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Slimebeast on 14 November 2012
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Soleron said:
Slimebeast said:
Soleron said:

Go esports. I've spent $200 on SC2 tournaments this year, far more than I spent on video games.

How can that be? Is that on hardware, entry fees or what?

Are you there as an athlete or as a viewer?

Stream subscriptions. Now, it is entirely possible to watch the stream for free; I pay for the convenience of being able to see the video later, in HD, and without adverts. And even then most of that is for the Korean broadcast, you can watch most EU and US tournaments in HD for free.

Here's what I paid:

Korean GSL/GSL Team League: ~1000 (!) hours of commentated matches a year HD no-ad video access for $120
MLG: Four weekends of HD no-ad stream (videos posted for free 1 week later) for $30
Several special one-off events for $5 and $10 each

Free tournaments:

IPL team league (most nights, free)
NASL league and team league (most nights, free)
Dreamhack (five weekends/year, free HD and videos)
IPL (three weekends/year, free videos)
IEM (six weekends/year, free HD and videos)
Homestory Cup
Iron Squid (two weekends/year)
Korean OSL (didn't pay so only free stream, 100 hours of matches/year)
Battle.net World Championship ($250,000) (free in HD no ads)

Oh and I watched the Dota 2 invitational ($2,000,000 free in HD no-ads)

And that's only the top-tier tournaments. There's lots of smaller events which are all free ad-supported, and then at any time usually 10-20 pro players are streaming their practice on twitch.tv.

I never would have thought they actually charged internet viewers.

But I guess it's kinda cool. To pay to get rid of the ads makes sense. I can't stand ads.

I've watched some old matches of Age of Empires II and it's often very exciting. And I'm not into Starcraft 2 at all but still I've enjoyed watching some matches on YouTube.