESPN. Multiple sources said Blizzard is asking for a $20 million franchise fee for the league featuring its popular 2016 title, with prices escalating from there in larger markets such as New York and Los Angeles. However, following the $20 million buy-in, teams are not guaranteed revenue sharing until after 2021 and only if Blizzard meets certain criteria that sources did not disclose to ESPN. Additionally, sources said if a team sells its spot to another party, the league would receive 25 percent of the proceeds. Overwatch was released last year and, as of January, has 20 million players worldwide, according to Blizzard. The only established major esports leagues featuring the game are OGN APEX in South Korea and Overwatch Premier Series in China. The $20 million evaluation is significantly higher than any buy-in into an esports league in the United States. A spot in the League Championship Series for Riot Games' League of Legends, the most popular game in the world and one of the most established esports leagues, sold for $1.8 million in December. It was previously reported that the Kraft Sports Group, the family business headed by Robert Kraft that also owns the NFL's New England Patriots and MLS's New England Revolution, had closed in on a deal to purchase a spot. One source close to that negotiation told ESPN it was a handshake deal and includes a most favored nation agreement that allows the Kraft Group to buy in at the most favorable price given to another organization.[/quote] [url=http://www.espn.com.au/esports/story/_/id/19347153/teams-hesitant-buy-overwatch-league-due-high-cost-undesirable-contract-terms]ESPN[/url]

That is an obscene price. To compare, league of legends slots usually run around a million at the most.

- $20 million buyin - no guaranteed revenue until 2021 and even then only when certain conditions are met - selling your slot means you're paying 25% to them Ofcourse teams don't want to sign up under those retarded conditions.

Man if only Blizzard had about [B]20 YEARS OF REFERENCE/ORGANIZATIONS[/B] to go off of or anything. I mean my god MLG and other organizations did this better

You'd think they'd learn after Starcraft 2 but guess not

This is a hilarious fuckup on Blizzard's side -- they've done pro tournaments perfectly fine before, and they know what numbers they can pull in. It's just the corporate greed talking. I'm there at the bottom level the people who want to assemble a professional league are more than willing to, but the big execs are insisting on a hilariously overpriced and unsavory requirement.

[QUOTE=Stroheim;52214943]Man if only Blizzard had about [B]20 YEARS OF REFERENCE/ORGANIZATIONS[/B] to go off of or anything. I mean my god MLG and other organizations did this better[/QUOTE] What makes this more crazy is that [URL="http://www.majorleaguegaming.com/news/activision-blizzard-acquires-the-business-of-major-league-gaming"]Activision Blizzard bought MLG[/URL] probably to help get Overwatch on it's feet as a eSports game. Clearly that's money well spent and personnel well utilised.

That be insanity. What is Blizzard doing?

They should be less greedy and just lower the price. Problem solved, league started. It's as simple as that.

[QUOTE=bord2tears;52215086]That be insanity. What is Blizzard doing?[/QUOTE] They just want you to [img]https://s23.postimg.org/5y0pyo20b/overlmao.png[/img]

[QUOTE=RenegadeCop;52215238]Can someone explain this reference to me?[/QUOTE] The Uprising Overwatch event had some intro screen with a very prominent "BUY" button, for buying loot boxes.

[QUOTE=antair;52215090]They should be less greedy and just lower the price. Problem solved, league started. It's as simple as that.[/QUOTE] Well it'd help, but several teams have already disbanded because the competitive scene is dead in the water already. It isn't a surprise, this is the same company that killed the biggest game in Korea (StarCraft 2) by taking away LAN support and getting into a slap fight with the tournament organizers. They have no idea how to cultivate a competitive scene these days. There's also the consideration that Overwatch just isn't much fun to watch, what does it deliver that you can't see by playing yourself or looking up videos on youtube? With CSGO you get crazy plays by incredible players, but a lot of high end Overwatch is team fights waiting into ults which the two teams shoot at each other to try and win.

I'm a huge goofball when it comes to shit like this and I have no idea what most of this means. At first, I thought it was the price Blizzard was asking advertisers to pay to stick their adverts all over the place. Then I reread the title and saw it's for teams to buy into the competition? Even with League of Legends, how the fuck does a team afford to pay $1.8million to buy into the competition? Or am I pants on head retarded and getting this completely wrong?

I see where they're coming from and I'm guessing they are trying to take eSports out of amateur status and into professional sporting, if they see 25 million as a good offer then that means they crunched the numbers and calculated the revenue they expect to payout to franchises compared to 25 million buy in was a fair offer. I mean hell, if I had 25 million I would do it right now, imagine buying an NBA team when they first started. EDIT: Since some of you don't understand, Blizzard is selling a limited number of franchises (teams) to participate in their league. Just like major league sports, all teams share revenue from ads, broadcasting revenue, and venue revenue when their teams play. This could easy become millions of dollars for franchises owners (every game) to payout to players of the team. [b]EDIITEDIT: I don't think you guys understand the ramifications of ESPN starting this eSports branch, they have literal billions of dollars they are going to pore into this branch, advertisements on their main channels, and the infrastructure for their telecommunications network makes all other eSports broadcasting companies look like a YouTube channel. The implementations of owning a eSports team for EPSN will make you incredibly wealthy this early on[/b]

blizzard has a track record with trying to stronghand competitive scenes only while totally fucking them up in the longrun

[QUOTE=loopoo;52215383]I'm a huge goofball when it comes to shit like this and I have no idea what most of this means. At first, I thought it was the price Blizzard was asking advertisers to pay to stick their adverts all over the place. Then I reread the title and saw it's for teams to buy into the competition? Even with League of Legends, how the fuck does a team afford to pay $1.8million to buy into the competition? Or am I pants on head retarded and getting this completely wrong?[/QUOTE] league of legends teams make millions of dollars from stream revenue, advertisements and sponsorship. my rough understanding of the way it works (or at least used to work back in 2013 ~ 2015) was that big teams like TSM and CLG would have their 5 team members stream regularly, normally every night, on twitch.tv each of tsm's players made around 10k ~ 20k a month at the time in 2013 from streaming ad revenue (and subscriptions donations etc etc) alone, they also ran a guide website for league of legends where each player would write blogs/guides (all running ads) about specific champions and such with youtube videos (also running ads, you see where this is going). in the end, the team would take all of the money combined and pay the players a set salary out of this money, as well as paying their share of the rent on the 6+ bedroom houses they lived in, this allowed the team organization to take that revenue and easily use it to buy slots in riot's official tournaments. performing on riot's big stage got them even more money from winnings/advertising, but most importantly had their TSM branding all over the stage, bringing in more people to watch the streams, vlogs and guides. big teams in esports basically exist to perpetuate a gaming brand that offers advertisement sponsored content online more than they exist to compete in video games, which is pretty perfect for the players who get a nice pay, a nice house and live their dream of competing in an game they love to play for hours every day, while the team behind it is financially incentivised to keep the players playing.

I think Blizzard is doing a good thing here, eSports will never be taken seriously if it's 1/50th of the price for networks as NFL or NBA. It's a serious revenue maker with a huge audience. Their price is fair for what you're getting, the only reason the other ones are cheaper is because of the prevalent "kids watching people play video games" attitude.

Maybe if overwatch had a dynamic and interesting meta itd be worth the $20 mil. Siege competitive scene is already 500x better on like .001% of the budget

[QUOTE=Streecer;52215341]Well it'd help, but several teams have already disbanded because the competitive scene is dead in the water already. It isn't a surprise, this is the same company that killed the biggest game in Korea (StarCraft 2) by taking away LAN support and getting into a slap fight with the tournament organizers. They have no idea how to cultivate a competitive scene these days. There's also the consideration that Overwatch just isn't much fun to watch, what does it deliver that you can't see by playing yourself or looking up videos on youtube? With CSGO you get crazy plays by incredible players, but a lot of high end Overwatch is team fights waiting into ults which the two teams shoot at each other to try and win.[/QUOTE] OW probably has some the worst meta gameplay of a game aside from For Honor. Like it's so bad over half the roster isn't played because they aren't viable in any remote sense. [img]https://www.overbuff.com/blobs/1mP4EXeCfG5.jpeg[/img] It's pretty damn sad, when a decent amount of the heroes aren't considered good for high level play because they just can't function with other classes.

i really loved overwatch, i put alot of time into it and hit T500's but i really dont see the competitive potential to this game. Maybe in the future they can prove me wrong but it feels so barebone to compete with other esports like dota and lol

[QUOTE=RG4ORDR;52217584]OW probably has some the worst meta gameplay of a game aside from For Honor. Like it's so bad over half the roster isn't played because they aren't viable in any remote sense. [img]https://www.overbuff.com/blobs/1mP4EXeCfG5.jpeg[/img] It's pretty damn sad, when a decent amount of the heroes aren't considered good for high level play because they just can't function with other classes.[/QUOTE] It is worth noting that we just witnessed a meta shift compared to the previous tier lists. Where Ana and Reinhardt were very viable before, now we have Winston, DVa and Zenyatta, who previously were lower on the tier list. You could make the argument that Lucio has been up there forever though, there's no sugar coating that.

[QUOTE=ClauAmericano;52217734]It is worth noting that we just witnessed a meta shift compared to the previous tier lists. Where Ana and Reinhardt were very viable before, now we have Winston, DVa and Zenyatta, who previously were lower on the tier list. You could make the argument that Lucio has been up there forever though, there's no sugar coating that.[/QUOTE] This is also from a Korean Tourney and not a European or NA one.

[QUOTE=RenegadeCop;52218611]And also from the top 5% of players, and no where near has any indication what the average player will be playing.[/QUOTE] This isn't about an average player tho, it's about esports and pro leagues.

If Overwatch's esports scene struggles, could that mean trouble for Overwatch's overall longevity?

[QUOTE=DatHarry;52215526]league of legends teams make millions of dollars from stream revenue, advertisements and sponsorship. my rough understanding of the way it works (or at least used to work back in 2013 ~ 2015) was that big teams like TSM and CLG would have their 5 team members stream regularly, normally every night, on twitch.tv each of tsm's players made around 10k ~ 20k a month at the time in 2013 from streaming ad revenue (and subscriptions donations etc etc) alone, they also ran a guide website for league of legends where each player would write blogs/guides (all running ads) about specific champions and such with youtube videos (also running ads, you see where this is going). in the end, the team would take all of the money combined and pay the players a set salary out of this money, as well as paying their share of the rent on the 6+ bedroom houses they lived in, this allowed the team organization to take that revenue and easily use it to buy slots in riot's official tournaments. performing on riot's big stage got them even more money from winnings/advertising, but most importantly had their TSM branding all over the stage, bringing in more people to watch the streams, vlogs and guides. big teams in esports basically exist to perpetuate a gaming brand that offers advertisement sponsored content online more than they exist to compete in video games, which is pretty perfect for the players who get a nice pay, a nice house and live their dream of competing in an game they love to play for hours every day, while the team behind it is financially incentivised to keep the players playing.[/QUOTE] you also have big teams like the koreans samsung teams. a lot of the time its not just 5 players on the team, you have lots of big sponsors, a manager, a coach, and subs. and even if they lose they still get a pretty heft prize.

[QUOTE=Symwck;52222272]If Overwatch's esports scene struggles, could that mean trouble for Overwatch's overall longevity?[/QUOTE] Well a big e-sports scene puts a lot of eyes onto your product, but I don't think they're that worried about building a big playerbase any more to be honest. An e-sports scene does help keep interest for your active players though. StarCraft is the only Blizzard game that's had any real success in building an e-sports scene, and they STILL managed to fuck it all up with SC2. In my opinion I don't think that Overwatch can live off new maps and heroes forever. The reason why games like CS:GO and LOL and DOTA stick around is because they're much deeper than they seem, and watching a professional play lets us get a little insight into what high level play looks like. From my own experience with the game it feels like there isn't much to learn, and in fact that only gets worse the higher up the ranks you go, as team composition becomes more stagnant and matches start to take the same shape. There's something fundamentally dull about watching other people play Overwatch, and that's because it isn't a game where a professional player looks much different from somebody you'd meet in the higher levels of ranked. Sure, Seagull can pub stomp people with Genji all day, but when it comes to the actual matches you'll see the same few heroes trotted out to play a game of ultimate building footsies with each other. Think about all the variables in a match of counter strike, the weapons, the grenades, the positions of each team, the execution and individual skill etc. There's so many things that can happen that no two rounds are ever really the same, and because of that we get exciting plays from people in tough spots, and crazy comebacks from multiple point deficits. From what I've seen of competitive Overwatch both teams roll with the meta composition, stand behind their tanks and build their ultimate meter for a few minutes before firing them off in the hopes of winning the team fight. It's kind of dull and I doubt they even could build a big scene around it, it's something core to the design of the game, when you take it to the logical extreme it simplifies itself to the point of no longer being interesting to watch. CSGO gets more complicated the higher you go, you have to know positions, abilities, grenade positions and weapons and respond accordingly. You also have to improve your individual skill as a player. I honestly can't say the same about Overwatch, at a competitive level you can safely ignore half the cast of the game because they have no practical use; and that cast is where most of the depth comes from. Oh, and $20 million is stupid too.

[QUOTE=Symwck;52222272]If Overwatch's esports scene struggles, could that mean trouble for Overwatch's overall longevity?[/QUOTE] TF2 did okay.

I can only be so glad Blizzard never picked up dota

[QUOTE=ZombieDawgs;52224081]TF2 did okay.[/QUOTE] I mean to be fair, the Esports scene in TF2 is (mostly) community based.

[QUOTE=ZombieDawgs;52224081]TF2 did okay.[/QUOTE] TF2 can also be modded and has way more maps than Overwatch does. Of course this is due to Overwatch being a rather recent game, but it won't last nearly as long unless Blizzard actually adds in content that isn't just skins. Seriously, the game has been out for almost a year and most of their content seems to be for event exclusive loot boxes.