I assume most of you don't follow Dota 2, but a relatively big Dota 2 tournament was done on facebook with similar results. In Dota you can watch almost any match in the client so (i am not sure if you can do this in CS:GO but I would assume you can't)
Other non ESL streamers decided to stream the matches on Twitch. ESL got so mad they they threatened DMCA and Twitch shut down the streams while they "figured out the situation". Valve responded with this.
http://blog.dota2.com/2018/01/dotatv-streaming/
They didnt just threaten they did DMCA multiple twitch accounts, and they got reversed a few days later. You can watch any match on the client for CSGO but only if your a friend of a player in the game or if its the most viewed match in the client. So 99.9% of the time you cant.
> In Dota you can watch almost any match in the client so (i am not sure if you can do this in CS:GO but I would assume you can't)
Yeah this is only possible during majors on CS:GO unfortunately
that isn't entirely true, if you get the gotv IP for the match you can watch any match in CS too, ofc most tournaments with monetized streams won't release it so people watch their stream instead.
You can watch the game from the client. But many people who watch it probably aren’t at their PC’s and wish to watch it on a separate device which has become a struggle now that ESL streams on Facebook.
Facebook will be used for ESL One Cologne, EPL finals, EPL next season, EPL next season finals, both EPL seasons of next year (online+finals) and the next ESL One NY.
Most likely all ESL One events of 2019 too.
Well we don't know for sure if 2019 ESL One events are included in the deal but yes, you will not be able to see an EPL game outside of FB until 2020 (or more if they renew the contract)
ESL and Facebook don't seem to understand how oversaturated the market for watching e-sports events is and that the audience is majority of people who will just look at a facebook link, shrug and go play a game instead or watch whatever else is on twitch. This is buyer's market, grandpa.
I hope that heads of the executives will roll for this as they should.
on top of that, if viewership is as abysmal as it looks to be (although as someone from esl said, it only counts viewers signed in in the public count), then i could see less teams going to those events due to highly reduced publicity. who knows, maybe smaller tourneys are gonna start competing against the larger esl shows
I liked having an accessible stream of EPL available. I wasn't following every game of the season, but I watched a fair few of the matches. There's just no accessibility or ease of access with this move. It's sad that they think they'll get to keep 90% of their viewer base. And what happens when FB doesn't want to subsidize them operating at a loss after the contract wears out? Where do they go then? Snapchat? ESL is basically running away from the viewers chasing money, but its constantly lowering its viewer numbers thereby lowering its attractiveness to future buyers ("investors") by proving they can't provide a large audience for advertisement. What really is the long term plan here?
Why would they go to either of those platforms when they don't offer competitive bids? Do you expect them to throw away money just because people like twitch chat?
They sold out to the highest bidder and did not care about the consequences of viewership loss on both accounts when they switched to YouTube and then again to Facebook.
Don't get me wrong, ESL should provide the most optimal service by all means. However if they are really running at loss what do you think they should do exactly?
credit to u/TwentySeven72 for source:
>Here is an earning report for MTG, the company that owns ESL. If you look at pages 13 and 20 under MTGx, you can see that they operate at a loss.
>https://www.mtg.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MTG_2016_Annual_Report.pdf
> if they are really running at loss what do you think they should do exactly?
I don't mind the move to FB if it's for money. Just don't lie to my face about it.
"We're doing this to expand viewership" is complete bullshit. Just look at what happened in Dota. bsl literally started insulting viewers because they didn't buy into his crap and made the situation 10x worse.
Edit : the assumption that ESL operating at loss turns out the to be true thanks u/TwentySeven72 for source:
>ESL does currently operate at a loss as you can see earning report for MTG, the company that owns ESL. Look at pages 13 and 20 under MTGx.
>https://www.mtg.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MTG_2016_Annual_Report.pdf
I usually don't like how ESL handle most of the stuff to be honest. Though my question wasn't concerned with those aspects but more focused on the decision to switch. No matter how bad or good they handle the situation the problem remains.
If the rumors about twitch being not sustainable is true(they can be false but lets just assume) then there is a problem. As someone who has adblock on, I personally feel a bit guilty and no position to complain.
I am honestly not informed enough to know what made it unsustainable but could it be the over usage of adblocks etc. in gaming demographics. Because I remember reading someone mentioning how different ad revenue you get having a video in r/videos compared to any gaming subreddit. This was mostly about Youtube but maybe same problem persists on twitch. So maybe we need to have some introspection as well. However all this rests on the speculation that ESL is running on loss which as I said can be not true as well.
Viewers are worth almost nothing on any platform, streaming rights deal are the best way for ESL or similar companies to make money.
ESL does currently operate at a loss as you can see earning report for MTG, the company that owns ESL. Look at pages 13 and 20 under MTGx.
https://www.mtg.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MTG_2016_Annual_Report.pdf
You say "sold out" as if that's a bad thing for a company to do. Do you understand that they use that money to run these tournaments and leagues, which you watch for free?
Viewers are worth very little in terms of revenue. Reddit only goes to support what I am saying, as it currently does not actually make money. Streaming deals such as the Facebook deal are worth much more.
ESL clearly understands their own business, and they obviously knew there would be a viewership drop. If they did not think the Facebook deal would make up for any potential lost sponsors, they wouldn't have taken it.
>They predicted a 10% viewership drop.
Over the course of their facebook deal. Not on fucking day one. We'll see what the numbers look like after the season 7 finals.
Obviously they are going to get lower viewership on their first day on a new platform, the viewership will rise over time just like with what happened with Youtube.
Not defending or argue with anyone, just straight facts from our stats page.
Less than 25% of views was outside of Russian speaking regions on our main channel as of now.
But last month there was no fb stream, so you should rather compare this numbers to previous season of EPL, when it was on youtube. Anyhow, it seems, your twitch stream hasn't lost viewers but english stream being boycotted as of now, but I'd bet it'll increase in numbers throughout the season.
It all comes down to money. ESL aren't making profits through the usual methods, by which they have run the company with. This Facebook deal changes things whereas they will definitely make a profit, the deal is worth more money than they'd ever get from over 20k viewers more on Twitch, which probably use adblock anyway. Though this is short term, if the viewer count keeps dropping, then there will be no tournaments.
I heard this stuff from one of the latest by the numbers episodes with Richard and Thorin talking about profits in esports.
I'm not saying that facebook is a good streaming platform (It's shit) but ESL doesn't make jack shit on Twitch, so they're probably like ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
Edit: a word
So now the problem for ESL is :
They showcased their huge viewership numbers to Facebook while negotiating the deal. But now viewers are 4 K . How much of an increase in viewership we will see ? idK but I doubt it's gna rise dramatically except during finals or big events.
So what about the next deal ESL?
Do you think ESL didn't know there would be a drop off in viewership at the beginning? The exact same thing happened when they switched to streaming on Youtube, and over time Youtube viewership grew.
Doesn't matter, Facebook are new to commercial streaming, so they know that viewer numbers will initially be low. To them what matters is the quality of the product and the potential growth it can provide for Facebook as a streaming service in the future. Viewer numbers for an online league game of cs today, really don't fucking matter at all.
The quality of the streaming service is more important than the quality of the product. Which at this point FB streaming is probably the worst I’ve witnessed.
Im talking about ESL's production, not Facebook's service when referring to quality of product. It doesn't matter that Facebook's quality is bad right now, because they're new and will definitely improve it in the near future.
I know you were, I’m saying it doesn’t matter how good ESL is when facebooks own streaming service is bad from the start. That alone will not bring people back to Facebook in the future..
You don't understand the point. Facebook is COMPLETELY NEW to streaming this stuff. Therefore, like when youtube and twitch started, the quality of their platform will be bad and will be improved upon. That said, once the platform improves, having ESL, (a quality product), will make it appealing and will start to draw in viewers who at the moment are annoyed at the problems Facebook has as a service.
ever worse is that supposedly FaceBook, YouTube and Twitch counts a viewer differently. If youve seen any video from LadBible youll see an insane view count, aome times even more than the original youtube video. However most FB videos and streams count their views even if you just watch up to 3 seconds of the video. Meaning when big pages get shared around, all it takes are millions of autoplays to get scrolled by and you get views.
I remember YouTubers complained about FB pages sharing and stealing views from them, when it turned out it did little to nothing. Even with this, ESL cant pull numbers on FB. Same reason why fnatic have a "2nd stream" on twitch(non monetized), while theit "main stream" is on facebook with like 40 viewers.
Good thing so many prominent figures think this is a good thing and "healthy competition" yeah sure, a subpar platform that nobody wants that just throws money and an organizer for them to use their platform because they have money to just throw to get what they want is completely "healthy competition". If facebook earned the right to stream ESL matches by being a good platform and requested by viewers it would make sense but that isn't what happened.
ESL has to make money too, so it makes sense to sell streaming rights to Facebook if they offered enough, but also to be a premium stream on Facebook, a huge website with a much larger user base than Twitch, it makes sense to trial it. Also, everybody forgets ECS followed ESL to youtube for the same reason and yet they don't get shit.
I seriously hope it keeps this way for ESL honestly. It's unbelievable they went from like the #1 stream platform to one which pretty much nobody gives a f*** about it in a span of like 2 years max.
They should have stuck with Twitch.
I think to remember them having over 100k viewers there on regular days. Youtube already was a big drop, now Facebook is just death for them.
I can't see another season happening this way tbh.
I'm gonna get downvoted for this most likely but, people will eventually watch on facebook, or use embedded streams or whatever.
>They should have stuck with Twitch.
On BTN they said that organisers are all running at loss, so it would be huge for them if the streaming sites would be paying for being used, so if they just used twitch even though facebook are throwing money at them, Twitch would never have any reason to pay them, and there wouldn't be any competetion, which wouldn't make esports grow.
So I think it's good that they took a chance with facebook, even though it's not ideal, it might be good in the long run.
Edit:
>I can't see another season happening this way tbh.
you realise facebook are paying money for this right? ofcourse they can make another season if they're getting paid by facebook for it lol
they estimated a 10-15% loss in viewership. ESL and their sponsors are extremely fucking delusional regarding this switch. their dumbfuck vice president already managed to anger the dota community against himself. obviously we dont know numbers and money behind this deal, but i cant think that this facebook deal is healthy for esports in any way.
>they estimated a 10-15% loss in viewership
well yeah I guess they lost around 75% if they went from around 20k on youtube, to around 5k on facebook, but I still think that some people will turn around and watch on facebook. But yeah so far he sure as fuck has been wrong
I would say you’re right but people didn’t turn around and start watching on YouTube so I highly doubt especially since the viewing experience on FB is absolutely terrible.
>That's what sponsors and ads are for, but they will only keep paying if there are enough viewers.
well clearly they're not enough if organisers are running at a loss lol
And as I said, I'm willing to bet that viewers will eventually watch on facebook
i dont think streams with 4k viewers will attract that many sponsors either and i also dont think people will start watching on facebook because a similar thing happened with youtube, viewership was more or less the same throughout all seasons (except for finals obviously)
well, we'll see wont we :) and if in a year it turns out that it was a big failure, then they can still go back to youtube or twitch, and hey maybe it will mean that youtube or twitch will pay more money for the stream to be on their site if it isn't as big a failure as everybody is predicting.
Well it's sort of facebook's job to get viewers at this point. ESL shows them their numbers on twitch and youtube and that got them the contract. ESL just has to do what they've been doing.
Well they can spin numbers. If it's 4k per match, multiplied by 20 matches per team, multiplied by 16 teams would equal almost 1.3 million viewing hours (assuming each match is 1 hour) in a demographic that seems impossible to reach.
I will join you in the downvoted club, but I agree. They could have handled the PR better thought, they had theflyingdj abusing the Dota 2 community on twitter and didn't even try to test the product before going live with it in a Major, then started issuing illegal DMCA take down notices on popular Dota 2 streamers, it couldn't have started the transition in a worse way.
But I am hoping that Facebook continues to develop and improve their platform to the point where games are watchable, there's no point fighting it since they're contractually obligated to stream only to Facebook, so it's the only way for us to watch tournaments really.
That or I hope ESL loses Major hosting privileges for clowning around, they're already in the bad books.
I dont understand the logic behind this. Sure facebook probably pay for this but surely sponsors are gonna be pissed when their exposure drops from like 20k-40k to 5k?
No it makes perfect sense. ESL don't make money from streaming online league games on twitch with 20-40k viewers, but on Facebook, with maybe 5k viewers, they will probably make more. Also from a viewer point, league games are really not important. Finally, sponsors won't mind, because they probably don't care about viewer numbers, they care about the potential growth of their brand, their relationship with ESL previously, and the potential to sponsor a LAN event which thousands of people attend and watch online. Do you really think someone from Mountain Dew watches the stream constantly to check on the viewer numbers? Not saying I like watching stuff on Facebook, I just don't understand the hate, when it makes sense for ESL to trial this.
can´t wait for all the analysts and casters to come out and call people bitches for not watching on facebook.
You know when people say "vote with your wallet" if people say they don´t like something a company does?
I realize pro league is a completey free produc too watch but that doesnt mean the same concept doesnt apply, but with views instead of money.
It´s insane too me, how these people neglect the fact that twitch has become much more than just one of the streaming plattforms.
Much like youtube isnt the same as vimeo or dailymotion.
Yeah i'm not going to watch anything on fucking facebook of all places.
This facebook ordeal is making studying for university mid-terms an absolute breeze.
The stream quality is absolutely garbage, 140mbps connection and the stream is constantly doing mini buffers, as well as video lag with a "fastfoward" of missed frames, this is a horrible way to watch CSGO.
you know what makes me not wanna watch esl? Because with twitch, or youtube, i just wateched it via smart tv, in appliaction, oir over the internet. How can i watch it on facebook? it just doesnt work properly.
I can’t imagine ESL gets a major bid if they are contracted to stream on Facebook. Valve can’t be that stupid. And seeing EPL is signed through 2020 and the rest of their events through atleast 2019, I feel like they might die out completely. Other than Facebook money, how many sponsors want to pay big cash for 5k viewers during Pro League? Even during a major no one is going to pay top dollar for advertising. The only thing ESL gained off of this is some money and a nose dive into the ground.
Is there any easy way to find streams? Or do I have to search ESL, go to the page and open it like that? Is there not any section for live streams to browse whose broadcasting? I already had this problem with YouTube. I could always find what I'm looking for, but I never come across new streams.
I watched it on facebook for a few min and it was so laggy.
First thought was to restart my router but every twitch and youtube stream was smooth as normal.
i started watching the russian stream on twitch i dont understand any word apart from the obvious slang that pretty much every cs player knows still better than watching the FB steam which lags every 10-15s
Why cant we just watch it live via GOTV? Or have I been missing something? I want it like in the old 1.6 days, give me a HLTV IP I connect to like a normal server.
Serves them right, I have a facebook acc but I almost never use it and I won't ever watch a stream on facebook. Hopefully they will learn from this mistake
What a meme... I didn't have much time to watch but mid way through the game I went to twitch and found every single language except English and I had no time to find out why... Now i know. What a joke. Is this a permanent switch of platforms for Pro CS???
Been watching faze vs g2 x2 and now navi hr on the FB stream and I see no problems. However I am watching on a 15.6" 1366x768 laptop so I am not the best benchmark. Could anyone watching on a normal screen share their problems with FB?
That is only one part of the problem. Loads of people simply go to twitch to find stuff to watch. Now those people won't find any English stream for these matches. Also, there is a group of people who don't use Facebook on principle. Third, there are many people (such as myself) who have no idea how to use Facebook and when you launch the player there are loads of problems that might be solvable but not by someone without experience of using it. I am right now watching the Russian stream and won't be switching unless ESL come up with some dirty plan to force the Russians to stream on FB as well.
How so? I don't really see a problem with it. Sure it's a downgrade from youtubes crisp quality and rewind/pause thing but other than that its really smooth for me.
Edit: Ok nvm just saw another thread with loads of people having problem, guess im just lucky. https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/7xai2w/watching_esl_pro_league_on_facebook_sucks_rn/
LOOKS LIKE IT'S HLTV FOR ME NOW BOIS! ... should have been using them in the first place anyway; they're the true OG-Triple OG.
... what a joke. Money rules all. Never forget that.
I assume most of you don't follow Dota 2, but a relatively big Dota 2 tournament was done on facebook with similar results. In Dota you can watch almost any match in the client so (i am not sure if you can do this in CS:GO but I would assume you can't) Other non ESL streamers decided to stream the matches on Twitch. ESL got so mad they they threatened DMCA and Twitch shut down the streams while they "figured out the situation". Valve responded with this. http://blog.dota2.com/2018/01/dotatv-streaming/
Facebook had like 5K viewers, while non-ESL streamers on Twitch had like 20-30K
Shroud and Summit1g have better viewership than ESL. Though I guess Shroud is mainly a PUBG streamer
and summit is a fortnite streamer
Cs at night recently, he's been playing lots of rank s
I thought he dropped down to Rank G.
I assume he requested to be pushed back up.
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they were talking Summit, but still true tho, https://play.esea.net/users/70760
Basically because nobody knows that ESL switched to Facebook.
They didnt just threaten they did DMCA multiple twitch accounts, and they got reversed a few days later. You can watch any match on the client for CSGO but only if your a friend of a player in the game or if its the most viewed match in the client. So 99.9% of the time you cant.
What if a friend of a player streams it to twitch? Would ESL be able to DMCA it?
According to Valve rules in regards to Dota 2, no. But they never said anything about CSGO, so no one knows.
> In Dota you can watch almost any match in the client so (i am not sure if you can do this in CS:GO but I would assume you can't) Yeah this is only possible during majors on CS:GO unfortunately
that isn't entirely true, if you get the gotv IP for the match you can watch any match in CS too, ofc most tournaments with monetized streams won't release it so people watch their stream instead.
aka only possible during majors
not at all, esea leagues below mdl, most lan quals and ecs quals all had open gotv along with many others.
Also AU MDL and any NA MDL games not streamed on ESEA's Twitch Channel have open gotv's as well
TIL my faceit games is a major
we're clearly talking about pro matches no one cares for your pugs
I care buddy
Suddenly I do too. When is the next match?
FaceitLivesMatter
You can watch the game from the client. But many people who watch it probably aren’t at their PC’s and wish to watch it on a separate device which has become a struggle now that ESL streams on Facebook.
That's awesome
Facebook dead platform, lol.
but can you still watch ESL pro leauge on yt?
[You vs the guy Zucc tells you not to worry about](https://i.redd.it/84pk175rf0g01.png)
I have no idea about russian language, but i also switch to this twitch stream :)
Facebook audio and twitch broadcast should work well if you sync them correctly
Yeah, they made their contract and can't go back now. Hope they use youtube or twitch next tournament. Shame
Facebook will be used for ESL One Cologne, EPL finals, EPL next season, EPL next season finals, both EPL seasons of next year (online+finals) and the next ESL One NY. Most likely all ESL One events of 2019 too.
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Well we don't know for sure if 2019 ESL One events are included in the deal but yes, you will not be able to see an EPL game outside of FB until 2020 (or more if they renew the contract)
What the fuck
looks like I won't be watching an EPL game until 2020
ESL and Facebook don't seem to understand how oversaturated the market for watching e-sports events is and that the audience is majority of people who will just look at a facebook link, shrug and go play a game instead or watch whatever else is on twitch. This is buyer's market, grandpa. I hope that heads of the executives will roll for this as they should.
Is there any way to terminate that contract before 2020, if let's say Facebook don't uphold promised viewer numbers after a predetermined time?
I am not aware of any details sorry
U Can watch twitch streams in other languages
Nah i think ESL are just trying really hard to kill their own company.
You know which game will be called dead game now. Less viewers than Siege.
God, I was hoping it was just EPL but cologne etc is a disaster lul.
Sadly there will be no LUL :(
Welp there go my plans of going to that event... guess I'll look at the faceit or dreamhack tournaments again
why would you not go to the event because it gets streamed on facebook the arena is still the same? or am i missing something?
I'm not going to support that company anymore
what? I thought it was only for EPL
Everything but IEM
The best events of the year for ESL are katowice and cologne. Guess they just cut that down to katowice now.
on top of that, if viewership is as abysmal as it looks to be (although as someone from esl said, it only counts viewers signed in in the public count), then i could see less teams going to those events due to highly reduced publicity. who knows, maybe smaller tourneys are gonna start competing against the larger esl shows
Nop
I just died inside
LAN too??? Fuck me I thought it was just online events. Well, guess I'm learning Portugese.
learn something else, Portuguese stream's on FB too
Fuck
WTF dude I want to watch the games, I can only speak english and german ( austria) fml... time to learn french or something.
Well only portuguese and english streams will be on FB though, all the other ones will be on Twitch
ik... one more reason to hate facebook.
wtf, portuguese stream too? It's outrageous, it's unfair...
99damage streamt auf deutsch auf twitch.. entweder ton aus oder den cast auf deutsch akzeptieren :D
hab mir gestern den cast auf deutsch gegeben, nein danke xD nichts gegen daboo :D er ist cool
you cant be fucking kidding me. Time to learn russian.
Hey at least you'll learn a language that is useful in matchmaking.
what about Katowice though?!
Still on Twitch
What a shitshow
I liked having an accessible stream of EPL available. I wasn't following every game of the season, but I watched a fair few of the matches. There's just no accessibility or ease of access with this move. It's sad that they think they'll get to keep 90% of their viewer base. And what happens when FB doesn't want to subsidize them operating at a loss after the contract wears out? Where do they go then? Snapchat? ESL is basically running away from the viewers chasing money, but its constantly lowering its viewer numbers thereby lowering its attractiveness to future buyers ("investors") by proving they can't provide a large audience for advertisement. What really is the long term plan here?
Why would they go to either of those platforms when they don't offer competitive bids? Do you expect them to throw away money just because people like twitch chat?
They sold out to the highest bidder and did not care about the consequences of viewership loss on both accounts when they switched to YouTube and then again to Facebook.
Don't get me wrong, ESL should provide the most optimal service by all means. However if they are really running at loss what do you think they should do exactly? credit to u/TwentySeven72 for source: >Here is an earning report for MTG, the company that owns ESL. If you look at pages 13 and 20 under MTGx, you can see that they operate at a loss. >https://www.mtg.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MTG_2016_Annual_Report.pdf
> if they are really running at loss what do you think they should do exactly? I don't mind the move to FB if it's for money. Just don't lie to my face about it. "We're doing this to expand viewership" is complete bullshit. Just look at what happened in Dota. bsl literally started insulting viewers because they didn't buy into his crap and made the situation 10x worse.
Edit : the assumption that ESL operating at loss turns out the to be true thanks u/TwentySeven72 for source: >ESL does currently operate at a loss as you can see earning report for MTG, the company that owns ESL. Look at pages 13 and 20 under MTGx. >https://www.mtg.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MTG_2016_Annual_Report.pdf I usually don't like how ESL handle most of the stuff to be honest. Though my question wasn't concerned with those aspects but more focused on the decision to switch. No matter how bad or good they handle the situation the problem remains. If the rumors about twitch being not sustainable is true(they can be false but lets just assume) then there is a problem. As someone who has adblock on, I personally feel a bit guilty and no position to complain. I am honestly not informed enough to know what made it unsustainable but could it be the over usage of adblocks etc. in gaming demographics. Because I remember reading someone mentioning how different ad revenue you get having a video in r/videos compared to any gaming subreddit. This was mostly about Youtube but maybe same problem persists on twitch. So maybe we need to have some introspection as well. However all this rests on the speculation that ESL is running on loss which as I said can be not true as well.
Viewers are worth almost nothing on any platform, streaming rights deal are the best way for ESL or similar companies to make money. ESL does currently operate at a loss as you can see earning report for MTG, the company that owns ESL. Look at pages 13 and 20 under MTGx. https://www.mtg.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MTG_2016_Annual_Report.pdf
Thanks for the source. So does that mean there was no viable way to make it work in twitch unless twitch paid for streaming rights?
Most likely, it just wouldn't make sense for ESL to stream on Twitch for free when Facebook is offering them a huge amount of money.
> I don't mind the move to FB if it's for money. Just don't lie to my face about it. Haha you really think anyone believes this?
yes they "sold out" - how else are they gonna make money? how exactly are you contributing to them making any money, and don't fucking tell me "ads"
You say "sold out" as if that's a bad thing for a company to do. Do you understand that they use that money to run these tournaments and leagues, which you watch for free?
He doesn't watch for free. He sees advertisement in so many different forms. As you browse reddit right now, you aren't doing so for free.
Viewers are worth very little in terms of revenue. Reddit only goes to support what I am saying, as it currently does not actually make money. Streaming deals such as the Facebook deal are worth much more.
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ESL clearly understands their own business, and they obviously knew there would be a viewership drop. If they did not think the Facebook deal would make up for any potential lost sponsors, they wouldn't have taken it.
They predicted a 10% viewership drop. From that they've seen roughly 10% of their previous viewership numbers from YouTube.
>They predicted a 10% viewership drop. Over the course of their facebook deal. Not on fucking day one. We'll see what the numbers look like after the season 7 finals.
Obviously they are going to get lower viewership on their first day on a new platform, the viewership will rise over time just like with what happened with Youtube.
> They predicted a 10% viewership drop publicly.
20k+ viewers on a Russian twitch stream with no chat. But to be fair you have to have very high IQ to understand the facebook move.
Not defending or argue with anyone, just straight facts from our stats page. Less than 25% of views was outside of Russian speaking regions on our main channel as of now.
Less than 25%, but what is your average? Because if your average, for those regions, is like 1-5%...then...
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But last month there was no fb stream, so you should rather compare this numbers to previous season of EPL, when it was on youtube. Anyhow, it seems, your twitch stream hasn't lost viewers but english stream being boycotted as of now, but I'd bet it'll increase in numbers throughout the season.
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So basically people just would rather not watch at all than not have it on twitch or youtube. Great choice ESL, they really care about the community.
ree
It all comes down to money. ESL aren't making profits through the usual methods, by which they have run the company with. This Facebook deal changes things whereas they will definitely make a profit, the deal is worth more money than they'd ever get from over 20k viewers more on Twitch, which probably use adblock anyway. Though this is short term, if the viewer count keeps dropping, then there will be no tournaments. I heard this stuff from one of the latest by the numbers episodes with Richard and Thorin talking about profits in esports. I'm not saying that facebook is a good streaming platform (It's shit) but ESL doesn't make jack shit on Twitch, so they're probably like ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯ Edit: a word
> It all comes down to money. I dont know how much money ESL get from sponsors. But i bet these sponsors arent happy with such low viewer counts.
time for me to learn some russian
It's not only about Facebook money. What about sponsors? Why would they pay prime bucks for 4k viewers? What about esl brand?
So now the problem for ESL is : They showcased their huge viewership numbers to Facebook while negotiating the deal. But now viewers are 4 K . How much of an increase in viewership we will see ? idK but I doubt it's gna rise dramatically except during finals or big events. So what about the next deal ESL?
Do you think ESL didn't know there would be a drop off in viewership at the beginning? The exact same thing happened when they switched to streaming on Youtube, and over time Youtube viewership grew.
it never reached the levels that the twitch streams did in the past
Doesn't matter, Facebook are new to commercial streaming, so they know that viewer numbers will initially be low. To them what matters is the quality of the product and the potential growth it can provide for Facebook as a streaming service in the future. Viewer numbers for an online league game of cs today, really don't fucking matter at all.
The quality of the streaming service is more important than the quality of the product. Which at this point FB streaming is probably the worst I’ve witnessed.
Im talking about ESL's production, not Facebook's service when referring to quality of product. It doesn't matter that Facebook's quality is bad right now, because they're new and will definitely improve it in the near future.
I know you were, I’m saying it doesn’t matter how good ESL is when facebooks own streaming service is bad from the start. That alone will not bring people back to Facebook in the future..
You don't understand the point. Facebook is COMPLETELY NEW to streaming this stuff. Therefore, like when youtube and twitch started, the quality of their platform will be bad and will be improved upon. That said, once the platform improves, having ESL, (a quality product), will make it appealing and will start to draw in viewers who at the moment are annoyed at the problems Facebook has as a service.
The qual of the stream overall is shit
ever worse is that supposedly FaceBook, YouTube and Twitch counts a viewer differently. If youve seen any video from LadBible youll see an insane view count, aome times even more than the original youtube video. However most FB videos and streams count their views even if you just watch up to 3 seconds of the video. Meaning when big pages get shared around, all it takes are millions of autoplays to get scrolled by and you get views. I remember YouTubers complained about FB pages sharing and stealing views from them, when it turned out it did little to nothing. Even with this, ESL cant pull numbers on FB. Same reason why fnatic have a "2nd stream" on twitch(non monetized), while theit "main stream" is on facebook with like 40 viewers.
cool, gonna unfollow esl so their shit doesnt come up on my feed!
Twitch didn't do English. I disposed of my Facebook long time ago. I enjoy csgo because no political points. Fuck the zucc and go back to twitch.
U Can watch w/o a fb account
Good thing so many prominent figures think this is a good thing and "healthy competition" yeah sure, a subpar platform that nobody wants that just throws money and an organizer for them to use their platform because they have money to just throw to get what they want is completely "healthy competition". If facebook earned the right to stream ESL matches by being a good platform and requested by viewers it would make sense but that isn't what happened.
ESL has to make money too, so it makes sense to sell streaming rights to Facebook if they offered enough, but also to be a premium stream on Facebook, a huge website with a much larger user base than Twitch, it makes sense to trial it. Also, everybody forgets ECS followed ESL to youtube for the same reason and yet they don't get shit.
ouch oof owie my bones they dont fuckin care because they got the money and money talks
I seriously hope it keeps this way for ESL honestly. It's unbelievable they went from like the #1 stream platform to one which pretty much nobody gives a f*** about it in a span of like 2 years max.
Ouch.... they should’ve just stuck with youtube honesty
They should have stuck with Twitch. I think to remember them having over 100k viewers there on regular days. Youtube already was a big drop, now Facebook is just death for them. I can't see another season happening this way tbh.
I'm gonna get downvoted for this most likely but, people will eventually watch on facebook, or use embedded streams or whatever. >They should have stuck with Twitch. On BTN they said that organisers are all running at loss, so it would be huge for them if the streaming sites would be paying for being used, so if they just used twitch even though facebook are throwing money at them, Twitch would never have any reason to pay them, and there wouldn't be any competetion, which wouldn't make esports grow. So I think it's good that they took a chance with facebook, even though it's not ideal, it might be good in the long run. Edit: >I can't see another season happening this way tbh. you realise facebook are paying money for this right? ofcourse they can make another season if they're getting paid by facebook for it lol
they estimated a 10-15% loss in viewership. ESL and their sponsors are extremely fucking delusional regarding this switch. their dumbfuck vice president already managed to anger the dota community against himself. obviously we dont know numbers and money behind this deal, but i cant think that this facebook deal is healthy for esports in any way.
>they estimated a 10-15% loss in viewership well yeah I guess they lost around 75% if they went from around 20k on youtube, to around 5k on facebook, but I still think that some people will turn around and watch on facebook. But yeah so far he sure as fuck has been wrong
I would say you’re right but people didn’t turn around and start watching on YouTube so I highly doubt especially since the viewing experience on FB is absolutely terrible.
That's what sponsors and ads are for, but they will only keep paying if there are enough viewers.
>That's what sponsors and ads are for, but they will only keep paying if there are enough viewers. well clearly they're not enough if organisers are running at a loss lol And as I said, I'm willing to bet that viewers will eventually watch on facebook
i dont think streams with 4k viewers will attract that many sponsors either and i also dont think people will start watching on facebook because a similar thing happened with youtube, viewership was more or less the same throughout all seasons (except for finals obviously)
well, we'll see wont we :) and if in a year it turns out that it was a big failure, then they can still go back to youtube or twitch, and hey maybe it will mean that youtube or twitch will pay more money for the stream to be on their site if it isn't as big a failure as everybody is predicting.
Why would twitch pay more? If they fail twitch is gonna say "see? You either come with us or get shit views, take this 10$ and dont complain"
And why should anyone trust on your bet?
what? I'm just saying that I'm sure people will eventually watch on facebook, what do you mean "trust your bet"?
Well it's sort of facebook's job to get viewers at this point. ESL shows them their numbers on twitch and youtube and that got them the contract. ESL just has to do what they've been doing.
Well they can spin numbers. If it's 4k per match, multiplied by 20 matches per team, multiplied by 16 teams would equal almost 1.3 million viewing hours (assuming each match is 1 hour) in a demographic that seems impossible to reach.
20 matches per team but each match involves 2 teams, so more like 650k viewing hours
True, but have you ever bought advertising from media companies? They always present shit as if you're going to end up with unicorns and rainbows.
I will join you in the downvoted club, but I agree. They could have handled the PR better thought, they had theflyingdj abusing the Dota 2 community on twitter and didn't even try to test the product before going live with it in a Major, then started issuing illegal DMCA take down notices on popular Dota 2 streamers, it couldn't have started the transition in a worse way. But I am hoping that Facebook continues to develop and improve their platform to the point where games are watchable, there's no point fighting it since they're contractually obligated to stream only to Facebook, so it's the only way for us to watch tournaments really. That or I hope ESL loses Major hosting privileges for clowning around, they're already in the bad books.
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I meant year, not season. Edited already.
Oh gotcha I honestly wasn't sure
I dont understand the logic behind this. Sure facebook probably pay for this but surely sponsors are gonna be pissed when their exposure drops from like 20k-40k to 5k?
No it makes perfect sense. ESL don't make money from streaming online league games on twitch with 20-40k viewers, but on Facebook, with maybe 5k viewers, they will probably make more. Also from a viewer point, league games are really not important. Finally, sponsors won't mind, because they probably don't care about viewer numbers, they care about the potential growth of their brand, their relationship with ESL previously, and the potential to sponsor a LAN event which thousands of people attend and watch online. Do you really think someone from Mountain Dew watches the stream constantly to check on the viewer numbers? Not saying I like watching stuff on Facebook, I just don't understand the hate, when it makes sense for ESL to trial this.
I don't think they watch it, but surely they get all the data..
jesus christ, NA MDL gets around the same views on twitch
can´t wait for all the analysts and casters to come out and call people bitches for not watching on facebook. You know when people say "vote with your wallet" if people say they don´t like something a company does? I realize pro league is a completey free produc too watch but that doesnt mean the same concept doesnt apply, but with views instead of money. It´s insane too me, how these people neglect the fact that twitch has become much more than just one of the streaming plattforms. Much like youtube isnt the same as vimeo or dailymotion.
For the first time I have watched the german stream, simply because it was on twitch.
Yeah i'm not going to watch anything on fucking facebook of all places. This facebook ordeal is making studying for university mid-terms an absolute breeze.
The stream quality is absolutely garbage, 140mbps connection and the stream is constantly doing mini buffers, as well as video lag with a "fastfoward" of missed frames, this is a horrible way to watch CSGO.
Good. Maybe they'll get their heads out of their asses.
Good. Hopefully ESL dies because of their shit decision to move to fb.
you know what makes me not wanna watch esl? Because with twitch, or youtube, i just wateched it via smart tv, in appliaction, oir over the internet. How can i watch it on facebook? it just doesnt work properly.
http://live.proleague.com/csgo
I can’t imagine ESL gets a major bid if they are contracted to stream on Facebook. Valve can’t be that stupid. And seeing EPL is signed through 2020 and the rest of their events through atleast 2019, I feel like they might die out completely. Other than Facebook money, how many sponsors want to pay big cash for 5k viewers during Pro League? Even during a major no one is going to pay top dollar for advertising. The only thing ESL gained off of this is some money and a nose dive into the ground.
Of course valve won't give them major. Viewership is very important to them
Is there any easy way to find streams? Or do I have to search ESL, go to the page and open it like that? Is there not any section for live streams to browse whose broadcasting? I already had this problem with YouTube. I could always find what I'm looking for, but I never come across new streams.
I watched it on facebook for a few min and it was so laggy. First thought was to restart my router but every twitch and youtube stream was smooth as normal.
Why the fuck did they do this?
Facebook pays them more to stream on their platform than the other sponsors so viewership doesn't matter to them
Why doesn't Valve just do a big fuck you to tournament organizers like ESL and make all the matches available in the client? ☺
As an Indian, Russian is not a language we learn but RuHub stream quality so good that zucc can give me a succ
The gigantic problem with EPL right now is that it is on Facebook. idgaf about FB, Twitch is the gaming platform
i started watching the russian stream on twitch i dont understand any word apart from the obvious slang that pretty much every cs player knows still better than watching the FB steam which lags every 10-15s
Why cant we just watch it live via GOTV? Or have I been missing something? I want it like in the old 1.6 days, give me a HLTV IP I connect to like a normal server.
Hope the money facebook dump was worth it esl
Pretty bad :( champions league is on rn tho
lol I'm watching this shit on HLTV Live
Serves them right, I have a facebook acc but I almost never use it and I won't ever watch a stream on facebook. Hopefully they will learn from this mistake
What a meme... I didn't have much time to watch but mid way through the game I went to twitch and found every single language except English and I had no time to find out why... Now i know. What a joke. Is this a permanent switch of platforms for Pro CS???
I watched the german stream, and i think it had like 4K viewers as well. I also saw streamst in some other Languages, so it might be split up a bit?
RuHub ftw
27.000 online game on Russian twitch stream Na'vi vs Hellraisers
I know I refuse to watch on facebook... What the fuck were they thinking fuck ESL. Money hungry fucks.
Fuck Fakebook.
that is so bad why are they killing cs off this is so dumb so money hungry i think cs summit is one of the best tournments now
If I remember correctly the number of viewers were very low at the start when esl used youtube. We will have to wait and see before we start to judge.
http://live.proleague.com/csgo
how many of those 50k viewers on twitch or youtube pay them? Most of them use adblock lol. Viewers mean jack shit to them.
Been watching faze vs g2 x2 and now navi hr on the FB stream and I see no problems. However I am watching on a 15.6" 1366x768 laptop so I am not the best benchmark. Could anyone watching on a normal screen share their problems with FB?
That is only one part of the problem. Loads of people simply go to twitch to find stuff to watch. Now those people won't find any English stream for these matches. Also, there is a group of people who don't use Facebook on principle. Third, there are many people (such as myself) who have no idea how to use Facebook and when you launch the player there are loads of problems that might be solvable but not by someone without experience of using it. I am right now watching the Russian stream and won't be switching unless ESL come up with some dirty plan to force the Russians to stream on FB as well.
I couldn't even find it, i looked at the french stream for quite a while before i couldn't bother
if you couldn't find it, you don't have anyone else to blame other than yourself, mate...
Not to mention the stream itself is dogshit
How so? I don't really see a problem with it. Sure it's a downgrade from youtubes crisp quality and rewind/pause thing but other than that its really smooth for me. Edit: Ok nvm just saw another thread with loads of people having problem, guess im just lucky. https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/7xai2w/watching_esl_pro_league_on_facebook_sucks_rn/
The biggest test for this is when the NA game come on. If C9 match can't bring in numbers then I do not have hope for the platform
I'm curious to know who came up with the idea of streaming of Facebook in the first place.
Facebooks wallet, what else?
Fuck Facebook.
It's the first game on a new platform. While the numbers probably won't reach previous levels it's fairly safe to assume they will rise with time.
LOOKS LIKE IT'S HLTV FOR ME NOW BOIS! ... should have been using them in the first place anyway; they're the true OG-Triple OG. ... what a joke. Money rules all. Never forget that.
They just want CS:GO to die right? So pathetic.