Hacker News Reader

Comment by timsally | Hacker News Reader

120,000 spectators came to an outdoor stadium in Busan, South Korea, to watch StarCraft at the 2005 SKY Pro League final -- roughly 50,000 more than attended the Super Bowl in 2009. In Korea, Starcraft is the second most watched sport after Soccer. You can roll your eyes, but I think you are lacking in knowledge about this market. In some places, people do indeed believe that Starcraft is better than real sports.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/virtua...

View on HN

My point isn't that people aren't entitled to feel that one is better than the other. My point is that it's egregious to feel that one HAS to be better than the other.

It'd be like my brand of iced tea having the slogan, "Better than Nestea" or if my J.Crew shirt said, "better than Target."

Like I said in another comment, I love watching the Stanley Cup playoffs and watching Starcraft games narrated by HDStarcraft. But I don't need for a company to tell me explicitly that one is better than the other, because that doesn't matter to me and it just spurs fruitless fanboyism that I detest.

You mean in one place that offers very little (if any?) real sport competition? More people in Korea would be watching a successful South Korean soccer team then even the biggest of star craft 2 events. The market is small, the market is tiny. It only seems large because of the internet. In reality the market for spectator e-sports is very small (and beyond star craft it is pretty much non-existent). The only way e-sports will ever become a profitable market beyond niche is to engage it at the casual player with accessible leagues/ladders/ and tournaments for all. Blizzard kind of does it but they don't provide a good interface for it in my opinion. All others who try have failed pretty hard. Beyond sc2 e-sports have been declining and failing left right and center. And absolutely nothing that I see coming from game companies give me faith that this will change. Star craft 2 is a nice niche but it does not represent the e-sports market as a whole. That market is tiny, and largely ignored and at the current time requires real innovation. In my opinion the real money in e-sports (when it finally does get big) will not be spectating at all, it will come from little Johny paying 5$ a month to play in a very well run, exiting, competitive and fun casual league. Someone just needs to build it right.

Ticket price? Stadium Size?

More people go to A LOT of things than the Super Bowl, but that's because getting in to the Super Bowl is no easy or cheap task.

Does not compare.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com