Hard to lobby for more events when the scene is so small. Even with how popular certain games are there are very few top players from the UK. We just have a poor infrastructure and societal view of such things. The media/politicians love to blame games/gaming for all sorts of things as if they are some sort of feral beast when alot of it is just with friends etc.
I loved the 2015 Gfinity Starcraft events so I would be so happy if this happened.
Presumably this is something that’s driven entirely by demand. If there were huge numbers of people wanting to watch U.K. esports then organisers would react. But if they could only get 3k in London, it seems there isn’t much call for it.
I thought that said the “UK escorts scene” and was imagining some sort of massive sex worker event in the Birmingham NEC.
A cynic might suggest that the overall demographics of the audience going to a competitive video games event might be pretty similar!
Yes, but also the BBC don’t really know what they’re talking about. The London Royal Ravens leaving the UK isn’t that big a deal.
Call of Duty League (CDL) and Overwatch League (OWL) are two Activision Blizzard attempts at establishing NFL-like city-based franchised esports leagues. Both are asinine because real sports need the physical stadium infrastructure to sell tickets and make money, and had existed over decades. Esports on the other hand are far more new and far more niche. South Korea is the only nation that can really foster homegrown talent because they were the only ones that adopted video games as a national sport, which is why that particular nation is so dominant in most competitive games, except maybe Counter Strike and Dota.
London Spitfire, the winners of the inaugural Overwatch League, were British in nothing but name. They were owned and managed by Cloud9 (an American org), originally had an all-Korean roster (and even now only have one Brit on their roster) and didn’t even play any games in the United Kingdom. Blizzard planned to host games in each participating city from OWL Season 2 onwards, but indefinitely scrapped the idea and continued hosted them in their Anaheim studio instead because of how expensive it would be to fly whole teams across three continents every week.
CDL is even more logistically stupid to franchise because they host a grand total of 5 majors in a select pool of cities and a world final every year, not even a round robin league like every other franchised esport league. All of these majors are also almost-always based in the United States, so it doesn’t even make sense to have a UK-based franchise.
What Britain needs is a small scale grassroots esports tournament organizer, like what Major League Gaming used to be. Someone that can host a whole circuit of tournaments across UK convention centres and arenas.
The lead in would be promoting gambling / placing bets in esports. It’s the hook for people they may not be familiar with them or off a different generation (says me, a child of the 80’s)
But that would be unethical and has all sorts of issues attached to it
No, because hardly anyone wants to watch it and even if they did then they certainly aren’t going to ‘tune’ in to the BBC to watch it…
The BBC are getting desperate now they’ve been outbid on almost all popular sports by other providers.
The biggest issue facing esports going mainstream will be the moral panic outrage machine reacting to Counter Strike.
I can see the D#ily M#il headlines already:
Violent PC Shooter Training Kids To Be Terrorists!
Realistic Murder Simulator Teaches Children How To Be Mass Shooters!
Belong which is essentially computer cafes that run out of some Game stores have a eSports league which seems a little small, but I think was a pretty clever way for Game to get a league going. The only other way I can see another eSports league being made is for someone to start a league at grass roots, probably recruiting teams from university gaming unions, that way most people in the country would have a team located near them. Overall though I suspect it’s impossible to start a big league in the UK without someone offering big incentives for these events to be hosted here.
I’ve been interested in watching esports for a while, but have struggles to find streams for games.
Having access to a well commentated game by an player with knowledge of a game would be great.
I’ve played overwatch so would watch that, but would love a Street fighter tournament.
If it’s hard to find no-one will watch, if no-one watches it, it won’t be popular.
My problem with people asking does esports need more live events is that honestly esports needs some decent games I’m not bored to tears watching. Most of the time these games are super involved with margins for error that amount to split seconds and while that’s all very impressive to say, it doesn’t amount to accessible gameplay to watch.
I watch starcraft 2 esports, I spent some time watching the last tournament at Katowice with my son. My wife, who was watching, had absolutely no idea what was happening and was completely put off by it. When you have effectively amateurs casting the games, and everything happening on the screen is a bunch of visual noise, it’s not going to draw massive crowds of people.
Part of the problem is that nearly every time the media/news in this country talks about E-sports, it’s a quirky novelty for creepy nerds (it’s not as bad as US coverage but still), despite being around for 20+ years and having grown to what it is today. Depending on the game, the UK doesn’t have the best reputation either, so I can’t imagine it being very appealing for TOs.
Side note, I still can’t believe COD as an e-sport is played with controllers…
I have zero interest in ‘Esports’ and I just find the whole scene to be incredibly cringey. I don’t have a problem with the competitions themselves, but dressing it all up like any other sporting event with pre and post match interviews, commentary and coverage just seems stupid, I can’t imagine there are many people that care that much even if they are taking it seriously. But then I am just a miserable bastard who hates streaming and internet celebrities in general.
I read that as “UK Escort Scene” and my brain went to a strange place
It needs more venues capable of hosting the audience it has. Demand is there but not to the point where big venues are necessary to stage them. It’s the same with concert venues, where a lot of towns lack medium-sized venues, so bands skip the town as they are too big for small venues but not big enough for large venues. e-sports is still pretty niche anyway. Putting on more events could be detrimental if they cannot recoup the costs at them all.
16 comments
Calling it esports is so pretentious lol.
It’s competitive gaming. Not a sport.
Hard to lobby for more events when the scene is so small. Even with how popular certain games are there are very few top players from the UK. We just have a poor infrastructure and societal view of such things. The media/politicians love to blame games/gaming for all sorts of things as if they are some sort of feral beast when alot of it is just with friends etc.
I loved the 2015 Gfinity Starcraft events so I would be so happy if this happened.
Presumably this is something that’s driven entirely by demand. If there were huge numbers of people wanting to watch U.K. esports then organisers would react. But if they could only get 3k in London, it seems there isn’t much call for it.
I thought that said the “UK escorts scene” and was imagining some sort of massive sex worker event in the Birmingham NEC.
A cynic might suggest that the overall demographics of the audience going to a competitive video games event might be pretty similar!
Yes, but also the BBC don’t really know what they’re talking about. The London Royal Ravens leaving the UK isn’t that big a deal.
Call of Duty League (CDL) and Overwatch League (OWL) are two Activision Blizzard attempts at establishing NFL-like city-based franchised esports leagues. Both are asinine because real sports need the physical stadium infrastructure to sell tickets and make money, and had existed over decades. Esports on the other hand are far more new and far more niche. South Korea is the only nation that can really foster homegrown talent because they were the only ones that adopted video games as a national sport, which is why that particular nation is so dominant in most competitive games, except maybe Counter Strike and Dota.
London Spitfire, the winners of the inaugural Overwatch League, were British in nothing but name. They were owned and managed by Cloud9 (an American org), originally had an all-Korean roster (and even now only have one Brit on their roster) and didn’t even play any games in the United Kingdom. Blizzard planned to host games in each participating city from OWL Season 2 onwards, but indefinitely scrapped the idea and continued hosted them in their Anaheim studio instead because of how expensive it would be to fly whole teams across three continents every week.
CDL is even more logistically stupid to franchise because they host a grand total of 5 majors in a select pool of cities and a world final every year, not even a round robin league like every other franchised esport league. All of these majors are also almost-always based in the United States, so it doesn’t even make sense to have a UK-based franchise.
What Britain needs is a small scale grassroots esports tournament organizer, like what Major League Gaming used to be. Someone that can host a whole circuit of tournaments across UK convention centres and arenas.
The lead in would be promoting gambling / placing bets in esports. It’s the hook for people they may not be familiar with them or off a different generation (says me, a child of the 80’s)
But that would be unethical and has all sorts of issues attached to it
No, because hardly anyone wants to watch it and even if they did then they certainly aren’t going to ‘tune’ in to the BBC to watch it…
The BBC are getting desperate now they’ve been outbid on almost all popular sports by other providers.
The biggest issue facing esports going mainstream will be the moral panic outrage machine reacting to Counter Strike.
I can see the D#ily M#il headlines already:
Violent PC Shooter Training Kids To Be Terrorists!
Realistic Murder Simulator Teaches Children How To Be Mass Shooters!
Belong which is essentially computer cafes that run out of some Game stores have a eSports league which seems a little small, but I think was a pretty clever way for Game to get a league going. The only other way I can see another eSports league being made is for someone to start a league at grass roots, probably recruiting teams from university gaming unions, that way most people in the country would have a team located near them. Overall though I suspect it’s impossible to start a big league in the UK without someone offering big incentives for these events to be hosted here.
I’ve been interested in watching esports for a while, but have struggles to find streams for games.
Having access to a well commentated game by an player with knowledge of a game would be great.
I’ve played overwatch so would watch that, but would love a Street fighter tournament.
If it’s hard to find no-one will watch, if no-one watches it, it won’t be popular.
My problem with people asking does esports need more live events is that honestly esports needs some decent games I’m not bored to tears watching. Most of the time these games are super involved with margins for error that amount to split seconds and while that’s all very impressive to say, it doesn’t amount to accessible gameplay to watch.
I watch starcraft 2 esports, I spent some time watching the last tournament at Katowice with my son. My wife, who was watching, had absolutely no idea what was happening and was completely put off by it. When you have effectively amateurs casting the games, and everything happening on the screen is a bunch of visual noise, it’s not going to draw massive crowds of people.
Part of the problem is that nearly every time the media/news in this country talks about E-sports, it’s a quirky novelty for creepy nerds (it’s not as bad as US coverage but still), despite being around for 20+ years and having grown to what it is today. Depending on the game, the UK doesn’t have the best reputation either, so I can’t imagine it being very appealing for TOs.
Side note, I still can’t believe COD as an e-sport is played with controllers…
I have zero interest in ‘Esports’ and I just find the whole scene to be incredibly cringey. I don’t have a problem with the competitions themselves, but dressing it all up like any other sporting event with pre and post match interviews, commentary and coverage just seems stupid, I can’t imagine there are many people that care that much even if they are taking it seriously. But then I am just a miserable bastard who hates streaming and internet celebrities in general.
I read that as “UK Escort Scene” and my brain went to a strange place
It needs more venues capable of hosting the audience it has. Demand is there but not to the point where big venues are necessary to stage them. It’s the same with concert venues, where a lot of towns lack medium-sized venues, so bands skip the town as they are too big for small venues but not big enough for large venues. e-sports is still pretty niche anyway. Putting on more events could be detrimental if they cannot recoup the costs at them all.