Tag: opinion

Since our launch, Toornament grew up from a B2B platform to a media of its own. Our community grew even more, leading to a wide array of profiles.

In order to know you better and focus our efforts on the parts and features that matter to you, we’re launching two surveys: one for the eSports fans and one for the eSports professionals.

Following last week eSports Fans survey, we’re releasing our eSports Pro survey. Your answers will help us a lot and we’ll reward you with a little lottery: one of the survey participants will win a swag bag full of Toornament goodies!

Happy answers and again, thanks you for making Toornament the best eSports platform!

We all heard the exciting news: giant retailer Alibaba is setting sails on the eSports market through its subsidiary sport division Alisport. Can iconic entrepreneur Jack Ma conquer yet another market?

CEO of AliSports, Zhang Dazhong, had the following to say post-announcement:

“Sports is a multibillion dollar business in China, with
massive growth potential. That is why Alibaba is investing heavily in this
vertical. Linking sport and technology enhances the quality of life. That is
what we want to do through AliSports.”

With an initial $15.6M investment poured into a $5.5M international
event followed by 20 eSports Club Competition Centres holding 1200+ tournaments,
the “Chinese Amazon” means business here. And talking about Amazon…

Haven’t seen this before ? Yep, Amazon, the other leading
retailer fished Twitch for $970M back in 2014, beating Youtube at the finish
line. Since then, Twitch has been growing up at a fast pace and is opening to
new types of streamers such as developers, creatives and foodies.

This trend is the one of gigantic retailers acquiring or
producing content to feed the millions of products they sell. And eSport may be
the best bet yet. It reconnects with the younger generation while being deeply
associated with technology, hi-end gear and sports, all hi-spending markets.

We’ve all read the studies and estimates from the likes of
Newzoo and Superdata, promising a new Gold Rush for both Gaming and Sports
industries. The estimates are cool, but the facts are even better:

• The last 3 major CS:GO tournament all surpassed
  the million concurrent viewers mark.
• Clash Royale, Supercell’s take on eSports already brings more than $1.5M per
  day.
• The International 5 money prize is on par with
  Tennis Major tournament.
• Merchandising and Broadcasting rights on the rise.
• 21.3% of Twitch viewers come for eSports.
• Coca Cola. Yahoo. Verizon. ESPN. Intel.
  Turner. Disney.

All the ingredients seem to mix perfectly for the long
awaited eSports explosion as a mass culture. But we shall not overlook the competition barebone: tournaments.

They come in all sizes and shapes, the few big ones and hundred thousands small ones,
multiplied by a growing number of eSports. There were 2 majors eSports (CS and
Starcraft) and a few notable ones (Quake, FIFA) back in the days, with a few dozens
organizers in key territories for each.

Nowadays, we can count at least 5 major eSports (CS, LoL,
DotA 2, Hearthstone and Call of Duty) and dozens of noticeable ones (Starcraft
II, Heroes Of The Storm, FIFA, World of Tanks, Vainglory, Street Fighter V…),
all operated by thousands of operators and publishers all over the globe!

This massive expansion of the eSports tournaments occurred
without any rules, do’s and don’ts or framework. From the grass root scene to the
big operators, everyone went its way, resulting in highly variable experiences
for everyone.

We can observe this issue with scenes such as the FGC (Fighting Games
Community), which sees all of its organizers use different in-house or third
parties platform to handle their tournament and share their results, leading to
a lively but nearly impossible to track eSport scene. That’s why we created
Toornament.

Providing a powerful, free, unified platform for every
eSport professional is the motto driving Toornament. With a smooth experience
and advanced features, free, web-standardized API, we aim to unify the way
people run and follow eSports tournaments.

The Alisport announcement deeply resonates with us:  its ambitious plans encompass most of the
current eSport spectrum: one top tier event combined with hundreds of local
competitions all year long in dedicated eSports centers. And they may run into
the issue we talked about: how to build such different tournaments and provide content the
most efficient and consistent way possible?

We believe in eSports and have been working in the industry
for more than 15 years, with both local associations and Fortune500 publishers.
We believe their eSports projects start from a common ground: building great
tournaments and share them the best possible way. We believe Toornament is
shaping to be THE answer to this crucial challenge, whether you’re a local association or Alibaba.

We can all agree on how crazy 2015 has been for eSports. More games, more money, more audience, more recognition, spectacular announcements and acquisitions… It’s been one hell of a ride. Well, guess what: 2016 is already poised to be even crazier. Here 6 (of many) points to prove it:

1. Publishers are the rulers

The heavy move the whole eSports industry was expecting is happening: video game publishers are taking control of their IPs. Following Riot’s steps, Activision-Blizzard has been continuously taking control back from the independant organizers hands. The recent MLG is the latest, most spectacular step in this way.

Valve, known for its more hands-off strategy, is also starting to weight in the way its eSports are handled. The Dota 2 and CS:GO major circuits and qualifiers do not prevent independant organizers from running their own events with their own rule, but they cast a huge shadow over everyone else, as they attract the top teams, the largest audience and loudest hype.

2. Players and teams Unions

On the other hand, players and teams are the other major force to reckon with. The idea of a union has been rampant for years, and even tried by the main CS 1.6 at the time even tho it didn’t work. The latest attempt was a leaked requirements list CS:GO teams intended to sent to from the tournament organizers.
Despite failed projects and short-lived announcement, 2016 might be the year we see major clubs and organizations come up together with norms and ethics codes. We hope they start small and simple, to federate as much people as possible.

3. Here’s Television showing up late to the party

Ah, TV. For years, eSports has been dreaming of the days it would be featured on national networks. It never really happened (sorry, CGS) in western countries. But for the last months, we’ve seen strong signs of television finally playing catch-up with eSports. ESPN and BBC started to air eSport tournaments (on their secondary channels, tho). Turner will launch a huge CS:GO league this year. Great news, but are they still needed?

Since a few years, eSports grew up outside of the TV screen and found its own way to viewers, with streaming. Twitch and Douyu wild success changed the game, as both eSports fans and professionals understood that they didn’t need Television any longer, they just built their own media. We’re thus very curious how traditional TV moguls will bring to eSports in order to challenge streaming platforms. When the hunted becomes the hunter.

4. MOBAs are plateauing

Gone are the golden days of MOBAs? Not quite of course, as the genre remains the most popular in eSports by a large margin. But their spectacular rise seems to have to come to a stop in 2015. DotA 2 saw its numbers decrease a bit in September, even thos we can tie them to the release of the less-stable, more buggy “Reborn” client.

Last but not least, “Heroes Of The Storm” seems to struggle. Despite the heavy promotion from its publisher Blizzard, the brawler-styled MOBA doesn’t seem to eat at LoL and Dota’s cake and convert enough new players. The fact that none metrics have been released since the official launch is a strong indicator.
2016 might be the most critical year for MOBA. Will the genre fade like Starcraft, or prevail like Counter Strike?

5. FPS on the (re)rise

2016 is poised to be the biggest CS year in history, with a record number of major tournaments, more players than ever (the 10M active mark has just been reached).

The FPS genre will also rise with the much awaited Overwatch from Blizzard and new milestones from the new Unreal Tournament open Alpha.
On consoles, competitive Call Of Duty may get a boost, with a popular iteration (Black Ops III) and the new in-house World League. Halo 5 is also working hard to get its community back together and reclaim its console-FPS throne.
After years of reloading, the shooting genre is back, all guns blazing.

6. Amateur tournaments level up their game

As the top players in eSports are bringing our young industry to a new level, let’s always keep in mind that it’s strengh will always lie in the community and grass root tournaments around the world. And this is where we’ll weigh in as much as possible, bringing a solid backbone for both eSports professional and amateurs.

The incoming Nintendo shooter, “Splatoon”, is designed with competition in mind.

We all know Esport is nowadays driven by a few chosen games : League Of Legends, DotA, Counter Strike, Hearthstone, Call of Duty, Street Fighter and such. Those major disciplines are followed by a pack of underdogs : Smite, Super Smash Bros, EA Sports games, World of Tanks etc.

But their numerous Esport compliant games with a little, but active community. We recently saw a huge “Arma 3” match and Nintendo is driving it’s newest IP “Splatoon” as a friendly, but highly competitive shooter.

As a tournament organizer, should focus your ressources on popular and known games, or give their chance to new  one ?

We support the later, for 5 reasons :

1. Easier to get to the community and publisher

Getting support from a game community or publisher may be a hard task, as everyone are close to harrass them for some attention, support or money. New or minor but promising games are on the other begging for attention and events. Getting to them will then a much easier process.

2. Money

Working on a new game can also bring great opportunities, as the game publisher will have some budget to spend on adds (media) and special operations (you). Bring a well thought pitch deck and your “new game” tournament won’t take ressources aways from your “main games” tournaments. It may even earn you some money.

3. Variety
If your tournament boasts several games, it’s always a good thing throw heavy contenders and rookie in the mix. Variety is an underrated value in Esport tournaments and Olympics are a great example of how major and minor disciplines benefit each other – and ultimately, benefit the event awareness.

4. Room for innovation
Well established games often rhymes with conservative tournaments. Groupstages to simple/double elimination playoffs are the staple in Esport tournaments, with few alternative structures. Some games like Heartstone, have their own format but again (i.e “Conquest”), but it’s still hard to chose another path. Fresh games are the perfect playground for fresh tournament structures and scoring system. Grab the opportunity !

5. “Small risk / hi reward” bet
Trying to support a new game may be seen as a risk and in a way, it is. It’s up to you to limit that risky part of the bet. Don’t invest in money prize (or let the publisher / sponsor take care of this), invite a limited amount of participants and try to squeeze the logistics requirement into manageable volume by your admin team.

As Toornament already support more than 70 Esport disciplines, we hope you’ll request us to support more !

In a recent post about

what we expect for Esport in 2015

, new sponsors were one of our key points. More money and more recognition never hurts. Wishes came true these last days, with some new actors involved in Esport, from HTC to Disney…

 

HTC gets a triple kill in LoL

We wrote earlier that one of the main goal for Esport this year would be to attract sponsors outside the gaming industry. The past years have seen some interesting partnerships, but most ended being one shots. Now comes HTC. The Taiwanese smartphone company may be jumping into gaming this year with a new product. To show its longterm dedication, HTC striked not one but three sponsorship deals with major League Of Legends teams :

–

Cloud 9

–

Team Solo Mid

–

Team Liquid

Those deals focus on the North American LoL scene, showing some insight from a traditionalist sponsor which we haven’t seen before. Also worth noting the wording used by the team : “premium” a “long term” shows that we’re not dealing with some kind of one shot or gear giveaway for some shoutouts.

Besiktas football, basketball, handball and volleyball club adds LoL

One of the largest sports club in mid-East, Turkish organisation

Besiktas JK

, just added a League Of Legends team, along with its soccer, basketball, hand ball and volley ball rosters.

Aces High is a turkish LoL team

which recently took part in the IEM Cologne. Linking an Esport club to a sport club has always been a long time and logical Esport fantasy, but this happening with a major international sports team (Besiktas soccer and basketball teams are quite renowned on the international scene) adds more weight to the deal. Here again, symbol matters more than any actual figures.

Korea closes the gap between Esport and Olympic Games

Korea remains one of the most advanced country for all things Esports. We just learned that the local Esport authority, the famous

 KeSPA, has gotten e-sports accepted into the 2nd level of the Olympic Committee

. This means that Esport now required one last step to be integrated into the Olympic disciplines pool. Esport is 20 years old now, but its craziest dreams from the early days are about to come true.

Disney’s new teenage sensation goes Esport

Last, but not least, Disney. The company behind Pixar, Marvel, Lucas and well, Disney, is also a juggernaut in the teenagers content industry, with hits such as High School Musical and Violetta. The new kid on the block is no other than a profesional gamer. From (another Disney’s) TV Show “Jessie”, Cameron Boyce will also star in a new show broadcasted on gaming/anime channel Disney XD.

“Gamer’s Guide to Pretty Much Everything”

follows “

a teenage professional video game player who circumvents life’s challenges using his gaming acumen

”.
But the most interesting part of this show lies in the (pro)gamer status treatment. Gamers characters have long been depicted as losers climbing from the bottom (I have no friends etc.) to the top (I’m finally cool, even tho I’m a gamer).
“GGPME” work the other way around. The hero here is an established cyber athlete, living the glamorous life of an Esport star until a thumb injury throws him back to “normal” life. We expect some stereotypes here and there, but the pitch itself shows a new step in Esport and gamers recognition : According to Disney, being a pro gamer is cool. This may look trivial to you, but this “bold” take on the matter may influence millions of kids – and their parents.