Report: Activision Buys E-Sports League's Assets

An anonymous reader writes: Major League Gaming (MLG) is one of the biggest e-sports operations out there. Or it was, until Activision Blizzard purchased most of its assets for $46 million. MLG's CEO has been removed, and nobody's quite sure what will become of the league once Activision is done with it. MLG has been struggling for some time, and it's expected that most of the sale's proceeds will go toward paying off debts. Shareholders are not pleased. Analysis at Forbes notes that "MLG has been most closely tied with Call of Duty for a long while now (though recently Activision partnered with MLG rival ESL for a new COD league), and has a history with Starcraft 2, both Activision Blizzard titles. It could make sense that in order to bolster their eSports division, Activision would assimilate MLG, though parts of this sound more like a liquidation of assets rather than MLG continuing to operate under its own banner, just with a new owner." Others note with skepticism the idea of a game publisher buying an e-sports league, which could lead to concerns about how games from other publishers are treated.

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[KGIII]

And fuck Forbes! I don't even click their links any more. It seems they dislike my use of an ad-blocker so they send me to a blank page where, I presume, they want to load stuff via various scripts. I could turn that off but I'd rather not. So, fuck 'em. Their property, their rules, and I don't visit.

Not that I was going to RTFA anyhow but, you know...

I just read the comments here and get the gist of it. It's probably more insightful than the article.

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[Sarten-X]

That's really only half true... The value of the shares is tied to the company's value. The price of the share is separately tracked for public (or private, but that's more irregular) trade.

It seems MLG was privately held, so we only really care about what the shareholders can get from a buyback, not public sale. That puts the shareholders' investments at greater risk, based on what happens to the company's value. They have a piece of paper saying they own a certain percentage of the company, but the compan

And the lawsuits

[tepples]

And not just "suits" as in executives who traditionally wear business suits. It can also mean lawsuits if Activision starts using the copyright in its games to take down streams of rival leagues. At least Capcom,[1] Nintendo,[1] and Sega[2] have been known to use copyright against fan videos and streams, and Activision had a TV rights dispute with KeSPA a few years back.

[1] Kyle Orland [arstechnica.com]
[2] Tony Ponce [destructoid.com]
[3] Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

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[Ranbot]

I agree with you that it sucks, but exclusive streaming rights for a major league competition might be why Activision was willing to make this deal despite MLG's debt.

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[tepples]

Which incidentally I see as one thing keeping e-sports from reaching the same prestige as traditional sports any time soon. Nobody has the exclusive right to stream basketball matches, for example.

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[Ranbot]

Which incidentally I see as one thing keeping e-sports from reaching the same prestige as traditional sports any time soon. Nobody has the exclusive right to stream basketball matches, for example.

I don't think I can agree completely. You may be right for re-broadcasted pro sporting events, but there's a huge market for streaming rights live pro sports. Some might even say that the biggest business challenge to pro/college sport leagues, and sports media networks right now is how to handle live streaming of pro sports with the consumer shift towards streaming.

NL/AL, NFL/AAFC/AFL, NBL/BAA/ABA

[tepples]

You may be right for re-broadcasted pro sporting events, but there's a huge market for streaming rights live pro sports.

Even if a particular streaming provider has exclusive rights to the live events of a particular league, no league has a monopoly on a sport. Pro baseball had the National League and American League competing until they officially merged into Major League Baseball. Pro American football had the NFL competing at various times with the AAFC and AFL until they merged, with the short-lived USFL and XFL also making appearances. Pro basketball had the NBL absorb two other competing leagues (BAA and ABA) to form th

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[Ranbot]

Ok. Before I thought you were only referring to streaming rights, but now I understand how you meant to relate it to league to league competition.

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[Opportunist]

What "lifeblood" is there to be sucked? E-sports has no lifeblood to begin with.

E-Sports is a niche curiosity that everyone inside, from stakeholders who want it to be something akin to real sports venue with merchandising revenue and ticket sales to the participants who'd just love to be paid like those real sports "heroes" (I'll use the term loosely now), want so badly to take off, while everyone around shrugs it off with a "meh" because, frankly, outside the circle jerk, nobody gives a fuck.

Football and

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[Vokkyt]

I don't think this holds true that there is no life blood. Gamers seem more than happy to part with money for hats/skins/donations to streamers, and are even more happy to park themselves in front of ads during official matches. There's money to be made with eSports and a strong community with even casual observers behind it. League of Legends, regardless of what your personal opinion may be, has a huge casual following; they may only queue up for non-ranked modes or play one or two characters, but the amou

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[phantomfive]

However, this isn't going to kill off the events and the potential in these games because honestly, the audience that exist is absolutely rabid for pretty much everything related to the game.

Why? I don't understand why people are so intensely into LoL

Not a surprise

[phantomfive]

MLG hasn't succeeded as well as they'd hoped, and Blizzard really, really wants esports to take off, and are willing to put serious resources into it.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[phantomfive]

tbh I think Blizzard is trying to reduce the number of tournaments. A lot of people feel like there were just too many, thus they didn't matter. Fewer tournaments would bring in the hype more. Or something.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[phantomfive]

ok, so what do you think Blizzard should do to increase viewership?

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[Woldscum]

Blizzard is dying. WOW is almost a dead game compared to what it used to be. Starcraft is on life support as an Esport soon to die. HOS (LOL ripoff) is a huge flop compared to LOL. Overwatch (TF2 ripoff) will be a flop as an Esport. Diablo still has a fanbase. Hearthstone is the only healthy and growing game/community/Esport Blizzard has.

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[Dr. Spork]

I doubt that one scheduling decision had much of an impact on anything. I don't know how to gauge the overlap in the audience of SC2 and DOTA2, but my guess is that it's rather small. LOL and DOTA2 may be fungible products, but SC2 is an entirely different beast, for a very different audience (that isn't growing right now). I would love this buyout if it meant that SC2 will return to MLG, because it's the only esport that I care about. I'm just not sure how committed Blizzard are to SC2, now that it's clear

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[phantomfive]

I'm just not sure how committed Blizzard are to SC2

Committed. They just increased the amount of money they are going to spend on pro Starcraft this year.

now that it's clear there will be no new expansions

Another expansion is already being planned, based on the back story of Nova.

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[phantomfive]

If they weren't going to make Starcraft 2 a viable PvP game,

PvP is balanced. They are the same race!

Welcome to Forbes

[innocent_white_lamb]

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I guess it's not ad-light then.

Oh well, I didn't need to read that after all.

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[drinkypoo]

Forbes is clearly paying Slashdot for placement, because they reliably have the shittiest article on every subject we discuss here with a link from them. Brace yourself, more Forbes links are coming

Other publishers' games

[DrHyde]

> Others note with skepticism the idea of a game publisher buying an e-sports league, which could lead to concerns about how games from other publishers are treated.

What's the problem? It doesn't matter that a chess tournament doesn't include a bit of Scrabble, or that the FA Cup doesn't include baseball.

I presume that people compete by playing Call Of Grand Theft Warcraft 97 against each other, and you don't have one person playing Call Of Grand Theft Warcraft 97, one playing Minesweeper, and one playin