KoleeKo [#65]
Idk money is for sure the measure of success, firstly its the main reason blizzard is in esports, second, you need money to make the league go.. Its why Blizzard asked so much from investors because they needed capital to make a quality product. The part thats hard to control is viewership, which is where you need the funds from advertisers; you cant rmaintain a league of this size on investor money. Noah might be passionate about esports, but people like Robert Kraft are not, and they want a sizeable return on their 20M investment, like any big timer would.
Investing loads of money is no guarantee at all to have a good product, and I totally agree on that, you get a bad product you don't get success.
OWL can be successful (or not) from 2 different points of view:
- Ours, the community, for that would be enough to have a series of great games, but being them called OWL, or whatever doesn't change a thing, as long as we get the games and they are enjoyable.
- Blizzard's and the investors who bought into OWL, for them is about revenue, if they don't get a good revenue the product won't be considered succesfull.
To get the 2nd you need the first.
I was one of the guys with many doubts about the success of OWL, and I'm still not sure tbh, I have the feeling (and is just a feeling) that they didn't care enough for the community, I'm afraid that the OWL arrived too late not too early in OW's life (and I'm not speaking from a financial point of view), and hope to be completely wrong in this.
Why am I afraid? Because this is now a product in which a lot of money has been invested and to keep it running more money will have to be invested and you don't get investemnts if you don't see a steady growth of revenue year after year (companies usually settle for nothing less than +15%/year)
If investors start to pull out of OWL, that will not only spell the end of the league but probably the whole OW pro scene, and eventually the game itself.
Discord