Xexr
01-18-2009, 04:42 PM
I enjoyed your tag line in the build up to the big v4 unveil, and your announcement of coL Gaming Television and acquisition of Noobflicks. With the fall of the CGS its apparent that there is no real central location to catch weekly eSports matches. I noticed this with the announcement today of coL's first FIFA match with the new lineup, it mentioned an IRC scorebot and an after match recap which leads me to my point.
Is this really still acceptible in 2009 that a digital sport is largely delivered through text based mediums? It occurs to me that with your Noobflicks acquisition you should be fairly well placed technically to be a market leader in live web streaming of weekly matches. Not just coL's matches, but the whole scenes matches - think of the user draw, it would be incredible.
Noone else offers this, so I don't think true eSports fans would object to a small yearly charge for the service to cover the extraordinary bandwidth costs something like this would involve. A SK insider for the eSports revolution if you will.
I think this would truely realize your ambitions of being the #1 source for global eSports coverage (well at least for the US scene to begin with). You would become your own network in a sense. It's obvious to all with the recent league collapses that the market is just not there yet for eSports on TV. It seems before this major leap is taken a true profitable userbase needs to exist so that when it does make the leap, the tried and tested format isn't bastardized to try and appeal to a phantom viewership.
For example, start with a medium which is easily convertible to a live streaming feed - HLTV & uStream (seeing as you already have this front and centre on the site!). Pick up which ever league the new coL side chooses as its main competition point. Speak to each team involved, and agree upon a consistant server setup, nightly match time, and HLTV configuration. Get a known eSports commentator on board - wheat or fatality, someone who can speak to the audience without dumbing it down, everyone of your viewers is already a hardcore fan after all. This position should be paid (from the membership fee) to present a consistant format and familar face! There you have it eSports content creation at its finest. I sure as hell would pay for that.
You could iron out the kinks with an exclusive beta (gamers lap that shit up, anything to feel special) - Appeal to the core coL fanbase and run a couple week trial period, establish the format, commentary style, intro vid sequences, score boards etc. Jumping to slowly cover every team and offering the service to all shouldn't be to daunting if all goes well in this early period. UStream handles your bandwidth costs, HLTV provides your recording equipment, coL community is your marketing, and established faces such as wheat (who is out of a job!) provide your professionalism and legitamacy...
I am gonna leave it there, I have written a lot more than I expected, perhaps I should have made it a blog. I am not naive enough to think that something like this would be easy, but a gradual approach would alleviate a lot of the growing pains.
Thoughts?
Is this really still acceptible in 2009 that a digital sport is largely delivered through text based mediums? It occurs to me that with your Noobflicks acquisition you should be fairly well placed technically to be a market leader in live web streaming of weekly matches. Not just coL's matches, but the whole scenes matches - think of the user draw, it would be incredible.
Noone else offers this, so I don't think true eSports fans would object to a small yearly charge for the service to cover the extraordinary bandwidth costs something like this would involve. A SK insider for the eSports revolution if you will.
I think this would truely realize your ambitions of being the #1 source for global eSports coverage (well at least for the US scene to begin with). You would become your own network in a sense. It's obvious to all with the recent league collapses that the market is just not there yet for eSports on TV. It seems before this major leap is taken a true profitable userbase needs to exist so that when it does make the leap, the tried and tested format isn't bastardized to try and appeal to a phantom viewership.
For example, start with a medium which is easily convertible to a live streaming feed - HLTV & uStream (seeing as you already have this front and centre on the site!). Pick up which ever league the new coL side chooses as its main competition point. Speak to each team involved, and agree upon a consistant server setup, nightly match time, and HLTV configuration. Get a known eSports commentator on board - wheat or fatality, someone who can speak to the audience without dumbing it down, everyone of your viewers is already a hardcore fan after all. This position should be paid (from the membership fee) to present a consistant format and familar face! There you have it eSports content creation at its finest. I sure as hell would pay for that.
You could iron out the kinks with an exclusive beta (gamers lap that shit up, anything to feel special) - Appeal to the core coL fanbase and run a couple week trial period, establish the format, commentary style, intro vid sequences, score boards etc. Jumping to slowly cover every team and offering the service to all shouldn't be to daunting if all goes well in this early period. UStream handles your bandwidth costs, HLTV provides your recording equipment, coL community is your marketing, and established faces such as wheat (who is out of a job!) provide your professionalism and legitamacy...
I am gonna leave it there, I have written a lot more than I expected, perhaps I should have made it a blog. I am not naive enough to think that something like this would be easy, but a gradual approach would alleviate a lot of the growing pains.
Thoughts?