I don’t follow any of Blizzard’s e-Sports things. I didn’t watch any of the Eternal Palace “World First” race. So I freely admit my ignorance here.
That said, what is Blizzard offering to promote their e-Sports? From what I read, it made it sound like Method got an in-game Achievement… and that’s about it. Bragging rights? Again, before I go on, I’m freely admiting: I DON’T KNOW.
Fortnite contest gives away FORTY MILLION dollars, the winner (a 16 year old kid), takes away the grand prize of $3 million!!!
From what I’ve read, Method was given some Red Bull.
Without opening the “it’s not sports” can of worms, or the fact I hate Fortnite, I’m overall in support of e-Sports. I mean I’m a gamer. And ESPN covered the event! lol
What kind of money is Blizzard throwing around at these things? Because frankly that’s the only way any of it is going to be taken seriously. Think of all the dopey kids playing Fortnite showing their parents that article! (If you’re one of those kids, keep in mind there were FORTY MILLION people entered to win… and only that one kid won the big bucks)
I’m probably wildly wrong with this so someone who actually knows please correct me, but from my current understanding, they have sponsors and charity sure, but method wanted world first mainly to remain a community run thing, whilst Redbull tried to do the opposite?
Blizzard are standing back at the moment. Can bet they are watching though.
As in most sports, the bigger you are, the more money you earn.
The Fortnite World Cup was an absolutely gargantuan tournament that had players competing specifically for the prize pool. The Race for World First was more a glorified charity stream sponsered by Red Bull than a Tournament.
Streaming the race is also something that’s fairly new. Previously it was something that was kept secret so as to not give away strategies, but since the Race is always well recieved when it’s on, often sustaining 20-30k viewers, and reaching 100k+ when the world first is close, it might get bigger or Blizzard sponsered in the future.
This. Method and red bull parted ways prior to this WF race which is why there were “competing” streams, though methods maintained 3-4x the viewership red bulls did. They probably made plenty of money through sponsorships, and as world first can’t really be a job more than 3-4 months outta the year, most of them have jobs.
There’s a whole kerfuffle surrounding this with Redbull trying to take “ownership” of the contest and method wanting it to be community controlled. Personally I think method is in the right here, you can’t have Budweiser in control of the NFL.
But something that came out in all of this is it’s difficult to monetize world firsts because there are just some structural realities that get in the way.
How do you price and sell sponsorships and add time to a competition that could last a day or a month? There’s also serious problems with it being a contest in the first place because it’s just untested content. The rules change mid competition.
There’s also very little lead time as to when the contest will happen. As little as month, maybe a couple weeks notice of when the new raid will open up? That may seem like a lot of time but when your working with the corporate decision making process via their add agencies on if, when, and how much sponsorship you want to put into something, it’s just not enough time.
Blizzard doesn’t support the world first race. It’s purely a community driven thing. The top guilds manage to get sponsors and what not but Blizzard isn’t a part of it outside of observation and balancing.
Blizzards eSports involves the MDI and Arena World Championships:
If it was arena it would justify a bigger prize. If you arent competing against an opponent its just not as impressive as a guy out surviving millions of human competitors.
The world first race is bragging rights only. It isn’t an e-sport. That said, the competitors make some good money from sponsors now that they stream it. As far as red bull is concerned, they were the sponsor of method in BoD, method broke from them and did their own thing for EP, but red bull still did a competing stream with limit and several other guilds.
Well, to be fair - Method is a business (as well as a collection of some of the best raiders and raid strategists on the planet) where those streams are part of their revenue. Red Bull saw a promotional opportunity that was guild non-specific and decided to take advantage of it.
Last night, the picture at Blizzard became clearer. Support teams had been gutted. The layoffs were largest in non-development departments like IT and QA, according to those who were there. The esports department was hit hard, as many within Blizzard had expected—after all, it had been led by Amy Morhaime, wife of Mike, the long-time Blizzard CEO who left the company last fall. She departed around the same time. The two Morhaimes were seen as big advocates for esports within Blizzard, even when it wasn’t quite as lucrative as Activision’s executives might have hoped, and with them gone, the department was in danger.
