Report: Activision Buys E-Sports League's Assets (esportsobserver.com) 45
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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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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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 (Score:3)
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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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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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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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 (Score:2)
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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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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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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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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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 (Score:3)
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Blizzard's not exactly built themselves the best track record when it comes to arranging their own tournament, the Starcraft II WCS. For example, one year, Blizzard arrogantly decided to have ALL the regional finals during the same weekend, which also happened to be the week that the biggest DotA 2 event in the world took place, The International. I'll let Totalbiscuits, a well-known person from the Starcraft II scene, including as a team owner affected by Blizzard's decision, words illustrate how happy man
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Not really, they just wanted the WCS to be the central point. However, it was not competently managed. And you can sort of see the after-effects nowadays. Homestory Cup finals ran just after Legacy of the Void was released, and the finals had less viewers than the random streaming from CSGO players had in aggregate, and Homestory Cup isn't exactly a small no-name tournament. In fact, I think they may have attracted more viewers than WCS did this year.
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The question isn't what I would do, it's what I COULD do to turn it around. But I'd start by adding a system similar to Dota 2's Compendium. Cynical marketing move, sure, but it does evidently help to get people interested. More timely responese to balance issues also.
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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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The overlap in viewership is pretty large. Hell, Team Liquid had to split Dota2 coverage over to a website of its own, because it overshaded the SC2 coverage on the main Team Liquid site.
Totalbiscuit, as a team sponsor and a professional SC2 caster seriously watched TI3 when his own players didn't play matches in the WCS regional finals. That tells you about the overlap.
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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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If they weren't going to make Starcraft 2 a viable PvP game,
PvP is balanced. They are the same race!
Welcome to Forbes (Score:2)
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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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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 (Score:1)
> 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