Ten years ago, Sundance DiGiovanni set out to standardize competitive gaming. He wanted to create a "world-class organization" type of league that would bring in players from around the world into the living rooms of rabid fans.
Three months ago, Major League Gaming's StarCraft 2 Pro Circuit National Championship had 241,000 concurrent unique viewers from 175 different countries, and fans watched more than 3.6 million hours of video from Nov. 18-20. Their total tournament season had over 15 million hours of video watched by 3.5 million people. Contrast that with the number of people who watched the Super Bowl live stream this year — 2.1 million — and you see DiGiovanni's dream has been realized.
DiGiovanni owes most of his success to improved streaming technology, and to the rise of companies like Justin.tv and TwitchTV, which support streaming esports and meet the demands of an exploding audience.
"Streaming has allowed us to take what was an in-the-room experience and broadcast it to millions of people," says DiGiovanni. "If you go back five years ago, that wasn't possible. The costs keep getting reduced and the quality keeps getting better."
Events are always streamed in high-definition. And viewers aren't just restricted to watching one match at a time; during the past weekend's Winter Arena, another StarCraft 2 tournament, viewers were given four different matches with commentary to watch at once, along with an additional stream that featured interviews with players. This might seem like a lot of content, but for fans of the sport, it's exactly what they want. DiGiovanni explains that MLG's viewers are so passionate about watching matches because they are gamers too, and can relate intimately with the drama.
"There is a big difference in what we have compared to the something like the NBA. Most of the people who tune in to watch that sport are passive participants; they don't necessarily play basketball," says DiGiovanni. "We have an active participatory group; people who watch also play the games that they watch. It's a lifestyle."
The results of its active, vocal audience is that many people are tuned into streams for three hours or more at once. It also helps that StarCraft 2 is the most popular esport in the world. According to developer Dustin Browder's keynote at last year's GDC, Blizzard purposefully developed StarCraft 2 to be the perfect esport after the wildfire success of StarCraft in South Korea as a competitive sport. Browder says the key elements to a successful esport are that it's something that people can play competitively and spectate easily. They need to be simple enough to pick up, but have a high level of skill available for competitive play. Matches also must be uncertain all the way up to the end, an element that helps bump up streaming views on MLG's matches.
DiGiovanni said social media is also helpful in the times between matches, where they can keep fans in the loop about day-to-day goings on. They also create almost daily video content related to professional gaming, which covers other esports as well.
Day-to-day interactions with viewers extends beyond MLG as well. Nick "Axslav" Ranish, playing in last weekend's Winter Arena, says he uses a streaming channel to interact with and even educate newer fans.
"When I play, I basically walk through everything I'm doing, and then I read the screen chat, see the questions and respond. It's great way to talk to anyone all over the world," says Ranish. "I actually try to run my stream very educationally. I used to be a math tutor, so I have background in teaching."
Major League Gaming decided to hold a tournament in its New York offices for the first time with last weekend's Winter Arena. The tournament brought the top 32 StarCraft 2 players from around the globe to compete for spots in the Winter Championship tournament at the end of March, and offered $10,000 to the champion. This was an experiment for MLG in many respects: It was the first time they converted their offices — which are used for broadcasting daily content — into a tournament space, and it was the first time the company sold pay-per-view passes to the whole weekend of tournament coverage, thus imitating the business model of other sports. It was a test to see if PPV was a viable streaming method, or if viewers would balk at paying $20 for a weekend of games.
Just before the final match, in which 18-year-old Lee Jung "MarineKing" Hoon from South Korea took the top prize, DiGiovanni made an announcement on the stream: Because of the success of the Winter Arena, MLG will hold two Arena events leading up to the spring championships June 8-10.
Check out our photos from inside the MLG offices during warmup in the gallery below.
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